I use it to turn my lights on and off. It works great for this, I don't need to leave my chair/couch/bed and I can turn many lights on quicker than any other me

I use it to turn my lights on and off. It works great for this, I don't need to leave my chair/couch/bed and I can turn many lights on quicker than any other method I'm aware of. I use it to play music, usually through Spotify. I use Amazon music occasionally when I'm looking for a song (usually while cooking or the like) but on the whole it's inferior. I ask for the weather in two or three cities while I'm tying my shoes, so I can decide if I need a jacket. I use it for timers when I'm already using my oven timer. I appreciate being able to ask how much time is left while I'm not in the kitchen and thus can't see the oven. I use it for unit conversions (how many oz in a quart? How many tablespoons in half a cup?). The most use I get from it is when my hands are busy, my phone is either: in my pocket, or in another room plugged in charging. Or dead (this happens less frequently since I bought a new phone recently). I also find that context matters. When I use my phone's voice assistant I'm usually trying to do something on my phone. With my Echo I'm just trying to do something. I have a lot more success with the Echo. I bought a few dots when they went on sale this fall, but I've only set up one. It works surprisingly well with the echo. They rarely get confused. Sometimes the device much farther away responds instead. You can set up a passcode for ordering, or disable it entirely -- I've never used it and probably never will. I already carry a microphone around with me all day and work in an office surrounded by literally hundreds of microphones, or a few dozen in my house (my Dropcam is always on and has a mic. My TV remote has a mic for some reason I hope to never discover. My laptop, my iPad, and various other devices have microphones too). Look, I didn't see a use case for it either. But once I got on, it infiltrated my home and now feels like an extension of it. I also didn't see the point of smart phones, tablets or IoT devices in general, but now I have all of them. It's clear this sort of interaction is the future.