I think that's a fundamental issue with a lot of these basic electronics. A significant % of the cost is on packaging/markup/distribution when the chip itself i

I think that's a fundamental issue with a lot of these basic electronics. A significant % of the cost is on packaging/markup/distribution when the chip itself is so cheap. I frequently see old mini-PCs with i3s and it's for ~100EUR. Even a 4th gen i3 is going to be way more powerful than a Pi, the only thing going for the Pi is probably newer faster memory. IMO the best use case for the Pi is buying 10 Pi-zeros at a discount and putting them on a moderately-heavy task that needs them to run off a battery.