The Casetas are definitely pricier per device, but you do get what you pay for and they are often available at a significant discount on ebay. For me, it was case of if I am going to hard wire dozens of these devices in the new house, I want to make sure they will continue to do what they do for decades, no matter if 2.4Ghz wifi or cloud servers go away. I was also concerned about range, and thought I might need a second hub, but so far it has been fine, even for switches in detached garage 100' from the hub and through 3 walls. The Pico remotes are kind of the 'killer app' for the Caseta system - you can basically surface mount a matching wireless dimmer/switch anywhere, without wiring or cutting drywall. I also like that the response is instant - the pico's communicate directly with the device they are controlling, no hub necessary.
I know there are a bunch of curmudgeons who don't see the point of all this, but there are lots of reasonable use cases for these, and of course they still work like nice dimmer switches without the smarts. The obvious cases are 2/3/4 way switches - as many slave switches as you want and no complicated wiring required. Scenes are another one - to put the lights how we like them in the evening requires turning 5-6 switches, with automation you can have one button that sets all the lights to the correct levels. Timers are great for porch lights, fans, air compressors etc. Motion lights are easy to implement, particularly when you can't be seen from the switch you want to turn on - the motion sensor can be remote from the switch. One of my favorites is having a pico remote stuck to the wall by the house door that leads to the detached garage - I can switch the garage lights on from the house on the way out - that would have cost me $1000's in additional wiring/conduit to implement with romex.
