In my opinion hardware wallets are an unnecessary expense ($100–$300) pushed by marketing, when free options provide similar or better protection:
Paper wallets, air-gapped computers, or open-source software like Electrum can achieve true offline signing without hardware costs or trust issues.
The seed phrase is the real key to your Bitcoin—if stored securely offline, a hardware device adds little value beyond convenience, yet introduces physical risks like loss, damage, or theft.
In criminal contexts, recovery seeds can be shared to invisibly transfer assets post-seizure, bypassing blockchain traces and making hardware wallets a tool for evasion rather than pure security