Pictures are often better than a thousand words, but not all pictures tell a complete story. We have been asked about Digi-Key part number 1904-1022-1-ND; manufacturer part number ESP-WROOM-02U if it comes with an antenna or not. We have confirmed that an external IPEX antenna is included with this product that connects via the U.FL connector seen in the photo. The datasheet does vaguely mention this, but it’s not exactly spelled out. There are two forms of the part mentioned in the datasheet: ESP-WROOM-02D which describes an “onboard antenna” while the one I’m writing about says “IPEX antenna” on page one. In this case, the datasheet is implying that the antenna comes with.
More often than not, if a datasheet mentions a certain part or feature and does not explicitly say “not included” then it usually comes with whatever it mentions. Manufacturers tend to be very specific if a part does not come with it. For some reason, the implications of inclusion are very common for several manufacturers. Each manufacturer has its own way of approving a datasheet and the complexity of the datasheet highly depends on the intended application. Sometimes, smaller details are not discussed at length and even left rather vague. We encourage customers to ask us on the Forum about vague details in datasheets.