That is no joke I see. Everybody need definitely reconsider the purchase from this company direct. In eU distributor (for example : Pollin de) make it more better. Pollin.de warranty (German)
§ 9 Warranty / Liability (1) The statutory warranty provisions (§§ 434 ff. BGB and, if the customer is a consumer, additionally §§ 474 ff. BGB) apply. The warranty period is two years, for used goods one year, in each case from the statutory limitation period. Any claims for damages are due to the customer within the statutory limitation period. Any guarantee of durability or durability granted by the manufacturer shall remain unaffected. The legal rights of the customer are not limited by any guarantees of the manufacturer.
Buying from a foreign supply in the far east is always going to be a risk as collecting on any warranty even if it exists is going to be expensive and probably futile (regardless of what they say). there is no arbitration mechanism to call on so its always going to be purely discretionary.
This is why the same product packaged up as a media player by a European or American seller will cost you twice as much if not more. So ultimately are you prepared to occasionally take the hit on products with failure rates measured in the few percentage points ?
No, in the EU it is the seller that gives the warranty.
So for me buying within the EU gets over this warranty problem … 2 years guarantee, or in places maybe 1 year.
This is why I’m happy buying cheap stuff from the other side of the world - if it fails it’s not a big deal. If I’m spending £100 on a media player it’ll be locally (uk / eu). The price difference with the N2 isn’t huge anyway.
odroid.co.uk seem to limit the warranty to 3 months if I am reading their terms correctly:
“Prototyping items including but not limited to the ODroid range, Raspberry Pi range, Orange Pi range, Up Board range, and any product listed on our websites as an “SKD” part are requiring of specialist technical knowledge and owing to their scope of use carry a limited warranty of 3 months.”
They can write whatever they want but it doesn’t trump statutory rights.
Any goods sold have to be fit for purpose and last a reasonable amount of time. Nobody buys a raspberry pi expecting it to last 3 months.
Having said that any company that posts terms like that is not one I’d choose to use (if there’s an alternative).
Buy a pi from Farnell and you get a 12 month warranty - and it’s cheaper than from odroid.co.uk
What I said was I’d choose a different company if there’s an alternative. I mentioned the pi4 as it’s one of the boards mentioned in their t&c’s (and in the post I quoted), it’s widely sold and the price / terms can be compared.
I don’t like hardware with no warranty - unless it’s throwaway cheap. And any company trying to offer a 4 month warranty on a £100 media player is taking the p*ss.
I am wondering, how this fault could happen so fast. Could it be because 4.9 kernel? I know C2 is supported from HK 3.14, dunno their supported OS version in case N2.
Anyway, thanks for sharing this and I am sorry to hear that
The poor warranty offered by HK was one of the reasons i went with the vim3 instead, along with better processor, smaller size, built in WiFi+Bluetooth+emmc and smaller form
Factor and imo much better looks with the vim case, It also worked out cheaper for me to buy the vim3 pro than what I’ve seen a lot of people have been charged for the N2 with shipping and fees and Especially by the time you’ve Specced it anywhere close to the VIM3. Seems like a no brainier to me. The main argument thrown forward was that the N2 had better cooling but with just the heatsink and no fan my VIM3 pro has never exceeded 60• peak and it’s on 24/7, I’m sure once the fan arrives I can expect to never exceed 50/55• peak temp.
Plus of course it comes with a 1 year warranty
Thats my board done the same thing, it boots coreelec logo goes black then tv gets no signal.I can watch in tv settings when it goes black screen fit on auto, or on or off turns grey and then no signal.Odroid UK very sad to hear about it then reminded me of the 3 month warranty on prototype boards.Absolutely superb
They are not prototype boards, even though they claim that the Pi4 also falls into the same category, which is also false because purchasing the Pi4 from any other EU retailer automatically comes with the standard warranty associated with most products that you purchase.
Write/mail them to say that they are in breach of EU rules regarding warranties and if they don’t comply you will take the matter direct to trading standards, who will uphold your complaint.
I guess you have to pay your nickel and take your chances. Still it’s not something that will keep me from buying an N2. Mine’s been been running well for several months now. If it dies, just have to buy a new one, they’re cheap enough. Now if I had that problem with my expensive laptop computer (lack of warranty) I’d be upset about it.
If it’s any consolation, usually with electronics if they’re going to fail it happens in the first few days of usage. Not always, but often that’s the case.
You also completely bungled the concept of hardware warranty vs software support. The vendor in question can promise as many years of software support as they’d like, but as a business they could just as easily go out of business and leave customers stranded. It is rather crummy that Odroid is only offering a one month hardware warranty, but that is what it is.
Personally I’d rather spend half the price ($70 vs $133) and have a device which is much faster, runs cooler and has a newer chipset. I’ve been extremely pleased with my N2.
