Drawbacks IoT Hat as standalone

I’m currently interested in purchasing the IoT Hat. What are the main drawbacks of using it as standalone device without stacking it on top of the Raspberry? Also, what would the power voltage required in this case? My goal is to connect it as standalone to a measurement tool which allows up to 5V voltage.

The only real drawback might be that it is hung off your Raspberry Pi (or other SBC/computer) via USB instead of stacked on top. Otherwise it should still work just fine.

What do you mean exactly? If I understood it correctly, the iot hat is connected to the Rpi via USB even if it is stacked on top of it.

Yes that is correct. I am sorry, maybe I missunderstood your original question. I guess maybe what I should say is, there really is no drawbacks. Over USB it will work on any kind of computer. On the back of the board there are pads to solder to for providing power. I believe it is 5V DC.

One other point - it can connect over UART on a Raspberry Pi (or other similar SBC). So with the hat configured to connect that way, it does not need to be connected to USB. There are a few drawbacks to not using USB. Mainly, the speed will be much slower over UART connection vs. USB.

The module on the HAT needs to be powered on, which is done via GPIO pins.

Ok thank you. So if I am understanding it correctly, I would be able in my case to both power on the hat and connect via UART at the same time thanks to the GPIOs.