Not a new project, but I feel is often overlooked: Sakura. I’ve fallen back to it repeatedly over the years. It is lightweight, opinionated but sane. Not as brutalist as st. I combo it with Tmux using powerline with little tweaking.
It uses standard libraries and stays out of the way.
So, I bought a Pinetime with tariffs applied to go with GrapheneOS. It came to me about $50 USD shipped. For that price, I would do it again if it broke.
My needs are very basic, I can control music, see notifications, and get my heart rate on a graph when I work out. I only switched to this from Sensor Watch, simply because of the heart rate sensor.
Speaking of, you would be surprised what you could make a Sensor Watch do for you with no connectivity to your phone. I had totp for work, chess, and sunset/sunrise times as well as a onboard temp sensor.
Suffice to say, I think nowadays Ill readily pay more for FOSS with less features than something else just on principle. So I wouldn’t let what could be conceived as a “bad deal” stop you if your convictions are strong enough.