Raspberry Pi Pico W vs ESP32: Which Is Better for IoT & Home Assistant? (2026)
Raspberry Pi Pico W vs ESP32 for IoT and Home Assistant in 2026: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ESPHome, BLE proxy, GPIO, ADC, power, performance and which board to choose.
Raspberry Pi Pico W vs ESP32 for IoT and Home Assistant in 2026: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ESPHome, BLE proxy, GPIO, ADC, power, performance and which board to choose.
Quick Summary (TL;DR):For a dedicated Home Assistant Bluetooth Proxy in 2026, the ESP32-C3 is the best-value Wi-Fi proxy: it is cheap, tiny, widely available, has Bluetooth 5 LE, 400 KB SRAM and more than enough CPU for continuous BLE scanning…

Quick Summary (TL;DR):For most new Home Assistant + ESPHome projects in 2026, the ESP32-C6 is the best default choice: it is inexpensive, mature, supports 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth LE and IEEE 802.15.4 for Zigbee/Thread, and has enough CPU and…