I've gone back and forth on using external resistors for I2C and have read a lot of conflicting views on it. I think this is another to add to the pile, but I'm leaning towards putting them on PCB designs by default now..
I am not an expert, but I think it depends on your MCU. (Some may have better implementation of a soft-pull-up than others.)
I've only implemented i2c on esp32-s2, and left the pullup footprints unpopulated at first. Eventually I came to the same conclusion and put two 10k resistors on and called it a day. Cost was negligible.
I've only implemented i2c on esp32-s2, and left the pullup footprints unpopulated at first. Eventually I came to the same conclusion and put two 10k resistors on and called it a day. Cost was negligible.