I moved to the ESP32-C3 after using the 8266 for a while, and the C3 is a great chip. It's small, power-efficient, has bluetooth and wifi onboard. It's got USB

I moved to the ESP32-C3 after using the 8266 for a while, and the C3 is a great chip. It's small, power-efficient, has bluetooth and wifi onboard. It's got USB pins so you can connect it up to USB and program it, and connect to Serial (no USB device though, sadly) It's got a really full feature set, and a really strong Arduino community to boot. Probably best of all, it's inexpensive and in-stock. While so many other chips have been unavailable, the C3 can be had just about anywhere at very reasonable prices. And if the chip isn't quite your thing, the modules available are _excellent_.