So yeah, seems unlikely the only impact would be a sluggish dashboard. Maybe the device was churning on error re-transmissions from the brownout? Like the CPU itself was OK but the ethernet ports weren't?
I think this is more likely. Two different routers impacted. Crappy grounding or induced noise causing high BER on the links.
Granted, cheap consumer devices are much simpler than that, but it's still something that can be added to the SoC.
Ebon Upton started Raspberry Pi to help Qualcomm dump stock they couldn't get rid of otherwise.
Look at every single Pi to come out - it's been faster than what came before it, but in a matter of weeks half a dozen competitors have better boards with faster processors for cheaper - that don't have all the nonsense like RPi foundation repeatedly fucking up the power supply so vendors could milk people on "pi compatible" USB power bricks.
A Pi 5 16GB costs $120. Plus case ($10) plus power supply ($12) plus video adapter ($10)...$152. That is absurd.
I think RPI is starting to lose sight of that with the Pi 5 and especially the 16gb models. It's starting to just be expensive and the better support for an ARM SBC starts losing a lot of value when it's butting up against x86 mini-pcs like the large number of N100-based options at around the $150 price point[1]. They aren't really any less efficient, and x86 software support is still consistently better than ARM software support.
1: eg https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-Intel-N100-Computer-Desktop-D... - $170 for a complete unit w/ 16GB RAM & 500GB SSD.