Personally, beyond HDMI CEC I'm heavily considering picking it up if I get a slot as Valve has a great track record of supporting their hardware, it is quiet and relatively low power consumption, and I will likely not have to tinker much to get a solid experience.
To me it's similar to 3D printers, you can either pay less and the hardware becomes part of the project/hobby itself. Or you can pay a bit more and just get to reliably use the hardware.