[Joel_Mckay]

I have used these in product designs before with zero failures. Where exactly did you buy your samples?

We found they drift less than 28s a year in standalone mode. Also, were repeatable within +-18ms when using a NTP client.

Microchip RTCs are harder to setup, but also seem to work just as well (ignoring the goofy epoch).

Chip shortage caused people to do unspeakable things.... ;-)

[hcfman]

You could buy an rtc and put up with that kind of clock drift, or.... for the same money or less you could be a GPS and have none of that drift.

[r2_pilot]

(a bit more money for the GPS to be fair) not even mentioning the fact that you should have clear-ish access to the sky, the time taken for you to receive the time data, and the possibility of jamming. I could go on but the two methods have differing modes of operation and failure despite ultimately being capable of fulfilling the need for a reasonably synchronized clock