My environment for the Edison will be in a very low power consumption situation, so I'm looking for a breakout board that doesn't have any LEDs or extra circuitry. I did some current metering and found the Edison mounted in the Mini breakout is drawing quite a bit more current than the Edison module specs. It was drawing something like 45-120ma, if I remember correctly, and about 5ma shutdown.
In any event, I would foresee getting it initially configured with a USB connection, then once WiFi was running, moving it to a bare minimum breakout board - something with nothing but a battery - maybe (3) AA's. In other words, a full function board like the Mini for setup, but then a barebones board afterward.