What this 16 Kbit I²C EEPROM brings to a through-hole board
The M24C16-WBN6P: The 8-pin DIP package is through-hole, breadboard-friendly, and easy to hand-solder — a good fit for a prototype or a low-volume build where you want to swap parts without reflow. Industrial temperature range (-40°C to +85°C) means it can sit in an outdoor enclosure or an unheated workshop without drifting out of spec.
If you are starting a new design, consider the active M24C16 series in a different package variant; the I²C protocol and memory organization are identical across the family, but pinout and footprint differ by package.
I²C bus timing and write-cycle reality
Read access time is 900 ns, which is well within the I²C timing budget at 400 kHz — the bus clock, not the access time, sets the throughput ceiling for sequential reads. Page or word writes take 5 ms typical — this is the non-volatile write time, during which the I²C bus is held in an acknowledge-polling state. Budget this into your firmware write routine; a 16-byte page write locks the bus for 5 ms before the next command.