Light blue bean is $30.

ESP is production ready. But doesn't have bluetooth (esp32 is not ready for prime time yet). What are other considerations?

Wemos D1 mini or NodeMCU :).

For BLE, but no Wifi, nRF51/52 chips seem like a good fit; bonus is that they're low power,

I'm getting price range of around $30 for these?

You're probably looking at dev boards, rather than the single chips, they're in the $2-3 range.

"esp32 is not ready for prime time yet"

There are some rough edges, but its already very useable, especially since the new silicon came out. Got anything specific in mind?

I just came back to my esp32 after a 6 week hiatus and the framework has evolved impressively in that amount of time. It's an awesome product for a steal of a price. Definitely at the usable stage.

That's great to hear!

If that's the case, then it's basically just supply chain issues that's left. It's still hard to get batches and it's probably still pretty expensive compared to the 8266?

That is true, but the SDK is so much better that frankly I don't care, but then I'm not doing high volume products either so thats easy to say.

I really wish the bean was cheaper too. $30 seems absurd for that thing (even though I love it).