> Does anyone really find these home assistants to be all that useful?

Just got a Home Mini; I find it pretty useful as a living room entertainment controller.

> All of them really seem to be designed to get you to buy them and then to sell you more stuff, not to actually be useful.

While I don't actually use mine for shopping yet, reducing friction for shopping you would do anyway is quite useful.

> The music integration doesn't work well with Spotify on the home

Seems to work reasonably well with Google Play Music (and the playback controls are are acceptable if minimal for Netflix; haven't used media controls with anything else.)

> and can't even add reminders.

The Home doesn't seem to have trouble adding reminders for me.

> The echo has to ask "am or pm" when I tell it to 'wake me up tomorrow at 8'.

While 8am is more likely, it's not impossible that someone would mean pm (people have all kinds of different schedules), and confirmation is better than assumption with alarms. So, so see this as doing the right thing.

> The only reason I use it is that it's perfect as a handsfree music player and that has its uses in the shower, etc.

So clearly you find it useful.