What you say is true, however, $1 is a killer feature. It can replace many IC and will make a very good addition to ESP32 which lacks pins for many projects.

What you say is true, however, $1 is a killer feature. It can replace many IC and will make a very good addition to ESP32 which lacks pins for many projects. And, sometimes you want external chip so output is not affected by ESP32 reboots or freezes.