What would be the reason that one would purchase this unit over the S9? Reliability is much better or so I have read, but power consumption is not. Would it be the fact that bitmain is not months behind and paying the scalper prices on eBay is absurd? Not trying to start anything here. Just attempting to confirm what I believe the reasons are based on my research. All in all given the retail pricing of both units wouldn't the S9 be the better machine 9 (not considering reliability).
Availability as well. You couldn't get an S9 from Bitmain either they were only releasing the L models for Eth and Ltn and or they were selling them for BCH. Then Canaan released the A7 and people slowly adopted them because they got tired of waiting for s9's. problem is, neither company can supply enough miners and frankly, they both are probably using every miner they make to mine their own BTC.
I don't care what anyone says, but I am a firm believer that's the case. I don't expect it to change for a while. Every now and then they will release a batch to make us think they are trying but they will be limited, go faster than most of us can purchase them etc. Normally, when supply overruns retail the companies will limit the purchase of an item to a few per customer. I don't believe these companies do that. So say they do make 1000 miners for sale. They put them up on their site and two people purchase them all. Leaving the rest of us out of luck.
Well of course theyre not limiting the purchase amounts. It makes more sense for them to prefer to sell in bulk because theres less hassle than dealing with multiple people. Saves them both time and money and in the end theres not many advantages selling individual units over bulk.