Performance per watt is nice but I’d be more inclined to talk about “problems being solved per dollar.”

If you don’t specifically have a project where you need the GPIO pins built in, I struggle to understand the use case proposition of a raspberry pi compared to a typical x86 mini PC or even just grabbing a think client desktop like a ThinkCentre.

Almost everything that is unique to a Pi compared to an x86 mini PC seems like it makes more sense with an ESP device.

When the Raspberry Pi was $35 and it ran a desktop OS and the cheapest alternative that did that was 5x the price that use case made sense.