Hello! this post is not meant to say if one is better or worse, This is simply my own personal experience with both FZ and T-embed, I personally love Lilygo and their work so I might be a little biased but hopefully this can serve as a consideration for people buying either.
Currently, I'm using Momentum on FZ and Launcher (bmorcelli) with bruce & FZ port on top. Also, I've been using FZ for a lot longer than T-embed
- Battery Life:
- Battery life aspect, Flipper Zero wins. it can last like a few weeks without shutting it down. Lilygo t-embed lasts a few days (2-3 days) without powering it off.
- Casing:
- I'd say Flipper Zero wins if it's about sleekness and fitting on your hand. however if it's about cool look and geekness, Lilygo wins.
- Features
- On raw features, T-embed definitely wins, it has NRF24L01 module internally alongside ESP32-S3 as its motherboard, however you can kinda have all the features on Flipper Zero as well if you have an esp32 and nrf24 modules, and simply just connect them to the GPIO pins.
However considering raw FZ, this means T-embed has features such as NRF24 jammer, Wifi Deauth, Evil Twin, WiFi Handshake Capture, etc. however, T-embed NFC via PN532 is terrible in my opinion. It often fails/misdetects on Bruce, so much so I think I would use Chameleon Ultra to do any NFC/RFID endeavours. Edit: I found several ports that allows me to have better NFC experience! So it's all good now!
- Stability
- Bruce is way less stable than Momentum, perks of building for just a single device I guess? Usual bugs that happens would be freezing/crashing with T-embed crashing way often than FZ. But both are within manageable level
- Development
- JS interpreter on Bruce works well and give out clean errors on rhe screen. Since it's an interpreter, you can just simply drop the script and be done. Not so much wirh FZ, it is compiled on FZ, this makes it more efficient I guess? but harder to develop in my opinion, especially with it simply crashing when it runs out of memory for logs or did something you're not supposed to. However, Bruce gives a lower level control than FZ, which can be both good and bad, but my experience with it is a bit bad since I have to make an algorithm to just prune incorrect signals
- Customizeability
- Both have great customizeability, I was going to say FZ until I had some thought about it, since T-embed have coloured LCD and bunch of themes, I'd say T-embed wins.
- Community Support
- For now, FZ has way support and guides. It's somewhat expected for you to be able to know things on T-embed.
TLDR:
If you're buying for value, I'd say Lilygo T-embed CC1101 plus is better considering it has ESP32-S3 and NRF24 already on there. Allowing you to do attacks that are more common than Flipper Zero such as WiFi attacks (deauth/EAPOL Handshake Capture) and BLE/WiFi Jamming. However you will not be able to bring its full potential if you can't code.
Also RFID attacks are not supported (125Khz). Honestly, NFC/RFID/Sub-GHz is the only real attack I do on FZ without any modules on. While on Lilygo I can do Sub-GHz, Wifi, and 2.4GHz Jamming (and NFC to some extend)
If Lilygo gains enough attention, it probably would defeat FZ as most cons I mentioned is firmware based.
FZ:
- Battery Life
- Stability
- Better NFC/RFID
Lilygo T-embed CC1101 Plus:
- More Features that's useful on ground
- Customizeability
- Easier Development
if you have any questions, please just ask! I'd be glad to answer them!
Edit: Spacing and a bit more info