I never watch Youtube channels since it's almost always 5x as long as it needs to be and either faked or with some unknown agenda/bias. However, I thought I'd give this one a go mainly because the guy's dry humour is hilarious.
Nevertheless, a few things did come to mind:
1. He went waaaaaay overboard with the whole reverse-engineering thing as a service manual of sorts. Sure, it's impressive and makes for some great Youtube watching but the amount of detail (and therefore time) that got invested into it makes little sense outside Youtube given how few people will ultimately benefit from it. And even so, with several critical parts obscured it's anyway incomplete.
2. The whole troubleshooting process was way too elaborate. He could have just used his IR camera and spotted the dodgy tantalum without going into that kind of effort (refer to above). This method makes for entertaining watching but it's not efficient unless you have all the time in the world (justified with a monetized channel).
3. If he had any real respect for the device, why plug power into it after it's been dropped with stuff rattling inside?? He's lucky there wasn't some screw lying on exposed circuits. As a rule, if I get something that's defective on my bench I always open up first before just hitting the power button.
4. The price certainly is steep, the build quality rather homemade-looking and it's easy to poke fun at the designer. It's also easy to ridicule the designer's absurd repair fee (which it is). In fairness though: the design seems to be sensitive to component matching. Many of us have seen the butchering jobs when opening a 'mint' used product, so I can understand the apprehension of the designer to let such a high-strung product loose on just any techie that could ultimately ruin his reputation if the quality is sub-par. There's a reason why several companies only use in-house repair or vetted repair services.
5. Regarding build quality: Meridian products until the early 2000s are not much better on the inside, and that's also premium and built on larger scale. Lots of holes that look hand-drilled, hard-soldered wires instead of connectors etc. Classic case of brilliant R&D with a fairly decent frock but dismal underneath.
6. Another part that was not covered: not a word of the actual performance of the product. If it took decades of R&D to arrive to a truly unique result, a high price is justified to cover the investment. Tantalum capacitors can fail in any circuit (including medical, where they are often used).
My takeaway from it was that, sure it was entertaining but changed little about my perception of Youtube being full of BS, hype and half-truths. Not bashing the guy, he found a niche that's entertaining and helps pays the bills but I'm pretty sure he'd have done it differently had it not been for the camera.
