help me clarify a little…
I entered the world of ESPHOME about a month ago and immediately purchased some devices from Alixpress… like EPS32, ESP32-C3, ESP32-S3 ESP32 S3 zero etc… some seem to me to be of better quality, others less so.
Then I saw the SeedStudio devices like the XIAO ESP32S3 Plus which looks like an ESP32-S3 in all respects, only with fewer pins and they seem to be smaller and also higher quality products. They cost more, sometimes not even that much more (like the ESP32-S3) or maybe even double (like the ESP32-C3) but they still fall within an acceptable price range.
If in ESPHOME they are used and flashed in the same way, wouldn’t it be better to take and buy the SeedStudio ESPs directly for the aspects mentioned above?
I like them because they seem more compact and seem better made.
Get what you like. They are all the same and function same at the end of the day.
Seed studio, m5 stack and some other products are more “finished” in their build, form, packing and maybe documentation but they work no different then cheap alibaba and amazon stuff.
Seed Studio is kind of “reputable” brand, so they try to have certain quality control on their products. If they sell bad products, it hurts them. That’s not the case with random AE vendors.
Also, does your AE board have built-in battery management? What kind of voltage regulator it uses? How is (low) power management…
Anyway, if your task is to power the board through USB and read some temperature sensor, they worth about the same.
Sometimes. Other times the cheap versions cut corners with component specifications - low power voltage regulators and shitty capacitors - leading to reliability issues.