Yes, having played with the pico, ESP32 and predessor I kinda agree, thouogh ADC's in microcontrollers are limited depending upon what you want to do and will o

Yes, having played with the pico, ESP32 and predessor I kinda agree, thouogh ADC's in microcontrollers are limited depending upon what you want to do and will often lean towards an external. The ESP also has hardware floating point, which if you need to use that sure does blast past the pico's core's. What the pico does shine well at is the PIO controllers and a good documentation user base. The fact that within a year it had early on full support in the ecosystem of microcontrollers is pretty darn amazing, more so given Espressif not exactly known for their doumentation and the whole intergration with IDE's like the ardiuno was dedicated users off their own steam driving it. Another plus for the PICO is that you can get for a dollar the chip itself and with the advent and ease of doing your own circuits, afforded the ability to roll your own controller board how you want them. Sure can do that with the ESP's but not sure so easily accesable price wise as the PICO chip is and not as cheap. Yes the whole lack of wifi and BT upon the PICO in todays times with IOT this and other projects, does leave shortfalls, though there are boards that do that, sadly many get WIFI by adding something like an ESP01 chip and the whole ironic aspect of a microcontroller needing another microcontroller for it's wifi when maybe what you wanted to do could be done upon the ESP01 alone, well. Bit of a chuckle. So for me, were the PICO stands out is the PIO controllers and how they with the USB host option allow many device avenues. Want your own joystick - doable, want to emulate some odd protocol - may well find the PIO can take a lot of strain from that.