The new Intel Alder Lake N N100 up to i3-N300s are just starting to appear. Most are semi pricey but we are seeing some sub $150 offerings, new. The top end N300's are easily equivalent performance of an 35w i5-8600t. With some nice extra modern features/bells/whistles.
https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/10/02/zx05-mini-pc-stick-p...The real challenge is though that for most people, there's a huge market of secondary/resold business mini-pcs. These systems offer exceptional value. They're bulkier & idle close to 10w often, but if you're not doing battery powered or mobile robotics it's almost always a great trade-off.
My old Acer Chromebox units were even smaller and idled around 4w, and had two pretty beefy cores (alebit with low clock and small caches) and gobs of io. 6 USB3 ports, which it could easily saturate & barely break a sweat. Internal sata and mini-pcie wifi. Incredibly great value, and I was picking them up for under $100 years ago. Stuck 2*16gb ram in em. Amazing value.
If you need gpio, there are really really cheap USB based addon peripherals that offer whatever you might want and more.
It bothers me a lot how many people seem to support a market for junky piddling slow & limited celerons. The chips you cite have barely changed in almost a decade & were low end to start. I used a Chuwi 12.3 laptop with n3450 for a while & it was quite survivable sure. But there's so much more value going to resale markets or spending a little more & buying a Lenovo business 1L mini PC when it goes on sale. I wish Intel wasn't able to get away with selling such bad performance for so long.
Thankfully the new Alder Lake N replacement is worlds better. It's a great chip, and we can buy units at reasonable prices. I wish AMD competed here too but they have remained far up market.