Here is a run up of all my thoughts and experiences during this RoadTest...
The MAX31889 is quite a powerful chip, with great accuracy levels and precision.
I was quite disappointed to see that Windows 7 was not supported even though the website claimed it was.
Maxim Support has promised to look into this.
The MAX31889 is also low cost- less than 3 dollars in quantities of one(found on Newark, at time of writing, in USD), which is quite inexpensive and has significantly greater value for cost, than the comparative sensors I studied and found and put in my RoadTest report.
At bulk pricing(500+), it is 1 dollar and 80 cents, which is only around twice the price of competitor chips, while maintaining much greater than 2x the value.
The chip also has temperature(high and low) alarms, which could be a quite useful feature in some cases.
I think I've covered all about this wonderful chip.
(Did I mention it has 0.25 degree accuracy over normal temp. range and 0.65 over extended range?)
Onto the MAX32630FTHR board that is supplied to evaluate the EV board.
At face value, it's quite a feature packed board, with Bluetooth Dual mode, PMIC, Battery Charging, Feather form factor, a great MAX32630 chipset, and more, including onboard sensors and optional XIP flash solder location.
But it's outdated.
The MBed OS libraries are years behind, in fact, the libraries can't even print out integers and floats with printf.
Undoubtedly, it was easy to use during its release, (2017), but this board was made for mBed OS 2, which is 4 generations behind.
It's such a powerful development board, but frankly, it's capibilities are being wasted with the lack of current support...
My feelings are overall, neutral on this roadtest... the product's pros and cons essentially balanced out...
But still, regardless of the problems I faced, it's still quite a good kit I would recommend.
Once again, I'd like to thank Randall, element14, and Maxim Integrated for allowing me the honor and oppurtunity to test out this evaluation kit.