Expensive
The shortage of stock over the last few years made me re-consider using rPis in a couple of home situations. If you need a headless/fanless board for a very specific function, then the price-per-watt might still be worth it. It's not even that small in footprint when you factor in the cables sprouting out of every direction
However on my home "management server" I tried attaching an SSD via USB-SATA enclosure to my 4GB Pi 4 to make updates/installations slightly less IO-bound vs MicroSD or USB-3 stick. Despite recommended/compatible USB 3 chipset, I had no end of problems with the power envelope of the Pi. With a powered USB hub as well the thing ended up taking out 2 plug sockets and wires everywhere... not a family-approved application.
I eventually just bought a Lenovo ThinkCentre M93 Tiny with Intel i3 "T" CPU (office refurb on ebay, £35). When comparing the power usage, the full x86 box with more RAM and expandability idled at 9-12W and my Pi 4 idled at 4W. For some applications such as ARM development, GPIO/electronics tinkering, or a truly fanless requirement then it might be worth paying the Pi premium. But IMO if you need cheap but still vaguely efficient home compute for some headless home server/NAS tinkering, then for most people a cheap refurb x86 thin client is probably more flexible and cost-effective.