At least compared to some things like refurb laptops and such. Just recently saw 249€ Lenovo laptop with Ryzen 5 4500U, 16GB RAM and 480GB SSD.
Not new, but still, more powerful and having storage too.
"You can buy old restored/refurbished thing cheaper than a cheap brand new thing" is hardly a very insightful take.
Does that mean that there is no market for "cheap brand new thing"?
Specially when you start adding up things. Like monitor, mouse, power. The total adds up and somehow it doesn't feel like great deal for most income levels.
Same goes for their other products. Numbers just don't make sense for lot of people.
So perhaps you are the one out of touch.
Nothing against the N100 as an option, it's a great option for many use cases... but it's at minimum the same price (for a different type of computer), but typically a little more expensive ($150+)
They'll be cheaper than a Pi 5 or Pi 500, plus often come with a keyboard and mouse in addition to the power supply. Sure, they arent going to be quite as power efficient but you're getting significantly more for your money, as well as repurposing second hand kit that might have otherwise ended up in landfill.
GPIO aside I struggle to think of a good reason to buy a Pi 5 for this sort of application, especially when the cheaper second hand alternatives have one thing the pi doesn't - upgradability.
On the N100's, they seem to occasionally get a fair bit cheaper. The GMKtec G3 Mini for example (8GB ram, 256GB SSD) was down to £67.55 on Aliexpress[1] recently for example.
I do like a good Pi but for a lot of applications they just do not make much financial sense anymore.
[1] https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/gmktec-g3-mini-pc-intel-ald...
