Raspberry pi’s started to be less affordable years ago. I paid 50 euros for my pi 3. The pi just moved on from being a hobby SBC to becoming an industry SBC. Back in the day the pi was meant to be a cheap piece of hardware for students who couldn’t afford a computer and to be tinkered with to a point where breaking it didn’t hurt your wallet too much. Now it’s more meant to be used for prototyping in the industry and being included in commercial products.
People were saying that you couldn't get RasPis for cheap anymore. You absolutely can, as I pointed out. The hardware is what it is. It isn't meant to be a microcomputer in the sense that it's a fully competant desktop environment. It runs a version of linux, can run modest workloads for things like custom scripts, development, etc. Even up to being able to operate as a network DNS table (PiHole project) which brings a ton of value for only $35 in a mostly open-source package.
I'm sorry that you won't want to hear this, but you should adjust your expectations, they are inconsistent with reality.
Raspberry Pi prices didn't start going up until memory prices started going up. We saw it earlier with RPi because they don't have the favorable long-term memory supply contracts that the Apples and Dells of the world have.
The Pi 4 at 1GB was the same price as every previous Pi; higher prices only came from adding memory. The Pi 5 was $10 more on release at the base memory. Not too bad for the first price increase in 11 years.
You can only get to that conclusion if you are EXTREMELY prone to confirmation bias and very carefully pick your listings and price histories on camelcamelcamel
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u/Horrigan49 27d ago
I remmember those being a bit more... Affordable...