I've been using RPis and secondhand mini PCs for embedded systems development and testing professionally for the past few years. I've got 3-4 dead Pis already out of a dozen or so that we have, a mixture of Zeros and 4s, which isn't exactly impressive. Meanwhile the couple dozen mini PCs, despite their age and having been bought used, have had only one failure, a RAM module which was trivial to replace. The failed Pis went into the electronics recycle bin because that's all you can do with them when the develop issues.
Sorry, I stand by my opinion that Pis are hobbyist playthings. I'm sure they were reliable for you but you probably weren't trying to do anything serious with them either.
What were you doing with those three boards that failed? I've got the feeling you meant total failure and we're not talking about SD card failures or broken connectors. Heavy use of GPIO?
> I'm sure they were reliable for you but you probably weren't trying to do anything serious with them either.
Of course it was serious. I was frowning the entire time.
> secondhand mini PCs for embedded systems development and testing professionally
I feel like I'm missing some key piece of context when people mention the humble dumpster origins of the PCs that keep coming up when comparisons with Pi are made. Like "we were trapped on an island the entire time," or "our company operates out of South Sudan, the poorest nation in the world," or something like that.
Sorry, I stand by my opinion that Pis are hobbyist playthings. I'm sure they were reliable for you but you probably weren't trying to do anything serious with them either.