At first I was on the same wagon, but then I really started to think about things. Yes it is expensive and it is probably more than they could cost. But its all relative this can't be compared to a phone there just to play devils advocate. There is much to consider not just the price of the light and how much will be made. What are the cost's of the business, there's R&D, marketing, production, rent, salaries, healthcare cost's, workers comp, insurance, tariff's and probably more that i am missing. There are millions of people that have a iPhone not all those people have a reef tank. Yes black boxes work as well as other lights but there are clearly differences in black boxes and radions the build quality is not the same and it comes down to how much you are willing to spend for innovation and quality. Black boxes have not changed by much since they first came out yet radions have gone through generations each time getting a little better, and you have to replace the black boxes every year or two unless you replace the diodes because they do degrade you cant expect top quality for something that cost 1/4 of all other brands.
Unlike a phone most reefers are happy with the Generation that hey have if you have g4's you will most likely wont upgrade for a few years unless your one of those people that have to have the latest and greatest. So as a company how many can you expect to sell and for how much so you can keep the doors open and create new items and pay the employees, bills, and taxes.
Now lets compare that to the current state of things. A reef tank is something that you can live with out so you cant compare it to rent or food. But how much do you spend in entertainment, how much do you subscribe to netflix, hulu, amazon prime, cable, disney + if you have all of that you are close to if not over 200 a month every month. how much do you sped going out to eat, or movies, if you think about it not that much after you add up all you spend on things you don't have to spend on.
I was helping a friend with developing a product that cost a couple of dollars to make, after all said and done it would cost more to make that what he could sell it for there are alot of hidden costs that we dont think about. I have had black boxes, t5's, and hydras. lets compare the black boxes worked great for a while until one almost caught on fire so there's who would i hold responsible? so i switched to t5's. Those were great a couple of hundred bucks for a fixture on amazon, ran for a few years so it cost me a around 300+ in bulbs not to mention the extra power consumption. So i probable spent close to the same mount of money by the time i need to replace the fixtures. Its just more money upfront. Now the growth was better with t5's but the colors are more amazing in led so a little bit of a trade there.
Now the price of corals is out of control that i can agree to that is why i sell my frags for almost nothing or give them away.
But like others have said its all to what you are willing to pay.
