The problem is most of the boards from partners are specialized with different hardware add-ons and have a significant markup at about 10 USD a board, which makes it harder to justify buying a handful of boards to tinker with. It's quite unfortunate.

That's true, but give it a few weeks and AliExpress will be full of dirt cheap Pico/ProMicro-compatible RP2350 boards with USB-C.

I recently bought a dozen RP2040 ProMicros with USB-C and 16MB flash for about $2.70 each, and there's variants with smaller flash for even less.

This store, if you're wondering: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006130019224.html

Are this almost identical to the rpi so I can install rpi OS?

No, these are microcontrollers. They're the thing you'd put inside a device that needs a tiny bit of smarts, like Raspberry Pi's debug probe[0]. The case I have for my RPi5[1] uses an rp2040 to run the thermal management logic.

0. https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/d...

1. https://argon40.com/en-gb/products/argon-one-v3-m-2-nvme-cas...

The Pico and Pico 2 are micro-controllers, not SBCs like the other Raspberry Pis.

For anyone else who wanted to see the Challenger+ board's specs/price (for some reason the rpi page only links to a photo of it): https://ilabs.se/product/challenger-rp2350-wifi-ble/?&curren...