The new FutureBit Apollo II has been officially announced and it is going to be available in three different versions with shipping starting in Q1 next year (2024) with preorders expected to be available from December 8th. We are not sure how to talk about this device as it is more than just a Bitcoin miner designed and made in the USA and targeted for home users… although the Apollo II Standard ($799 USD) is essentially a cool looking USB-based Bitcoin ASIC miner capable of delivering up to 10 TH/s hashrate with about 400 Watts of power usage and that device can be plugged in to an older Apollo node or a newer Apollo II Full Node or a computer or a RPi thus adding new or expanding existing hashing power. The new Apollo II Full Node ($1099 USD) as the name implies includes a Full Bitcoin Node and the device itself is a Miner + Full Node + Linux Desktop System all in one with the mining part essentially the same as the standalone device. With the Full Node you also get a built-in modern ARM based controller with 4GB of RAM and up to a 2TB of SSD storage that has a pre-installed dedicated Apollo OS 1.0, that allows for built in zero config solo mining directly to your node. And the third version is the FutureBit Apollo II Founders Edition ($1999 USD) that has all of the Full Node features, but with additional extras such as cooler looking orange case with transparent top, and you would be able to get it shipped first with a limited number of units available.
We remember first hearing about FutureBit back in 2016 on Bitcointalk where jstefanop announced that he is working on a USB-based Scrypt ASIC miner and soon after that we got our hands on the FutureBit MoonLander USB Scrypt ASIC Miner to test it. We really liked the design and how the device worked back then later on came the improved FutureBit Moonlander 2, after that the Apollo LTC miner and then the upgrade kit to bring it up to a Full Node and the Apollo BTC miner and Full Node, and now comes the next evolution with improved hashrate and power efficiency as well as features. The miners from FutureBit have always been for home users and not for large mining farms and are designed around the idea of quality and reliability, silent operation at home and useful additional features. So do not expect these to be rivalling the latest generation of ASIC miners designed for big Bitcoin mining farms, although efficiency wise the Apollo II does compare very well efficiency wise to the current generation of Bitcoin mining ASICs on the market.
