Believe me, I have trouble-shot every box I've had to the moon and back, as well as my brother's and my parents boxes. Between us we've probably had at least a dozen box swaps over the past few years for various reasons - V2's and V3's and every single blinking one of them hasn't functioned reliably. I'm extremely fussy when it comes to my AV kit as I work in TV production so I want the devices designed to show programmes I work on to do that properly.
I don't even have any miniboxes - no need for them at all, but every Q box I have had has suffered from the random audio drop-out issue. I have thoroughly tested every permutation of possible network interference (WiFi on, WiFi off, network resets, ethernet attached, ethernet not attached, broadband turned off completely, etc) as well as different TVs, cables, direct HDMI connections, HDMI ARC to an amp, optical connection to amp, optical from TV to amp, etc, etc, etc. Absolutely nothing works. The box just can't achieve the simple task of recording a programme and playing it back without random audio drop-outs. These are also now often accompanied by a frame skip at the same time.
As for housekeeping - I actually keep the Q box turned off at the wall now and only turn it on when necessary or when someone else in the house wants to watch something from a non-Freeview channel, so it gets a full reboot every few days. I bought a Freeview HD PVR to record anything from the main terrestrial channels instead and it has been 100% rock solid, never missed a beat. It just does what it's supposed to and does it quicker and quieter than the Q box ever could. Every so often we'll watch something together on the Q box but literally every time we do that there are at least a couple of drop-outs. It's maddening.
I'd get rid of Q in a heartbeat if it weren't for other members of the household. Like
@Dirk Diggler I find the NOW TV app on Firestick to be excellent - infinitely more reliable. My brother has since killed his Sky Q contract completely and switched to Now and has had no issues since. I suspect I will be doing the same thing soon.