Especially with ESPHome making it so easy to integrate with common sensors without writing code.
That said, the Pi Zero W is pretty cheap and small (similar in size to many ESP32 development boards) so it provides a nice upgrade path if you want to do more processing on device, exceed a few megabytes of ram, etc
This has just been one of my largest pet peeves with the entire Pi lineup. The Pi 5 is the worst offender that idles at like 3 watts doing jack shit. That's an entire 3000mAh battery gone in under four hours that would've easily lasted several days on an average smartphone SOC with twice the memory and speed.
My first reaction was "Well, the OS is open -- isn't it? Just set up good power management yourself and publish it for all to use, and it'll probably get accepted upstream eventually."
But then I remembered: The OS is open, but the hardware is not (because -- in one word -- Broadcom).
But maybe with an IPO, they can generate enough cash to get their own CPU started up. Maybe something based around [checks flip-chart] RISC-V or something, with enough documentation to allow people to fix the [checks excuse card] power management problem.
They've certainly shown some willingness to work in that direction with the RP2040.
Perhaps that will change: After all, how many engineers do you know who feel motivated to hold down regular mid-tier jobs at two publicly-traded companies?
And things like the ESP-32 have reduced the Pi's practicality on the other end where you just need something powerful enough to read and transmit data from a sensor.