I run pi-hole in conjunction with browser blockers and still find it a net benefit overall. Anyone who uses my wifi gets an adblocker, any device, for any browser, and any configuration gets the benefit of having it. It's not just myself, a technically literate person, but my mother, sister, girlfriend and friends... Ideally if it stops just one malicious ad from landing itself upon my home's network then I say the benefit is there.

If you have an excuse to run a Raspberry Pi at home for any other purpose then use Pi-hole to piggy back off it and the cost you cite becomes a writeoff. I had a Rpi running OpenVPN for myself, throwing PiHole on it was a no brainer.