Definitely not pretty cheap. We need to stop normalizing high prices just because we happen to be in the upper part of the k economy. It's an entire week's pay at minimum wage. To have a screen with a camera and speaker on a weighted base.

I did a very quick search for "kitchen smart hub" and a lot of the devices (including some by Amazon) were in the same price range. Even the Meta Portals were $199 to $349 when released.

Google's Nest Home is only $99, so that is likely the cheapest version from a big company.

For an apple product this is extremely cheap. The only non accessory products that are cheaper are watch SE and airpods.

Outside of basically just TV's the economy has decided to completely abandon targeting really much of anything at below median wage incomes.