While the OP-1 is a unique musical instrument (sold a $700 10 years ago, now $1200 new, god only knows why...), these designers will make you pay a premium for most of their products, aside from the low quality pocket operators.
I own one. It's amazing. Don't knock it till you try it! It's a $700 toy, not a radio. It works well in their ecosystem if you have other TE stuff, It's hours of enjoyment playing with it. It's well worth the money for the fun (I even used it to get off alcohol, every time I wanted to drink I was usually bored so I played with it every time I wanted to drink), unfortunately the build quality is awful.
I agree with everything you are saying except that pocket operators are actually quite neat. But yeah, everything else is actually really pricey and actually has a lot of reliability problems. You see a lot of people paying that $1200 for the OP-1 and it just breaks and TE doesn't support their product either.
It looks like you at least heard of this product before and yet you completely misrepresent it for some reason. This is not just a radio, it’s a music instrument of sorts: it continuously records what you hear on the radio and allows you to manipulate it in real time (rewind, loop, time stretch).
And behold their 600€ radio:
https://teenage.engineering/products/ob-4
Yes, I said a radio.
While the OP-1 is a unique musical instrument (sold a $700 10 years ago, now $1200 new, god only knows why...), these designers will make you pay a premium for most of their products, aside from the low quality pocket operators.