Whenever the Pi gets brought up people on HN will tell you you are wasting money if you are not buying a Chinese Pi clone with beefier specs instead. But at least for me, "Being able to boot into a Linux system without having to dig through outdated wikis and Chinese language support forums to hunt down a google drive link to an OS image from 2021 that has since then received zero updates" is definitely worth paying ten extra dollars for.
really good point, but I actually don't think the Pi's biggest competitor is Chinese clones, but just regular laptops and mini-pcs that have dramatically lowered in price over the years. I do still think Pis have a purpose though, it's just harder to justify in certain cases.
It depends on what you use your Pi for. If you are self hosting anything beyond what a Pi Zero can handle then a mini PC would most likely be a better choice than a Pi 4 or 5. If you are building embedded devices or are a hobbyist then the Chinese ARM SBCs are definitely in the competition.
