You have good reason not to trust it or any device like it; proprietary software (which is always untrustworthy) + mic and/or camera + Internet connection equal

You have good reason not to trust it or any device like it; proprietary software (which is always untrustworthy) + mic and/or camera + Internet connection equals spy device that doesn't respect your software freedom, pure and simple. You deserve to have as much control over your computers as you wish and no device like that will respect your privacy. The alleged convenience is highly overrated (everyone who has one has lived most of their lives without one and apparently been able to do just fine without) and, more importantly than any alleged convenience, not a good trade-off in light of paying with your freedom and privacy. But the same can be said of the tracker devices residing in many pockets. Some call it a cell phone or mobile phone, but its primary job and the job it does most of the time is to geolocate or track itself. And a tracker's mic has no indicator when it's listening, or a way for the user to vet the captured data, or control where the captured data goes. Those trackers that also have cameras are even worse in this regard. And they all run non-free, user-subjugating, proprietary software. So none of them respect a user's software freedom or privacy. I suspect that those with user-unmodifiable batteries aren't truly ever off except for when all of the batteries run down. But most users never turn their trackers off anyhow, so that's a bit of a moot point. What other freedoms can proprietors convince you to do away with in exchange for some minor convenience or possibly a little innumerate fear-baiting (such as "you'll want this tracker in the case of an emergency!").