I still love and use my Echo. None of the other things like ok google can help me when I am walking around the house with my hands full of dough. I mean I con't carry my phone around with me in my house. Its either in a purse, or on a table somewhere. The whole point for me is that Echo stays in one place, I can talk to it from almost anywhere since I placed her strategically.
She understands me just fine now, took a while. Weather, conversions, music, radio stations from around the world, playlists, news in the morning, calendar events. I use shopping list all the time, don't go shopping without it anymore. I am not forgetting things anymore as I add it as I am cooking around, just yell it out of the kitchen.
Timer is great and I can hear it from anywhere and again, hands free.
Of course I have several other devices around the house that can do some of those things to some degree, but none can do it hands free, without having to pick one up, find it, walk to it and do it all in one.