I've purchased dev board http://www.banggood.com/ESP8266-Serial-WIFI-Original-Test-Board-For-ESP-01-p-961299.html and I'm extremely happy with it. I can program several ESP-01's in mere minutes so I can easily 'play' with them.
Even though I do have NodeMCU v0.9 and v1.0 boards I am still mostly using ESP-01's while testing different sketches.
YMMV
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Mozz