There's a lot of shame with the RP2040 in my opinion.

1. No internal oscillator. Always requires external clock.

2. No internal flash. Always requires external flash + somewhat complex startup sequence.

3. ~500uA per MHz current consumption. Much higher than competitors (ex: STM32L1 has 180uA per MHz). This is a relatively power-hungry chip both in active, and sleep, modes.

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I think RP2040 is some kind of bridge device between the microcontroller and microprocessor worlds. But the M0+ core is an odd choice for this. Real world uCs / processors utilizing a Cortex M7 (or similar) would probably be a better idea?

That being said, the ESP32 is high-power (~100mA) due to the radio. Radios always use lots of power, especially during transmit. So the RP2040 probably is fine for this use case.