That $520 Canon Kit Is Cheap. It Is Also a Dead End.
Why is the cheapest camera the most expensive one?
A first camera should be one you can still be learning on in two years. The Canon R100 kit at Costco costs $520, and it is the cheapest brand-new interchangeable-lens mirrorless camera you can buy. That is the whole pitch. The kit lens alone sells for $350, which makes the body inside the box effectively worth about $170, and it behaves like it.
PetaPixel has made this plea before, two years ago, and the camera has somehow gotten more expensive since. As an investment in someone's future in photography, the R100 is a terrible purchase, because it cannot grow with a photographer past the very first stage.
What does the R100 actually leave out?
There is no electronic viewfinder, the rear screen is fixed rather than articulating, and there is no USB-C charging, so every trip means carrying the wall charger. Reviewer Chris Niccolls wrote that using the R100 felt like going a few steps backward, and that even much older cameras outperform it. Unless the budget is absolutely fixed under $500, he would stick to a smartphone.
What should you buy instead?
The Nikon Z30 costs under $600 now, and it is smaller, lighter, and substantially better: a fully articulating touchscreen, excellent autofocus, strong video, and a faster burst rate. If stills matter more, Canon's own R50 fixes everything the R100 gets wrong, with a viewfinder, an articulating screen, and USB-C charging, for $679. The video-focused R50V drops the viewfinder and lands at $569.
The used market is the other answer. KEH has a Canon 5D Mark II in excellent condition for $296, and a 24-105mm lens to go with it costs $256 to $475. Slightly more than the Costco kit, and a combination a photographer can actually learn and grow with.
Why it matters for you
The real cost of the R100 is not $520. It is $520 plus the camera you will want a few weeks later, when the first one has taught you everything it can. Skip the stage that ends, and buy the camera that supports several years of interest, not a few weeks of it.