On Mon, 20 Apr 2020 09:31:17 +0100, Chris Green wrote:

You can instead use a Pi, but it doesn't come configured out of
the box
and there's a million ways you could set it up.

True but you get exactly what you want. B-)

It also doesn't come in a convenient physical package, ...

This is more of a problem, box, PSU, connectors, time to construct,
etc cost way more than the Pi.

... and if it goes wrong (for example loses networking) you have
to
plug a screen in or pull the SD card and boot it on another Pi.

Not really, all my Pi systems (and some Beaglbone Blacks) run
headless, I just use ssh to connect to them and reboot, reconfigure,
update, whatever, from the command line.

All my Pi's run headless as well and operated as you say (apart from
the initial writing of the OS and addition of the ssh file to /boot
on a fresh/new SD card.

How ever if the networking falls over... B-)

I wish they produced a Zero E (for Ethernet), ENC28J60 boards work
well enough but is another board to faff about with in the enclosure.
Similar with a USB Ethernet adapter.

--
Cheers
Dave.