I'm a big fan of the ESP32, and I have a few different boards that I play around with. I have two of the "classic" ESP32 microcontrollers, an ESP32-C6 with Zigbee and Thread support, and an ESP32-S3.
While we are used to USB WiFi adapters, embedded devices typically use SDIO WiFi cards, and for good reasons – they’re way more low-power, don’t take up a USB port, don’t require a power-sipping USB ...