Many (small) affiliate sites vs one big authority website?

Title pretty much says it all.
Which one would you pick (If you had to go with one) - and why?

Small niche. How would you else target traffic. You would even with a big site have to focus on a small part of Products? Lets say you sell led. You can focus for seo. On led, Light etc.

One authority site covering one broader niche.

Depends on how much time you have to work, or do you have a team.

No harm with having 2 or 3 smaller sites on the go or as Nargil says just stick with 1 authority site covering a broader niche.

Can I pick both ? One big authority site is better in my opinion.

I think I'd prefer many small affiliate sites. Could spread out into some good niches and you don't have all your eggs in one basket if ranking goes to shit on your main authority page.

My ipinopi is to build 1 authority site on a paticulpar niche. Broader than micro niche like best gaming mouses but a site on pc gaming. Nowadays the big players are dominating the broad niches and have a lot of authority. Create a site in a slightly smaller broad niche so for example instead of home and gard en pick kitchen appliances instead. That way you'll build authority in the kitchen appliances niche for example. That way you can go after the big bucks. I see no sense in creating micro niche sites anymore. With today's SEO it's about trust and you can't exactly create evergreen content with a site that's something like bestleafblower.

Turn small niche into an authority site and branch out. Small niche won't survive in today's SEO.
Here's a small strategy I'm implementing with a new site. I'm starting a new site, competing against massive authority sites on the subject, competing with WebMD, medicinenet, etc. Almost impossible to outrank them. But what I'm doing is going to special in a small niche. So where they may have 20 articles on a subject, I will have 50. My plan is to acquire links because I am more specialized in the area. Google will also start to rank you well as you'll be seen as an authority in the niche. I'm a believer in content gap. So where they lack, you'll cover everything on the subject. It's not going to be easy, but I'm going to try.