Aside from the striking similarity to 1984 there is the fact that all of these devices are internet-connected and probably have backdoors or vulnerabilities (so while they might not listen all the time normally, they can be switched to listening all the time if you become targeted). Stallman calls this a "universal backdoor". Most of these devices are always-on and are placed in central positions in your home -- this is not generally true of laptops (mobile phones are carried with you -- but I don't actually have a smartphone for this reason).

Personally I physically disconnect all of the internal microphones from my laptops, and cover the cameras. I wish more people would do the same thing. Purism actually provides physical hardware switches which is much easier-to-use than having to physically take apart your machine (though Purism used to have proprietary kernel drivers, I'm not sure what the current status is).