Flash drives and SSDs are quite affordable nowadays yeah, but internal storage for devices remains costly.
For instance, the Pixel 8 starts with 128 GB internal storage, if you want the 512 GB model, you'll have to pay almost twice as much. You can't add a microSD card to it, so you're essentially stuck with what you purchase initially. This issue is common in most premium laptops and tablets aswell.
About Handbrake, you should be using the GPU for encoding (if you have an NVIDIA card, choose the codec ending with 'NVEnc'), it will significantly increase the speed.
I'd rather not spend $200 right now, compress the files instead, and get more sats with that money.
