Are your opinions based on your impressions from old CPUs like Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 X2?
Definitely nope. I used an i3-6100 recently just because that's what I got as a part of my payment after helping with upgrading PCs at some office. Okay, 6100 is nearly a decade old and its efficiency is questionable to say the least if we compare it to the next-genous "Intel 300" but I also invested my time into testing my own i5-12400F with 4 of 6 cores disabled.
So, having three or four times the cache and about 600 MHz on top of what this double-core CPU offers I was a little bit offended. Browsing wasn't very smooth, some not-so-well optimised web pages, perfectly capable of running smoothly on a fully enabled i5, were a little bit of stuttery mess on this 2-core nonsense. Gaming was just not here, anything recent is just thrown outta the window. I agree with the point it's enough for those whose most demanding task is launching Google Chrome and watching ASMRs on YouTube, yet that's still very pricey for this level of performance considering what you can get if you pay just 40 dollars more. i3-12100 provides at least 20% single-core performance uplift which is never a bad thing for "basic" users and at least 150% multi-core performance uplift which is useful for everybody.
Buyers save extremely little money and get their performance sliced and diced. 120 dollars for a CPU capable of your "basic" tasks and almost any kinda gaming + some multi-tasking VS 80 dollars for a CPU that's only providing smooth Excel spreadsheet management. No-brainer all things considered. I also dare to remind you those "basic" users virtually never upgrade their PCs so buying a CPU that will become obsolete a decade before they buy a new PC is not ideal. Pentium G4500, for example, became a complete pain train by 2019, yet i3-6100 felt relatively decent up until 2023. Their prices differed a little, their value is night and day. With Intel 300 and i3, this value difference is one order of magnitude bigger and price difference has shrunk even thinner.