These cheap board have turned me sour on some of the brand name stuff.

First of all the cheap Chinese boards are far more innovative than what I see coming out of the US. If there is something you can imagine doing with an ESP32, there is a good chance somebody in China is making a pre fabbed dev board for you that has exactly the peripherals you already need on it

And they’re selling it for $8.

The US equivalents which seem to do way less, last cost $50-100.

I get it, and I do try to support those US companies as much as I can, but when I’m putting together a workshop and need 10 boards, it goes from impossible to “I can give every student their own board and they can keep it at the end”.

These things are educational tools for me. The cost matters a lot.