[Mister_Snuggles]

Honestly, the big thing that the Pi has is the support and mindshare. Compared to many equivalents (e.g., the Banana Pi) you'll find much better documentation and have a much more polished experience with a Raspberry Pi.

The only question, for me anyway, is how much value I put on that experience and whether the increased cost is worth it.

[joshuanapoli]

Yes, this is it. When I'm experimenting, I'm happy to pay an extra $40 for the name-brand device that has 1000s of blog posts supporting it, since it's probably this community is going to help me be more successful and learn faster.

I would reconsider the choice when I have a commercial product that I have some scale of production, where a few bucks off the BOM is important.