If you follow the world of microcontrollers, then you’ll probably be familiar with the most recent crop of ten cent parts. They bring power and features previously the preserve of much more expensive chips into the super-budget arena, and they’re appearing in plenty of projects on these pages.

If you’re not familiar with them it can seem daunting to decide which one to use, so to help you [Zach of All Trades] is comparing two of the more common ones. The CH32V003 with a RISC-V core and the PY32F002 with an ARM Cortex M0+ core are both pretty similar on paper, but which should you use?

The video below gives a run-down of each part along with some demonstrations before making its conclusions. The ARM-based part isn’t as quick as the RISC-V one but has a slight edge on peripherals, while the support is where a potential winner emerges in the shape of the CH32. That should be the last word, but for that the PY32 has the distance advantage over its rival of ready availability.

So this look at two families of cheap microcontrollers reveals the pros and cons of each, but in reality it provides an introduction to two sets of powerful chips for pennies.

As we’ve observed before, there are more chips to be found in this market.