I've only had one flat out die. It happened after the car overheated so I'm sure the heat had something to due with the failure. I don't drive my car very much. It only sees a few thousand miles a year so I don't know the average life span of the sensor.
different setups require different things.
the bosche does not read extreme lows or highs where the ntk one does. now you don't need to know those numbers but it's just more information to work with.