Your feeling is right, but you got the numbers wrong. In today's money, they used to be around the $400-$700 range. Now they start at ~$1000, which is insane;

Your feeling is right, but you got the numbers wrong. In today's money, they used to be around the $400-$700 range. Now they start at ~$1000, which is insane; especially considering a last-gen, extremely performant laptop with a 5x larger screen and battery can be had for those $700.