I have a Reolink but haven't got to Home Assistant yet. I'm happy switching to that, but for less technical (though still digital savvy) spouses - how would you say the switch would be for them?
I'd say it depends on what you are trying to do. If it is simple device control and media playing and other stuff, then all you need is to update [dashboards](https://www.home-assistant.io/dashboards/) when you add/move devices and the users will find it pretty easy and straightforward. My parents are not extremely tech savvy but they find Home Assistant easy to use when I make the dashboards thoughtfully.
Making automations and scripts is getting easier every update, but it has a small learning curve as the logic can get complex and you sometimes need to know details like entity IDs or raw states. And there are some simple missing features that some people are very used to. Home Assistant is improving that sort of thing constantly, but sometimes the device APIs do not allow all functionality without the OEM apps.
For example, the two biggest camera-related things that are missing in my opinion is that the camera viewer does not allow zoom or two way talk. It uses the native browser media player, and on both a Samsung tablet and all iOS devices, this means that you cannot zoom and pan around the image. This is obviously not an issue if you embed a dashboard such as Frigate into the HA UI, which IIRC supports both two way talk and zoom. But YMMV.
Funny thing, that. They actually have Activation Lock (of sorts).
I regret it now but a few years back someone had moved into a home, dumped their Ring doorbell that came with the house, and we shoved it on our house. When we went to set it up Ring blocked the setup attempt because it was account bound.
... Apparently if you call Ring to release it (they can), frontline CS can see the entire log of when the doorbell was online, when it was last rung, and used that information to go "oh, it hasn't been rang in like eight months" to decide that I wasn't some criminal and that I can set up the doorbell myself.
You might if it were drastically more convenient. I seem to have somehow acquired nearly 1 imperial pound of documentation for every year I've been alive. That's just estimating based upon the weight of my panda file box next to my desk.
There's a lot in there, rental contracts, policy documents, w2 forms, that I might actually benefit from having scanned and digitally available on my computer. I feel that being able to search through these documents would have saved me some amount of trouble over the years.
Hell, if it were easy enough, I might actually scan all those receipts I bring home and then throw away.
You don't do much bureaucracy in your personal life (mortgages, moving around, children, or just keeping things as they are). I do similar things few times per year on average, and I don't do anything exceptional.
Plus living in a village, closest printing shop is maybe 10 minutes by drive. Scanner and good printer is a basic need in 2026.
I moved 5 times between 2015 and 2021 (air force), during which time I bought and sold houses at each move, have two kids in school, and I've never had to scan documents.