> $5 compute
Unrelated but the author at Tom's Hardware is apparently unaware of AliExpress so they bumped the price from $2 (or less) to $5. And that's the price for just one. These things are so cheap you can throw them in everything. They're the perfect alternative to a Raspberry Pi because they have WiFi, Bluetooth, lots of GPIO, and decent compute. Not enough to run Linux but you don't need Linux for IoT.
I just bought an ESP32-C3 with a tiiiiny 0.42" LCD screen for CAD$3 from Aliexpress off their "Choice" items menu.