For now, nothing beats the RPi 0 on price, as well as features-per-dollar. The closest is an Onion M2, IIRC. It's $9 before shipping, but only has 64MB memory. I'm prototyping /piloting on RPi Zeros, but if I end up scaling to 1000's of sites (which is why I cant use a $200 SBC per site. It's a self-funded passion project), I'll likely have to switch to the Onions due to the limited availability of RPis you mentioned
Which means my country’s very good consumer protections don’t apply, which immediately rules them out for me.
Seen pragmatically your "protection" in buying such small things, where the transport costs more than the things themselves is denying the seller a good rating, until one item that is functional arrives. AND/OR disputing via whatever payment service, or simply writing it off.
In countries where consumer protections are a complete joke, and a bad purchase is as good as a write-off, I could perhaps understand this sentiment.
However, I don’t have money to splash out on things that might be broken on arrival. I’ve already bought a few Raspberry Pis that needed returning and doing so was hassle free as soon as I quoted the Consumer Guarantees and Fair Trading Acts. At most places, I don’t need to bother.
(Another benefit is I never need to buy extended warranties; legal protections here tend to last longer than those anyway!)
If I can get the product in New Zealand via a local supplier, and I tend to prefer to support local businesses anyway, I can have just as much fun without any risk.
I just wrote that because of my experience in Germany, where I'm from, one tends to see the sourcing of gadgets from China like that.
I once ordered a NanoPi Neo2 with 1GB RAM, some 'Sata-Hat' for it, and a fitting metal case made of aluminum. Was about 50 US$ with the wall plug, directly from the vendor, waiting some weeks for delivery, and the possibility of hassle with customs, though unlikely for something of that price.
So i applied your reasoning and sourced it locally. BANG! 99EUR!!! Didn't make that much sense anymore, economically, but i wanted it. Then the delivery service fucked up, it got returned/canceled by the delivery service because I complained about their reason "could not find address", while having seen the driver speeding away at the end of his tour from my window, which was obvious from the online tracking with real time map which they offered.
Had to tell the vendor I did NOT cancel, please send again, this time with a more reliable delivery service, if possible.
Finally I got it! (That was the 'fun', the rest I could have done without)
Would it break now, i'd have no consumer protection at all because i bought it way more than half a year ago, which is how long ours last.
Since I'm no power shopper, this made me think about my/your reasoning, and the conclusion that if you want something from "there", either the 'no risk, no fun' thing is the way to go, or it doesn't exist, since sourcing it locally at least doubles the price, or it isn't available at all.
Ordered a few things since then, had no hassle, everything was good, and at least 3 times cheaper.
Even have Alipay connected to my bank/checking account and identity card, which was possible to set up via browser at the time.
The idea of supporting local businesses is appealing in theory, but seems to hail from bygone ages. Again, as seen from Germany, because nowadays many here are either clueless and/or scammy, which takes the 'fun' out of it.
So, coming back to the little expendable cash, the only remaining question for me is: Does it make sense to have some man in the middle delivering my cheap things for at least 50% more?