They’re inflated right now, depending on where you buy them. I got one for MSRP (around 30 bucks) last year at my local electronics store, but I had to give them my info to deter scalping.
“Right now” for Pi inflation has been since like 2016. This is just their price now.
Yeah, there’s a lot of competition in SBC these days. People seem to like the OrangePi lineup and some others.
An official raspberry pi isn’t worth gettin imo. Especially after their artificial availability issues during the pandemic.
Plenty of alternatives out there, which is what I’d recommend. OrangePi is much more reasonable price wise.
And if you don’t need arm, a used thin client will do the same job, cost a lot less, and have more compatibility.
It’s got to the point were for the price of a Pi 5 plus necessary kit, youcan just get a Mini PC with an Intel N100 (maybe the only decent thing Intel has done in the last couple of years) which has a lot more power and expandability though it consumes 15W instead of 7W and would probably be a better choice for running emulators.