Home automation tasks also tend to lend themselves much better to voice interfaces than touch because voice commands are always available regardless of where you are or what devices you have (or don't have) with you.

I was a huge skeptic of voice assistants before the Echo came along, but being able to turn my lights on and off with a single voice command alone has been more than worth the price of entry for the Echo Dot + TP-Link Smart Switch combo I got for $60.