Unfortunately, the board you’ve chosen is the worst of both worlds. An Arduino + ESP-01 as separate items gives more flexibility, but of course you have to deal with wiring the two together, which is tricky because the ESP-01 has a difficult pinout arrangement.
But, regardless of whether you go for separate modules or the integrated board you have, these system are far inferior to the NodeMCU and ESP32.
The reason is that for the ESP-01 (or whatever ESP8266 device is on your board) to provide WiFi connectivity for the Arduino it has to communicate with the Arduino in a very basic way.
The communication is done by passing AT commands to the ESP, and deciphering the result that is returned. This needs a library to handle this communication, and that library focuses on the primary commands needed to achieve the communication. What you don’t get are all the add-on functions, like WIFi signal strength, simple ability to query IP address and MAC address, access to WiFi connected status etc.
There are some workarounds for these issues, but TBH it’s just not worth the effort.
The NodeMCU and ESP32 work in a totally different way, with the ESP core software providing the integrated WiFi handling.
In addition, these boards have more memory, faster processors and a smaller form factor compared to your board.
This FAQ was written before ESP32s became as cheap and readily available as they are today, but still makes a good comparison between the NodeMCU and Arduino + ESP-01…
Pete.