You’re comparing computers that sold at very different price points.

But to the same markets. NeXTs were being sold both to the workstation and to the personal computer market. They were cheap but underpowered for a workstation, making them not very good for worksation-ish things, because you couldn't scale up. For a personal computer, they were very expensive, so they didn't do well there either.

I’m not arguing they had a good business plan - clearly they did not. All I’m arguing is that they were very good computers for the price, both in terms of software and hardware.

You are right. Sun's were much more expensive. But I would argue both were in the same class. NeXT also frequently compared themselves to Sun.

I'm pretty sure Sun offered huge academic discounts. I never saw NeXT at any of the local universities... It was mostly Sun and DEC.