2GB Raspberry Pi 5 on sale now at $50
raspberrypi.com
raspberrypi.com
I suppose there's still room for a 1GB model, but I doubt that cutting the RAM down by 1GB will knock $15 off the BOM, and it sounds like they're already scrimping elsewhere on the $50 2GB model.
And if you want something better than atrocious storage performance (random I/O performance) you need A1/A2 cards and they are still order of magnitudes slower than SSD/NVME.
So then you buy an NVME hat and select a NVME SSD instead of an SD card and now we are at $90 at least?
And we haven't talked about a case yet. Another $10?
So depending on your needs, it's probably closer to $100 than $50. And at that price point, a second-hand computer - depending on your needs - may be a better, more performant choice. And those 1L pcs can often do idle ~5 watt which is close to the Pi4/5.
I don’t want to spend $100 on this.