1GB model is $45. And if you need a Linux microcontroller, Raspberry Pi Zero with 0.5 GB RAM is $15.

Honestly, 16 GB RAM in a Raspberry Pi is stupid. What are you using it for? If you want AI, you buy NVidia Jetson, Raspberry Pi won't cut it with 4-core CPU. If you want a regular PC for office, you buy a regular PC with low-end Intel or AMD CPU for the same price. If you want a video server to plug into your TV, 1 GB RAM will be enough, and there are cheaper moddable media boxes out there. If you want a controller for your industrial equipment, you'll be barely using half-gigabyte of RAM for your industrial spaghetti code, so you probably bought the most expensive model for your corporate writeoff money just because you could. No, it will not be more reliable and won't work any faster. But you can run Quake 3 on your CNC lathe, which makes it totally worth the price (Quake 3 runs fine on 512 MB RAM, you could have bought Pi Zero ).