And yet, grandpa or that weird uncle everyone has could just pop onto amazon and buy a normal tp-link router on sale right now for all of about $40 that has wifi built in.

Anyone who’s tech-savvy should put themselves into the shoes of their non-tech-savvy parents or grandparents in a situation where they don’t have you around to help. That’s who the main audience is; not someone willing to go even slightly down into the stack with this idea.

Now consider your average parent or grandparent and tell me that they’ll be 100% fine on their own and actually want to do this. Most would not. Often-times, the marketing itself is enough to scare these folks off of that kind of tech. They worry about things you probably don’t and don’t generally want to worry. Hell, even the fact that you’d have to purchase two completely separate items to get what you can currently purchase in a single unit is enough to not get many of them to do it.

“just”

That’s not an option for most people. They’re either not savvy enough to manage everything at that level or don’t care to and they will likely spend more money doing it this way.