Are the cheap Amazon dash cams with 50,000+ reviews actually reliable?

Specialist communities are skeptical. r/Dashcam threads repeatedly flag certain high-volume Amazon brands for paid placement, inflated spec claims, and reliability issues, even when star averages are high. Brands with long track records in enthusiast forums (Viofo, Thinkware, BlackVue, Vantrue) tend to draw more trust than newer Amazon-first labels.