Nexus L1 review: it does not hit the 70 watts on the box

The Nexus L1 is a Scrypt ASIC that mines dogecoin and litecoin at the same time, sold as 320 to 330 MH/s at 70 watts. Our unit did not hit those 70 watts: at 1.39 volts the board drew 91.5 watts. Lowering the voltage brought that down to 74.5 watts at the same hashrate. More important than those seventeen watts is what you get in return: a 7.3% chance a year of a 10,000 DOGE block, and on four out of ten of those hits a litecoin block rolls in for free thanks to merged mining. That is why you buy a thing like this.

Transparency. The Nexus L1 in this review was partly provided by MineShop.eu, a shop we have an affiliate relationship with. They had no influence on the content, the figures or the verdict, and did not see this text in advance, not even when our measurements deviated from the specification on every product page.

What the L1 is

A desk-sized Scrypt ASIC. Scrypt is litecoin's algorithm, and dogecoin has been merge-mined on top of it since 2014: the same computing power counts for both networks at once. Switch on an L1 and you are taking part in two coins in one go, provided the pool supports it.

The device has a Thermalright heatsink with heat pipe, two fan headers, an OLED status display, an automotive-grade fuse, and both ethernet and 2.4 GHz wifi. The last point is not a detail: a miner that runs unattended for months is one you want wired.

The specifications contradict each other

This stands out as soon as you look at more than one shop.

Our daily average of 327 to 330 MH/s sits neatly between those figures, closer to the 330 MineShop quotes than to the manufacturer's 320. There is little to fault on hashrate, then; MineShop's figure is the closest.

More interesting is that the manufacturer itself does not name the chip while MineShop makes it four BM1491s. That chip belongs to the L9 generation of Scrypt ASICs. It is one of the few shops that says anything about it at all, but as long as the manufacturer does not confirm it, we treat it as a seller's assumption rather than a specification.

One name you can ignore: some shops sell it as the "Bitaxe Nexus L1". The L1 is not a Bitaxe. Bitaxe is an open-source project for SHA-256 hardware and has nothing to do with this device.

Lowering the voltage saves watts without losing hashrate

This is where it gets interesting, and where a product page alone will not take you. We ran the device over several sessions and several days at different voltages and read along with the telemetry.

Across that whole range the hashrate stays in the same band while consumption drops by seventeen watts. The setting our unit now runs on permanently is 1.34 volts: there the miner measures 330.3 MH/s at 85.5 watts over its own daily average, or 0.259 J/MH. That is six watts less than at 1.39 volts, at a hashrate that comes out higher rather than lower.

At 1.29 volts the power drawn drops to 74.5 watts and the device gets close to its advertised 0.22 J/MH for the first time. Over a year of continuous running that saves about €48 in electricity compared with 1.39 volts.

And it holds. After 3.8 days of uninterrupted solo mining the counter stands at 4,000 submitted shares with zero rejected. Tuning it leaner has not cost us a single share, and a rejected share is exactly the signal by which instability would announce itself.

What not to read into this. This is one unit. Chips differ from one another, even within the same batch, and what works for us need not work for you. Step down gradually and watch your accepted shares for the first hours; if that number drops, you have gone one step too far. We deliberately leave the temperatures out. Those readings come from different days without a controlled room temperature, and then a comparison between settings says nothing. For reference: across the whole range the chip sat between 48.8 and 54.8 °C, well within what is normal for this hardware.

70 watts is not 70 watts at the socket

Those 70 watts are the manufacturer's figure, and every shop, MineShop as much as the rest, passes it on as delivered. The number refers to what the board itself draws, not what your meter registers. An independent test measured 96.5 watts at the wall while the miner's software reported about 65.9 watts. Our own logs explain that difference exactly.

Three numbers for the same device at the same moment, and they differ by well over twenty percent. The bottom row is an estimate based on 88 to 92 percent adapter efficiency; the two above come straight from the telemetry. No shop can solve this for you; it is the way the whole industry states its figures.

Anyone comparing miners without saying where the number was measured is comparing nothing. For your electricity bill only the bottom row counts, and a ten-euro power meter between plug and adapter is therefore not a luxury but the first thing you buy.

What solo mining really yields

This is the reason to buy this device, and it is not the return.

Merged mining: two chains, one calculation

This is the mechanism that makes a Scrypt miner more interesting than a bitcoin miner at the same price, and it is rarely explained well.

Litecoin is the main chain. Dogecoin has hung itself onto it since September 2014: hidden in the litecoin block you are solving is a reference to a dogecoin block. One calculation, two chains. In our miner's logs that link is visible as the marker fabe6d6d in the coinbase, and our dashboard labels it: merged, DOGE plus LTC.

It costs you nothing extra. No watts, no hashrate, no second device. But it works differently from "two lotteries at once", and that difference is worth knowing.

Both chains hold their own bar against the same hash. Dogecoin's currently sits at a difficulty of 32 million, litecoin's at almost 78 million, well over twice as high. Clear dogecoin's bar and you have a dogecoin block. Clear litecoin's and you have automatically cleared dogecoin's lower bar too, and you have two at once.

So what you get is not a bigger chance of finding something; that is set by the lowest bar, which is dogecoin. What you get is a bonus on top of your hits: roughly four in ten dogecoin blocks also deliver a litecoin block, worth an extra €268.

Two chains with an almost identical share, one in seven million, but with very different outcomes. Dogecoin produces 24 times as many blocks a day as litecoin and has the lower bar as well, so the chance there comes out well over twice as high.

What to expect over a longer period

One in fourteen a year is the number that makes this device interesting. Leave it running for five years and there is roughly a one-in-three chance that something ever drops. That is not a promise and not a return; it is the reason people enjoy this, and it is honest to write down.

What merged mining adds to that is not extra chance but extra yield: about fourteen percent more expected income, for zero extra watts. That is worth checking.

What our dashboard says after 3.8 days

Our miner runs solo on its own node and keeps its own statistics:

That line "work done: 4.6 × 10⁻⁴ block" is the most honest summary of solo mining there is. After almost four days of uninterrupted computing this device has done four ten-thousandths of a block's worth of work.

The difference between the 315.6 MH/s the pool sees and the 330 MH/s the miner itself reports is normal. The pool estimates your hashrate from submitted shares over a period; at low counts that lags reality by a few percent.

A near miss is not progress

The best share we have submitted so far reached 20,340 of the 37.05 million a block requires: 0.055 percent. That feels like "almost", and that is exactly the trap.

Every new share starts the lottery afresh. There is no progress bar filling up, no accumulated entitlement, no moment when it is your turn. A miner that has run for two years has at every moment exactly the same chance as a miner switched on this morning. Anyone who does not understand that buys hardware on the basis of a feeling the mathematics does not support.

The odds themselves keep moving too

On 30 August the dogecoin difficulty stood at 41.66 million. On 1 September at 31.99 million, almost a quarter lower, within two days. The expected wait dropped with it from about 16.5 to 14 years.

Every calculation in this article is therefore a snapshot. Anyone who comes across a six-month-old profitability calculation is looking at fiction.

What it costs against what it yields

The expected yield is three to four times lower than the electricity bill, and that does not change by choosing another pool. Pool mining pays the same expected amount in small portions; solo mining pays almost always nothing and very occasionally everything.

The difference between those two rows is what lowering the voltage delivers. Go on to 1.29 volts and the annual bill drops to about €215, almost fifty euros less than at the highest setting, with a setting you touch once.

Check with a pool whether merged mining is actually on: if it only runs dogecoin, you leave those fourteen percent on the table without it saving you a single watt. In a web interface you recognise it by a label such as "merged" or by litecoin turning up next to dogecoin in your work lines.

How does this compare with a bitcoin miner?

We also have a Nexus S1 running here, the SHA-256 version for bitcoin. We cover that device separately; here we use it only as a reference point, because it answers the question everyone asks: is that frugal Scrypt miner the better deal or not?

So the answer is: no, not the better deal. Per euro of electricity the bitcoin side yields almost one and a half times as much. Anyone recommending the L1 because it uses "only 70 watts" is looking at one side of the division, and at a number the device does not reach at any setting we measured.

But there is something else in the balance, and that is the reason to buy the L1. The chance of actually finding a block within a year is about ninety times greater with the Scrypt miner. Seven percent a year is small, but it is not a lottery with eight zeros. That is the difference between a device with which something happens some day and a device with which statistically nothing ever happens. What a bitcoin home miner actually keeps, we worked out separately in Mining bitcoin at home in 2026.

Where to buy it

In Europe MineShop.eu is the obvious route, and not only because they supplied us with this unit. They ship from Ireland, so within the EU and without customs handling; with mining hardware from Asia you otherwise easily run into import duties and a week's delay.

What else sets them apart from the average web shop in this corner:

• The widest range of home miners in Europe. More than thirty compact models, from a €19.87 ESP32 lottery miner to a 90 TH/s Avalon Q. That is the only place where you can put those classes side by side.
• They carry the alternative too. If the L1 is sold out, the Scrypt competitor is right there in the same shop. You do not have to go searching.
• Their own tools that sell nothing. A block odds calculator and a heat reuse calculator, plus their own solo mining pool without fee and without KYC. That is taking the trouble to teach customers something instead of just shifting boxes.
• 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 1,319 reviews, with payment by card, bank transfer or crypto, and warranty and after-sales included.

Stock status. On 30 August 2026 the L1 was listed as sold out at MineShop; on 7 September the product page was online at the same price, but we could not reliably read the stock status that day. With small production runs like this that is the rule rather than the exception and can be different again next week. Check the product page yourself before relying on a price; all amounts above are quoted excluding VAT, as the shop consistently does.

If you cannot wait, the direct alternative is in the same shop: the Hammer Miner DC04, 210 MH/s at 80 watts for €369.87 excluding VAT. We would not take it, that is 0.38 J/MH against the 0.23 we get from the L1, so more expensive and well over one and a half times less efficient, but it is fair that the option is there instead of an empty page.

What else is on offer in home miners we keep track of in the current MineShop discounts; discounts of up to 58 percent ran there recently. Broader price and electricity comparisons are in Buying an ASIC miner at MineShop. Through our MineShop page Cryptocode receives a fee if you order there; it does not change what you pay.

Who the L1 is not for

• Anyone who wants a predictable yield. Solo mining means finding nothing in thirteen out of fourteen years.
• Anyone who wants to earn back the purchase. At €64 expected yield and €340 purchase price that is not achievable as long as electricity costs more than the yield.
• Anyone who wants it next to their bed. The stated level is about 50 dB, continuously.
• Anyone after the cheapest dogecoin per euro. Then you buy dogecoin.

Our verdict

The L1 is the nicest piece of mining hardware in its price class, and that is not down to the hashrate. It is because 330 MH/s at just over eighty watts is enough to play along on two chains at once, with a good seven percent chance a year of something dropping and a litecoin bonus on four out of ten hits. That is an honest product with an honest ratio: you pay for participation, not for return.

The biggest surprise was not in the specifications but in the settings. Across the whole range we ran, consumption drops by seventeen watts while the hashrate stays put. That a manufacturer tunes generously is understandable, it has to work on every unit, including the weakest chips in a batch, but it does mean the first evening with this thing is better spent on the settings than on the hashrate.

Where we remain critical is the way this whole industry states its figures. Seventy watts is not seventy watts at the wall, and the chip named in the shops is confirmed nowhere by the manufacturer. That is no reproach to the seller, who passes on what he receives, but it is the reason that with mining you hang a meter between plug and device yourself instead of relying on a spec sheet. None of those things makes the L1 a worse device. They only make it a device you have to get to know.

Frequently asked questions

How much dogecoin does a Nexus L1 yield? Statistically about 757 DOGE a year, or about €56 at the price of 1 September 2026, plus another €8 in litecoin via merged mining. In practice, with solo mining you almost always get nothing, and in about 7 percent of years a whole block of 10,000 DOGE.

Does the L1 really use only 70 watts? No. At 1.39 volts our unit reported 91.5 watts at the board, which comes to around 100 watts at the socket. At our current setting of 1.34 volts that is 85.5 watts, or about 94 watts at the wall, at 330 MH/s.

Can you tune the L1 to run leaner? Ours, yes. Across the range from 1.39 to 1.29 volts consumption drops by seventeen watts while the hashrate stays in the same band. Our unit runs permanently at 1.34 volts: 330 MH/s at 85.5 watts. Step down gradually and watch your accepted shares; chips differ from one another.

Can the L1 mine dogecoin and litecoin at the same time? Yes, and that is the whole point. Both use Scrypt and dogecoin is merge-mined on litecoin, so the same hashes count for both. It does not raise your chance of finding something, that is set by dogecoin, which has the lower bar, but roughly four in ten dogecoin hits then also deliver a litecoin block. That is fourteen percent more expected yield for zero extra watts.

My best share was very close. Am I nearly there? No. Every share starts the lottery afresh. A near miss is not accumulated progress, and after two years of mining your chance per share is exactly the same as on day one.

Why does my pool report a lower hashrate than the miner itself? The pool estimates your hashrate from submitted shares over a period. At low counts that estimate lags by a few percent. For us it is 315.6 against 330 MH/s.

Is the Nexus L1 a Bitaxe? No. Some shops sell it under that name, but Bitaxe is an open-source project for SHA-256 hardware and is unrelated to this device.

Where do you buy the Nexus L1 in Europe? MineShop.eu ships from Ireland, so within the EU without customs. On 30 August 2026 the device was sold out there. With the code CRYPTOCODES 3 percent comes off the price.

Transparency

This Nexus L1 was partly provided by MineShop.eu. We have an affiliate relationship with that shop: if someone clicks through from this page and buys something, we receive a fee. The discount code CRYPTOCODES is our own code.

Provided means, for us, access to the product, not a say in the review. MineShop did not see this text in advance and had no influence on the figures, the verdict or the comparison with competing devices.

The Nexus S1 that serves as a reference point in this article was not supplied by MineShop. We review that device in a separate article; here it appears only as measured values, with no recommendation and no buying advice.

Where a measurement ran shorter than a day, the measuring period is stated. We present a figure as confirmed only once the miner's rolling daily average has fully refreshed.

Mining does not deliver a guaranteed return. The figures in this article are statistical expectations at the network and price levels of 1 September 2026 and change daily.

Sources

• MineShop.eu, product pages Nexus L1 and Hammer Miner DC04, read 30 August 2026; price re-checked on 7 September 2026.
• XON Mining and MinerFixes, Nexus L1 product listings, read 30 August 2026.
• Minerstat, dogecoin difficulty 41.66 M and block reward 10,000 DOGE, read 30 August 2026.
• CoinWarz, litecoin hashrate 2.23 PH/s, read 30 August 2026.
• Alpha Vantage, DOGE/EUR 0.07399 and LTC/EUR 42.951, 30 August 2026 13:53 UTC.
• Own log files Nexus L1 and Nexus S1, 29 August and 1 September 2026.
• Own solo mining dashboard, 1 September 2026: difficulty 31.99 M, 4,000 shares, 0 rejected.

Mining hardware is a purchase with electricity costs, not an investment with a guaranteed return. Crypto is high-risk; you can lose your deposit. This is not financial advice.