Here's something I don't get: why discourage people from using QFN packages? QFNs are only a problem if you are hand-soldering your boards with a traditional s

Here's something I don't get: why discourage people from using QFN packages? QFNs are only a problem if you are hand-soldering your boards with a traditional soldering iron. Which is nuts. These days everyone should have a soldering station with both traditional iron and hot air — and soldering QFNs using hot air is straightforward and easy. Besides, the article is about manufacturing, so you aren't likely to solder those QFNs yourself. So why discourage them? I think QFN and DFN packages are fantastic. They save lots of board space (and believe me, board space matters a lot in all designs, more than you think!), have good thermal properties, lack of leads makes for better low-inductance connections, less material means lower price. And most still have pitch of 0.5mm or more, so you can use the same design rules and same PCB pricing. Everything is great about them. BGAs are a different matter, but not for the reason most people think: they are problematic not because they are difficult to solder, but because you need much tighter PCB parameters to be able to route all the signals. In particular, via size is the biggest problem. You need really small vias that can be placed between four BGA balls. I dislike the hate being poured onto QFNs. I think it is a relict of the past: back when hot air was expensive and "strange" and people tried to solder everything by hand using a soldering iron, QFNs were the enemy. But these days they should not be. The unfortunate effect of hobbyists hating QFNs is that some manufacturers (Freescale/NXP, notably) later class certain chips as "hobbyist" and don't provide QFN packaging at all. And believe me, if you're designing a wearable device, the difference in size between a QFN-64 and an LQFP-64 is monstrous. Providing no real advantages, because both have 0.5mm pin pitch. So, while I would agree with the author that BGA packages are best avoided, I would encourage everyone to actually go ahead and use QFN/DFN packages. They are better in every respect.