Why not to buy inexpensive "exotic" open source hardware wallets?

[Tibu]

The question is: where is the catch?
Why are they less popular than say Trezor or ColdCard which are more expensive, less convenient and not very beautifully designed?

For example, if you guys were choosing a new wallet now, and came to a shop where all open source hardware wallets are represented, would you purchase an inexpensive convenient beautiful "exotic" wallet? Or would you purchase one of the same wallets you used to consider, like Trezor/Coldcard/Bitbox02 ? Why?

Well, answer is clear.
Market leaders such Ledger got the monopol. They can do what they want and have a huge marketing power.
Newcomers and game changers might try to attrack customers with good price. And there is no trick. Producing a hardware wallet now is way cheaper than 10 years back.

[dkbit98]

Producing a hardware wallet now is way cheaper than 10 years back.

Yet in the same time materials and microchips needed for production are not easy to find and they are getting more expensive due to this manmade global crisis, so it's not all black & white like you say
That is why we can see almost all hardware wallet increasing prices, and global inflation is probably highest we had since WWII, not by accident.
Yeah ledger is holding the monopole but they also invested most money in marketing...