ESP32 C6 Review - RISC-V SoC with Thread & Zigbee Support!

June 3, 2023

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The ESP32 C6 is a WiFi, Bluetooth, Thread and Zigbee enabled RISC-V microcontroller that was announced by Espressif all the way back in early 2021 but sample units are now making their way into general availability! In this review we focus on the ESP32 C6 DevKit-C1. This microcontroller has clearly been aimed at the IoT and smarthome markets with all this connectivity.

There is 2.4GHz WiFi 6 802.11ax with b/g/n backwards compatibility. It has Bluetooth 5 LE and is Bluetooth 5.3 certified. And we have support for the 802.15.4 specification which includes Thread 1.3 and Zigbee 3.0 support. It’s like an esp32 c3 with extra radio functionality.

Purchase link:
ESP32 C6 Datasheet:
ESP-IDF:
M5Stack Stamp C3 Review:

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:14 Pricing
01:51 Brilliant
02:50 Dimensions
03:45 ESP32 C6 Specs
06:46 Dev Kit Specs
07:51 Pinout
08:03 Thread & Zigbee
10:55 Zigbee Demo
12:45 Software Support
16:46 Power Consumption
18:19 Conclusion

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21 thoughts on “ESP32 C6 Review – RISC-V SoC with Thread & Zigbee Support!”

To try everything Brilliant has to offer—free—for a full 30 days, visit https://brilliant.org/LearnEmbeddedSystems/. The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription.

You need to measure current on the chip not the whole module you are measuring the usb to uart and the LDO quiescent current

4:40 that is not a typo on the datasheet. The 22pin has 4mb flash and the 30pin had no flash and needs an external flash chip which is 8mb for the module

The module itself draws 5 uA in deep sleep, but the board has components such as the regulator, which draws 5 mA. If low power is needed, the board must be modified.

Finally, someone who knows that it's pronounced as "RISC Five" and not "RISC Vee". lol Good job. Nice and Very informative Video.

Nice info, thanks 🙂

1 core…not good, need 2

zigbee battery powered devices are controllable (i.e. temperature/motion sensor or so) but when you put your ESP32 to deep sleep, there is no radio. I am wondering how they are doing this to control zigbee devices while still consuming low power and yet to be controllable – do they wake up device every few seconds to check if there is any message from the controller? that is what I do for my devices while using ESPnow: go to deep sleep, wake up, measure whatever needed, send data to the controller, check if there is any command waiting for you and if yes – then do it, if no then go to sleep again – but that is my ESPnow not zigbee – I would like to know how it is done in zigbee

the "deep sleep" you are describing here is NOT deep sleep of the C6 but of the board and due to million components there, it is … 1000 times worse than the deep sleep of C6 😉

Bluetooth power consumption is disappointing. Gotta stick with NRF for BT applications that run on battery.

Hi, just curious about the power measurement. Can you sometimes make a video about how to measure microcontrollers power? Or maybe using other tools? Thanks, appreciate your great explanation video!

I just checked the schematic. The 3.3V LDO Output is connected to CP2102's Regulator Input Pin. This has also been the case with the Pico Kit D4 Board as well.

Removing CP2102 from the board and testing the sleep current can get you the right result. I did measure 5uA range in deep sleep by removing the LDO and CP2102 in the Pico Kit D4 Board.

5mA in sleep is very, very high, not practical to run off a battery.

Does it work with ESPhome?

I would be very interested in a thread/matter example! It would be amazing if there was a straight forward matter on thread or wifi example that could be used as a starting point for custom iot devices. If the deep sleep works with the wake on thread I would be ecstatic. I've been using the nRF52840, but it's community seems much smaller then the esp32 community and getting things running on it has taken weeks with a lot of pain points.