So, if you are in the EU, the Trezor One will now cost you around €70, while Trezor T is approximately €220.
And I still remember that a few years ago, some complained that $100 was a price they were not ready to pay to buy such a device. I haven't followed how much the price of the T model has changed since it appeared on the market, but it costs about $130 more than the Ledger X that I bought in 2019. Security is never expensive, but this price seems a bit excessive to me, even from an EU perspective, and here we are talking about the price with a discount...
I wonder how many people from various poor countries of the world have no chance to buy something like this because they have to work for several months to earn money for such an HW. On the other hand, some will say that they don't need HW, given that they can't even afford big investments.
Re: hardware wallet pricing.
I have no internal information about margins of different vendors, but model T can be expected to be supported for longer, has more coins that need to be actively maintained, and hasn't sold as many units as model One. These are some reasons for which I can understand a higher price.
Personally, I believe even 200€ or more for a Bitcoin-only device (less maintenance of coins, smaller codebase, less potential for bugs...) can be worth it.
Basically, with any such device, you're buying a signer with secure storage of your seed and a pretty good level of security against software and hardware attacks. If you don't need this convenience, you can very securely store your seed on paper in multiple
physically secure locations.
You don't really pay for the security (as you said, it can be achieved for much less), but for
convenient security. Having access to your coins from a mobile device on the go, without exposing the keys to software or prying eyes, for example.
Unfortunately, people from financially weaker countries can't afford a lot of things, but by giving up some convenience, they can still use Bitcoin very securely for cheap.
