Adafruit dev boards are way more expensive than Chinese alternatives but I've never used an Adafruit board where I went "why in the world did they do X", where X is some design choice (except having a bright LED light up while the board had power). On the other hand I've had Chinese boards that have a battery jack but an always-powered component on the board uses like 10+mA at all times when alternative choices for the same component use literally hundreds/thousands of times less power (but cost 1 cent more).

I’ve found that adafruit usually includes a cuttable solder pad for the power led when there’s real estate available. Just cut one of those traces this week in fact!

LadyAda is 5x the EE I am, and I think highly of myself. The boards are just art.