I have no clue why people here are comparing a Raspberry Pi with an ESP32, while those products have some tinkering overlap, they are entirely different product categories.
Your Raspberry Pi will have some difficulties running from battery for months while your ESP will already have a hard time driving a reasonably high resolution display for HMI
> I have no clue why people here are comparing a Raspberry Pi with an ESP32
The usual HN discussion of RPi goes something like this:
"The RPi 5 has gotten too expensive, these days intel small-form-factor PCs (possible second hand) are a better choice, giving better performance and no messing around with microsd cards"
"I need GPIOs, sub-3-watt power consumption, and I don't need the performance of the most expensive RPi model"
Well, yes, but to lots of people they use it for the same thing. You can find projects people post online that uses raspberry pi to control a basic motor, which is a bad use of raspberry pi and a horrendous waste of resources. But people do that. You understand the difference but not others.
Your Raspberry Pi will have some difficulties running from battery for months while your ESP will already have a hard time driving a reasonably high resolution display for HMI