This is the cost of doing business when you have to pay for engineering (and tooling + certification) on niche products. Nothing they do is really designed for mass market.
Desks, drum machines, synthesizers, mixers are not really niche products. They take fairly common items, and create a version that appeals to hipsters but is not as useful as cheaper options. Example $2k for this little synth https://teenage.engineering/store/op-1-field which wouldn't appeal to most synthesizer enthusiasts. Its more like office desk toy.
I definitely wouldn't pay $1600 but I like the idea of an ultra-modular and configurable desk. I wonder if you could build something similar with 80-20 extrusions (and/or similar knock-off) and an Ikea desktop. There's a huge ecosystem of ways to integrate/extend these and you could do some cool things with them.
This is the 10,000th time someone has posted TE products to HN and said they're overpriced. They make high-end luxury products for rich people, if you think it's too expensive then you're not the target audience. This is like saying a Lamborghini is too expensive because you can by a Toyota that does 90% of the same stuff for a fifth of the cost. Every one knows, that's the point.
I mean I get it, I would never buy anything from TE either, just like I can't afford a Lamborghini. But I can still look at it and go "Wow, that's really pretty."
Probably resentment because the original OP-1 was not crazily priced for its novelty and feature set. Once it got popular it rose from $800 to $1400 and the new OP-1 Field is $2000.
And the KO-II series is actually reasonably priced by their standards!
