Comment by grues-dinner

I assume your application host board wasn't two LEDs and a button. Using a module is one thing, using essentially only a module is another.

My point is, laying out very simple hobbyist-level designs is not 99% of PCB design effort in the world (the original claim).

It's not "envelope-pushing crazy designs" (per the original) to have 500 or 1000 or more components on your board even if you do use a module to offload the CPU and radio (or the field bus in industrial contexts). That's just normal levels of complexity.

And even if you do make a boutique smart speaker with a module and can afford it because it's a high-end device with margins, if you get to real volume, saving a dollar a unit by integrating might be worth it: you can still see change of out the savings after getting a design consultancy to redo your board if you're shipping millions of units.