TBH I don't think Gopro have a bad failure rate, though Grantway got the shaft 🙁 The older non-HD one was similiar, they allow a lot of criticism and failure threads on their website so you would dip in and think that they were all broken but I reckon it's partly just a side effect of their strong web presence- that old camera was very reliable.
Contour HD are the big competitor still I think and when they launched their horribly unready Vholdr 1, they deleted most fault threads and IP banned the posters on their forum, even if it was just "This isn't working, what should I do". So you read their forums and thought all was sweetness and light since there were few reported issues, even though they'd basically done a live beta with paying customers.
Viewing screen on the back is overrated, you might want to consider seperates for that but they're really not ideal for MTB use. Oregon have at least one camera with a screen, shame the video quality is diabolical, they've been adding features to their cameras for years but never fixed the rolling shutter defects and loss of stability that the ATC1 had. "Look, it has a screen on it!" "Yeah but it's huge and it still doesn't work."
For me it still comes down to the mountings, I have no idea if the Gopro is actually the best unit, the old one certainly wasn't the best when it was new but it was still the obvious choice just because you can do so much more with them. The chest mount is a real killer edge.
