I had meant to test the CH340G for a while. I had the chips sitting in my inventory for over a year. I guess the discovery that a crystal is needed turn me off a bit, but really, its not a big deal at all. The CH340G is $0.20 and the crystal is about the same. The SOIC format of the chip and the HC-49 format of the crystal are super easy to work with. In contrast, the 4mm QFN format of the Silicon Labs offering is a bit of a pain and the chip are about $1.50 each. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be any driver issues with Windows 10. A fresh box appeared to find an load the driver without much comment and the datasheet example schematic works just fine.
I think I’ll use the CH340G in all my future MCU designs.
