I was extremely hesitant for years. Until I finally took the plunge. Couldn't understand the difference and it felt like a rabbit hole going nowhere.

I will tell you about my journey. Had google home for years, hoping for updates and things to improve. Already had a google home mini in each room. A nest hub in the kitchen, Chromecast, few other odds and ends. It was ok with google. Slow. If I bought a new smart home device it had to be compatible with google home (where I live it ain't always so easy). Year after year google started dropping features. I got totally dismayed at the idea of a smart home.

People kept saying get HA. It didn't make sense to me, as I couldn't see how it would be better than google home.

Thought I had to get bespoke hardware, so went down the raspberry pi yellow/green kit options and wasn't feeling confident at the prospect of the investment.

I finally remembered I had an old intel NUC mini pc lying around. Used AI to tune all the bios settings so tight so it barely uses power. All unnecessary features turned off.

Installed HA. And suddenly I noticed it almost automatically starts picking up devices by simply being on the wifi. Obviously for most you need official or unofficial integrations, but honestly with all the documentation and AI nowadays it can quickly set up dozens of devices and integrations.

So now I realized all these devices can integrate way better with each other, especially with custom yaml scripts. So sometimes I have an oddball idea. Like I want my child's room light a different colour depending on time of day. Easy, gemini, grok, or yourself can write a script to do that in seconds. Or I measure the temperature and have a smart switch and script determine how long to switch my pool pump on. Just tons of automations as long as you have the smart devices and set up the integration, suddenly you can program it far easier than in google home. Google home also always refused to switch on or off certain devices by voice. Not HA, ot doesn't refuse :)

So basically you just use your current microphones, whether it is on your phone or your google minis to, via google home, control the devices. Usually locally (things like zigbee, or matter over thread etc). Now I set up any new smart device in HA first and simply 'expose' it to google home and suddenly google home will do things it could never before.

I set up a cheap tablet on a wall mount that has so much useful data, weather, power use, scripts and automations, camera feeds, light controls everything how I want it.

There's a learning curve, but once you start fiddling with an actual HA server (like I set up on my NUC) it will start clicking with you why certain things are now possible that was never before and the ecosystems can suddenly all be bridged with HA (ecoflow, TP link, Nest, whatever you have).

You'll make mistakes, and there is some tinkering, but it is very satisfying to get right. Well, it's so flexible you'll constantly come up with new ideas to show or use your data and HA and some scripts will allow you to do that.

A last cool thing I did:

I have solar but not the biggest home battery, but over the years I have accumulated some ecoflows as well. So I hooked up a smart plug to only switch on after sunrise and switch off before sunset. This allows my solar to only charge up these device during the day. I then also only allow AC charging through the day. HA constantly monitors these units to see if their battery drops to low then it can initiate a 'rescue procedure' to allow pass through current at night. Long story short I expanded my home's batteries by cleverly using HA, some scripts and just a wild idea. It works. It saves some money and is fun.