I wasn’t aware the MG24 was supposed to “replace” the NRF version? I thought it was more of a “supplement” to the XIAO range?
I use the MG24 for Zigbee (and Zigbee/BLE Multiprotocol) development. I don’t use Arduino or PlatformIO for my development. My customers require I use ISO accredited development tools. Simplicity Studio is a framework level “assistant” that I use mainly for project creation, but can also support building, flashing and debugging code.
Regarding the polling of the IMU - I agree it’s not optimal but neither is the I2C interface. I also don’t use the “sense” version as I don’t need it. If I did use an IMU it certainly wouldn’t be the (polled) LSM6DS3 over I2C!
I selected the XIAO_MG24 as it’s a very low cost device useful for prototyping hardware and (Zigbee) software. I have been testing the product on a number of Zigbee devices for a couple of months now and they work really well. Having the RF selection option is nice as I have been able to get excellent range testing done with UFL antennae and 19.5dBm!
The XIAO_MG24 is also great for developers to have the ability to flash and communicate serially in situ without user intervention! I can program and debug several devices under development without having to lug programmers around. For example I can connect 10 devices and have a flash batch file for each device based on their adapter serial number. Brilliant!
Obviously that’s not useful or necessary in an end product design and we have our own radio modules for that, but it is very useful in large system development.
I’m sure the XIAO_NRF (Sense) is very good. I just don’t use it!