I got a defective MS-01 and the return process was smooth and they paid for everything. I got a full refund even after the Amazon refund window expired.

I have a MS-A1 and a MS-A2 now and both have been serving massive web traffic for the past 8 months with 0 issues.

I think minisforum products are generally decent, but there are things that give me pauses.

I had a mini PC that would sometimes briefly show black screens followed by "AMD driver timeout" issues. I emailed their support, who instructed me to play with a few BIOS settings (slightly weird), and eventually asked me to start a warranty replacement. The emails were not tracked by any ticket system, just as regular emails, and the shipping address was a residential address in California. All of this feels slightly unprofessional, and the residential address thing is almost alarming. But in the end, the issue got addressed, so whatever.

The overall service definitely cannot possibly match Intel with their NUCs or Apple products, not a surprise. But the actual machines are ok.

If your mini PC died within warranty period, I don't see why you cannot do warranty returns. Otherwise, you just had bad luck, just like what could happen with many other devices from other manufacturers.

I can't speak for the Intel ones but I hear the AMD Zen 4 and later ones have been solid. I have a UM780 XTX that I've been using in a homelab setup and it's been rock solid. Zero issues with Linux (Arch btw), zero hardware issues after nearly 2 years of 24x7 operation.

I've owned a couple and Minisforum has generally been amazing.

Same, I have a fairly positive experience with minisforum.

These Chinese mini PCs are generally quite unreliable.

I have one Minisforum that had the HDMI glitch out periodically and another that would reboot on high MEM load. And the stock SSD died without any warning.

I relegated them to a NAS role and at low loads they’re ok.

Yeah I don't mind a ~250ish gamble on aliexpress but 500+ minipcs is above my risk tolerance. At that level I'd rather DIY a desktop sized build where I can troubleshoot individual components

Same here. Did yours have a fan or was it fanless?

It has a fan. I bought it from Amazon and it has been over a year but when I emailed them, I got no response at all.