ESP32-S3

What hackers pick instead

• ESP32A cheap microcontroller with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, strong docs and many examples, often preferred over a Raspberry Pi when no OS is needed; battery projects can struggle with power draw.190recommend
• Arduino boardsRecommended for easy starts, free tutorials and a broad ecosystem, though critics say cheaper ESP32 and Raspberry Pi boards now beat it on price and performance.81recommend
• Raspberry Pi PicoCheap, capable microcontroller board that people use for physical computing, prototyping and education; critics say it has limited RAM and flash and weak Wi-Fi connectivity.72recommend
• Raspberry Pi RP2040Cheap, well-documented microcontroller with a programmable PIO block for custom I/O, widely recommended for prototyping. Common caveat: its ADCs have only 12-bit resolution and some nonlinearity.29recommend
• STM32 microcontrollerCheap, feature-rich ARM microcontrollers with many chip variants, plentiful examples and readily available documentation. Common caveats are hardware bugs and a steep learning curve.25recommend

Every quote

The 36 most detailed of 37 comments. Each links to the original.

1. I liked how the hardware is really easy to make, I just soldered a USB port to an ESP32-S3 and that was it!

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Show HN: I wrote a small lib to turn a USB gamepad into a Bluetooth one”

2. Having two usb ports with one otg lets you do some neat things that would cost $100+ otherwise

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Running a 28.9M parameter LLM on an $8 microcontroller”

3. the ESP32 S3 with the slower flash and PSRAM is the lowest cost that you can find

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350”

4. these chips just aren't quite powerful enough for high-quality music encoding

   Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “ESP32-S31”

5. ESP32-S3 devices are ridiculously cheap and come in a myriad of form factors

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Price Increases for 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5”

6. The Xtensa LX7 in the S3 is very weird, though also quite fun to play with

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “PCB devboard the size of a USB-C plug”

7. the lack of support for vector operations for 32 bits makes me very grumpy

   Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “SIMD-accelerated computer vision on a $2 microcontroller”

8. the bandwidth to get IQs out fast enough like you can on the S3/S31

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Turn a WiFi 7 Router into a 320Msps Software Defined Radio Receiver”

9. For its price, the ESP32-S3 is a powerhouse of a microcontroller.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “SIMD-accelerated computer vision on a $2 microcontroller”

10. My sweet spot of choice between power and price is the ESP32 S3

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Building a 24-Bit Arcade CRT Display Adapter, from Scratch”

11. ESP32-S3 has enough of IO to handle an absurd variety of tasks

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s”

12. the ESP32-S3 certainly has better link rates and latency

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “ESP32-S31”

13. No question the ESP32-S3 is incredibly good value.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Running a 28.9M parameter LLM on an $8 microcontroller”

14. The value for money is crazy on these boards

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox”

15. ESP32-S3 is a great USB host

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Guitar amp and effects pedal built on the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.06”

16. ESP32-S3 may be the worse model to run Rust on due to the XTensa cores that makes the toolchain unnecessarily complicated.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “Running Bare-Metal Rust Alongside ESP-IDF on the ESP32-S3's Second Core”

17. idle current with the radio enabled, but not transmitting, is quite terrible

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “ESP32-S31: 320MHz 2C RV32IMAFCP+CLIC, 512KB SRAM, GbE, 802.11ax, 61 GPIO”

18. Tried running yolo pose on bare S3, and the results were underwhelming.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi”

19. I doubt if esp32s3's power consumption can be used in real life.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “A DIY Watch You Can Actually Wear”

20. ESP32-S3 is really too underpowered for larger e-ink devices

    Criticizes · Jul 2026 · in “Freeink: Open Ecosystem for E-Readers”

21. The S3 (and other Espressif chips) are pretty power-hungry.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “ESP32-S31: 320MHz 2C RV32IMAFCP+CLIC, 512KB SRAM, GbE, 802.11ax, 61 GPIO”

22. ESP32-S3 SIMDs are super difficult to use unfortunately

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “SIMD-accelerated computer vision on a $2 microcontroller”

23. It gives you more raw processing power (dual-core), which is great for managing the OS, MQTT, and the CSI analysis without hiccups.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Show HN: ESPectre – Motion detection based on Wi-Fi spectre analysis”

24. I have my mini splits set up on the S3 light with level shifters, not worth skipping because they'll end up failing on you

    Mixed · Sep 2026 · in “I added a non-wi-fi Mitsubishi AC to Home Assistant”

25. Drastically lowers the activation threshold for oneoff web-connected silliness.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Ask HN: What are your best purchases under $100?”

26. I'm using this as a cheap replacement for specialty high-G gyroscope modules

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Show HN: ESPectre – Motion detection based on Wi-Fi spectre analysis”

27. It looks good enough that you could sell it and works very well.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “EOL hardware should mean open-source software”

28. I was a frequent S3 user who switched to the P4 last year

    Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “ESP32-S31: 320MHz 2C RV32IMAFCP+CLIC, 512KB SRAM, GbE, 802.11ax, 61 GPIO”

29. Espressif did finally added back an FPU to the ESP32-S3.

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “The Intel 8087 chip: floating-point addition and subtraction”

30. make sure it has a ESP32S3 with 8M PSRAM and Flash

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Show HN: OpenClaw-class agents on ESP32 (and the IDE that makes it possible)”

31. Far more capable, barely and different in cost.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “ESP32-C3 Adblock”

32. no project I've done actually needs Linux

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Raspberry Pi 5 – 16 GB, $350”

33. covers far more than just WiFi

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Various Projects Find Hidden SDR Capabilities in ESP32 Microcontrollers”

34. the cable only works with USB2.0, High Speed devices, but ESP32-S3 is only USB1.1, Full Speed

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Guitar amp and effects pedal built on the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.06”

35. ChatGPT suggested an ESP32-S3 and a BME280, which is... just not a good idea.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Running local models on an M4 with 24GB memory”

36. with the weird alignment thing fixed

    Criticizes · Jun 2026 · in “ESP32-S31”