With consumer-grade electronics like this, my approach is to consider them as disposable after a reasonable service life has passed, as repair costs or efforts will probably exceed the cost of a new gadget
It feels kind of like having a friend or good neighbor leaving town when a long-trusted good device fades from your daily life but such is the way of things today
If you feel you've gotten your money's worth just replace it. See it as the perfect opportunity for an upgrade
I'm not quite sure what you mean by
“consumer-grade electronics like this”, but I can't think of another category of consumer electronics products, especially cameras of any kind where it is “
normal” to consider them “
disposable” except for those old 35mm ones that were specifically sold as disposables. In eight years of using dash cams it's astonishing to think about how many cams I've owned that I've had to prematurely take out of service because they became unacceptably unreliable or were outright dead. It all adds up to many, many hundreds of dollars.
It seems only in the world of dash cams have we become so accustomed to such high failure rates, glitches, problems and ongoing need for troubleshooting and vigilance. Only in the world of dash cams have so many of us become enured to the habit of checking to make sure our cameras are working properly each time we leave our houses every morning because for many of us, more than once, we've discovered only after the fact the our dash cams were indeed not functioning for one reason or another. And these are “mission critical” devices where learning only
after an incident has occurred that the camera you've been relying on for key evidence was not working can have very adverse consequences for the user.
@SawMaster, I understand that as an aficionado of low priced dash cams such as the, G1W-S, G1W-HC, G1W clones and the B1W I can appreciate where you are coming from in regard to the concept of a sub hundred dollar camera being perhaps "disposable", I've been there too with some of the very same cameras, but when it comes to higher end cameras like the SG9665GC and similar I'm afraid I have to disagree with you. I cannot think of any another 200 dollar consumer camera of any kind, other than dash cams that I would consider "disposable”. Come to think of it, as someone who has spent a lifetime involved with cameras both as a vocation and an avocation I've never had
any camera fail after a couple of months or after only a few years, regardless of cost.
The fact of the matter is that dash cams, even higher end, better built models like the Street Guardian are essentially “consumer gadgets” that have far more in common with toys like your average GameBoy than any other type of traditional “camera”. By this I mean that the device consists of a printed circuit board screwed into an injection molded plastic housing with an LCD screen and a lens. While some dash cameras may use better components such as metal lens holders or more heat resistant plastic and perhaps better attention to good soldering technique and general quality control in manufacturing, they are all made like this in one way or another and mostly with off the shelf parts which were originally “borrowed” from the CCTV camera industry. “Real” cameras are built to entirely different, higher standards, even modest priced point-&-shooters and camcorders. They are always built around a rigid chassis and to a level of precision we just don't see in dash cams. “Real” cameras are more than a PCB screwed into a plastic shell.
Sawmaster, so often you mention your budgetary concerns when it comes to purchasing dash cams and related items. And so I'm a bit taken aback by your advice to,
"See it as the perfect opportunity for an upgrade " considering that we are talking about a 200 dollar camera here. Like you, not everyone can just go out and drop $200.00 on a new camera any time they feel the need or the desire.