XIAO ESP32-C6

Worked extremely well for me. It does run a little hot but is a fun device to fiddle with and will, hopefully, be the basis for a few projects of mine.

The Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32 S3 Sense is an excellent compact board packed with features. Built-in Wi-Fi and BLE 5.0 make connectivity seamless, and the OV2640 camera plus digital microphone open up lots of possibilities for vision and audio-based projects. Having both 8MB PSRAM and 8MB Flash is a huge advantage for running more complex applications, including embedded ML. I really like the small form factor—it’s easy to integrate into IoT projects—and the fact that it supports battery charging makes it super practical for portable solutions. The interfaces are rich and well-documented, so getting started was smooth. Overall, this is a very capable and affordable development board for IoT, AI, and edge ML experiments. Highly recommended for makers, hobbyists, and developers!

Every XIAO I've purchased from Seeed Studio has been perfect. This company makes excellent products and this has been no exception so far. yes, the XIAO may not have all the GPIO exposed but that is not the point. They are meant to be very small and excel at their purpose. They have just enough pins exposed and the quality is better than just about any other brand out there.

Thought I'd give these a try for a Low Power Battery Operated WiFi Project. They have 11 Inputs, 4 can be assigned for Analog Inputs, I2C Communications (as well as other Comm options) and Digital I/O. The Analog Inputs caught my attention as the Low Power Battery Operated System I was designing required at least 2 Analog Inputs, one for the Sensor and the other for monitoring Battery Voltage. (The WEMOS R1 Di Mini has only one Analog Input). The Breadboard design worked very well, however I was able to locate I2C Communication Sensors that eliminated the need for Analog Inputs. Therefore, these units have been placed in my inventory awaiting a suitable application. Pros: 1-Appear to be well built 2-Small Form factor 3-Low Power Settings available 4-Built-in Li-Ion 18650 Battery Charger with Protection Circuit (I have not tested as yet) 5-External Antenna allows easy placement in enclosure 6-Fast Processor Clock 7- Built-in WiFi & Bluetooth 8-Check "seeed studio" ESP32C3 Datasheet for full details Cons: 1-The external WiFi Antenna could also be considered a negative, depending upon application.

This tiny board is very powerful and easy to use. It even has a battery charging circuit built in and comes with a wifi antenna. Highest quality esp32 single core board you can get your hands on for this price and I found it very easy to integrate in my projects.

Lots of code support online for getting this up and running. Easily had it serving a website on my local network for remote control via ngrok, plus powered some pretty hefty motors with only USB power and no issues. Impressive for the price and size.

Cute little board. Expect to write C and not C++ in Arduino to get full functionality. Arduino IDE works but it's sketchy

This is not for serious projects (I am reviewing the ESP32C6, although the other boards also have most of these flaws). This product may have gotten a lot of positive reviews, but I suspect most of these reviews are from casual users who many have played with this a bit and are impressed with its small size and good wireless functionality, but haven't really utilized it for a serious project. I made the mistake of choosing this for my project and now I can identify for you all of the major design flaws: 1) The battery connects not by standard pins but by small pads on the bottom. This is problematic for many reasons. First, the pads are very small and can burn off when trying to solder them (see the photo) rendering the product useless. 2) Further, having the battery connectors using pads on the bottom of the product instead of standard pins means that this is very difficult to attach to a printed circuit board. I understand they want to save space, but the designers could have also used regular pins for the battery (and taken away one digital pin of which there are many). If you are using this for a serious project then you will eventually be connecting this to a printed circuit board and you will then see the problems this design causes. I've already destroyed many of these XIAO devices trying to connect the battery pads to a PCB. 3) The ESP32C6 has a RESET button and a BOOT button, but these buttons are so incredibly tiny they are almost impossible to find and press. And if the header pins are attached to the ESP32C6 then it is IMPOSSIBLE to grip these buttons. Again, this product is not for serious projects. If you want to buy one of these and tinker around a little, have fun. But a serious project uses a PCB and does not have loose battery wires soldered to the bottom of the dev board.