[korm]

I think you're talking about context, which isn't specific to hooks. Hooks give functional components features that only existed for classes.

First of all, context is slow, at least currently. Secondly, it's just a vehicle for delivering deep updates. It should be used when local state is not enough, but it's only an intermediate step before needing redux-like state Management and all the convenience it provides.

[exogen]

There's also a big piece that people who see useContext/useReducer as a replacement for Redux usually miss: server side rendering.

The Redux store lives outside of the React component tree and has a getState() method to capture the state of the store and deliver in the SSR payload. With useContext/useReducer, the state lives in the lifecycle of a top-level component. Unless you build something equivalent to Redux's store anyway, you're not going to be able to easily get a snapshot of its state out of that component. Unless, I suppose, that component itself knows to put its own payload in a <script> tag in its render() on the server only (in which case you'd still get a hydration mismatch).