Doesn’t sound like the ‘cheap small computer you can run your hobby electronics project on’ that the original Pi used to be. It is not as cheap and a power hungry beast, still small, though. More and more like a PC and less and less a small cheap embedded platform. For some people it is a plus (I guess for most people here), for some not so much.
I tend to build my projects on Raspberry Pi Pico now, but sometimes I would need something more powerful and Raspberry Pi 5 will be too much.
The project goal has never been a ‘cheap small computer you can run your hobby electronics project on’. The whole point of the project is to build a small cheap PC to give away to school children to increase computer literacy, while making it attractive enough for normal people to buy to fund the charity side
If you can find a new one. They are $45+ on ebay used. None of the usual US sellers has any.
You can buy beelink small form factor pcs from Amazon for around $150 with cases and power supplies included.
But…he said that it’s not as cheap as it used to be and too power hungry and you propose an 150$ PC?
I’m agreeing with them. By the time you buy the Pi 5, and all the add-ons you need, it’s going to rival these SFF systems with full x86 Intel chips with efficiency cores.
I think they still make the older ones if you want something middle-of-the-road.