Partly for the same reason I bought my Wii system, they're fun. But also as a musical sketch pad; a quick way to demo a tune or see how it would sound in a certain style. The thing is, I'm not a big workstation fan either, I only have one 'true' workstation, the Fantom G7, and I mainly use that as just a straight synth. It's not much more useful to me than my SonicCell (but that's my fault). Actually, I guess you could call the Motif ES a WS, as well, but I use it the same way. Both are overkill for me as I never use on-board seq's and samplers or arps. With the aid of a drum machine (or arranger drums), I can put together a song via multi-tracking just about as quick as I can with an arranger, AND it'll be more of what I want it to sound like.

I like arrangers, will probably always have one around the studio, will probably never gig with one (like Oscar ), will probably spend long periods between upgrades, as the newest features are things I probably wouldn't use anyway (plus I hate learning new ways of doing things). For MY purposes, I agree with your assertion that arrangers are easier to use than WS's, but again, that depends on what you want to do with them. Heck, I even think that arranger drums are easier to use than a drum machine, and it's usually my first choice when putting down a quick and dirty rhythm track. This will change as soon as I get proficient enough to lay down a rhythm track with my new electronic drum kit (@ 2018 ).

chas