Novice user here. This is just personal experience.

I bought mine when the price first dropped from $130 to $99. It got a lot of use the first two weeks or so. I bought it to try some games on, and ended up using it more for some of the 360 videos and watching 3D movies.

I bought a Pelican style case for it, and until I saw this post had completely forgotten about it being under my bed. I just didn't end up using at as much as I had hoped.

A lot of the premium apps on the store have trials, and a great many of them are $4.99 and up. Just keep that in mind. I was surprised at the cost compared to the Play Store. The free section has something for just about everyone to see what you enjoy the most.

It became a hassle for me fairly quickly. Sometimes you get your phone installed and sit back and realize that there's a 1/16 section of a thumbprint you missed and it's now all you can see so you have to take it all apart to clean again. I used to plug in earbuds to my phone and if you don't brace the unit the force will unplug the entire phone from the jack. I started using my Bluetooth set instead to avoid the hassle.

I've also had pretty bad luck keeping the controller synced properly. YMMV on this, and it's probably just me being a scrub, but any time I would put the controller down and hand off the unit to a friend or one of the kiddos the controller would permanently lose sync.

Also there are games on the store that require an actual console style gamepad to play. I bought Minecraft PE and had to pair my PS4 controller to play it. Not a deal breaker, but the wand you get isn't always enough to enjoy the content provided. You are notified ahead of time.

tl;dr - I don't think I personally got my money's worth out of it, but it was a fun novelty for a time.