[alilleybrinker]

It ought to be easier to get a blank slate of a small device with some compute power and a screen, like the Kindle here, without having to jailbreak something.

[RicoElectrico]

There is one, it's called the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, but due to the small volume and the target audience largely being not-my-own-money (think educational institutions), the price is quite detached from the production cost.

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

I think more of the issue might be the eink screens. As far as I can tell, there just aren't 5+ inch eink screens for cheap.

[nine_k]

Arduino-compatible devices based on ESP32 are plenty powerful enough at a fraction of the cost.