It's a much less fancy cpu that's very small. No wireless. Lower powered I would expect. But it's an MCU with something like 16KB of flash and 2KB of ram if I remember right. The analog stuff on it is supposed to be pretty good. The Anduril flashlight firmware (toykeeper.net/anduril) is a somewhat popular application that can run on it.
> Lower powered I would expect
With the right software, ESP32 can be incredibly low power. Like "months on 3xAA batteries" for watching a pin with the ultra low power subsystem and then occasionally waking up and making a HTTPS call over WiFi.
This is just kind-of low-power. Some microcontrollers (e.g. PICs) can have sleep consumptions measured in nanoamperes. Months to years on a coin cell... just, they would need an external wifi module, which is highly inconvenient.
That's not lower power, is it? E.g. RuuviTags can run 3 years or longer while sending sensor data 2.5 times per second, with a single CR2477 (3V 1000mAh). A single AA alkaline battery has 1.5V and 2100-2700 mAh (https://batteryskills.com/aa-battery-comparison-chart/ , somehow this data was difficult to find so I'll add this link :)).
Bluetooth is lower energy than WiFi, but in your scenario the energy used for the radio is quite low anyway.
nRF52832 are famous for their low energy usage, it's hard to compete with them. However, ESP32 is much more universal.
Do you have an example of such a setup handy?
[dead]