Things certainly got better. Now it is very possible to get Arduino devboards under $3 from China. If you must, as it's possible at the same prices to instead

Things certainly got better. Now it is very possible to get Arduino devboards under $3 from China. If you must, as it's possible at the same prices to instead get much more powerful microcontrollers with RISC-V or ARM processors, like the ESP32 or STM32 lines.