My Home Assistant Voice Preview hardware comes this week, and I’m excited to give it a try.
Great job HA team on a successful hardware launch - at least, if all the “SOLD OUT” and “BACKORDER” statuses are any indication of success… 
I set up a Raspberry pi zero 2 W with a Respeaker 2 mic hat. I works fine so far. I was set to make another one. But now I found the ReSpeaker Lite with Raspberry Pi and the ReSpeaker Lite 2-Mic Array Voice Kit, Compatible with ESPHome. It looks like the cost of each setup is about the same.
- Raspberry Pi with 2 mic hat $15 + $13 = $28
- ReSpeaker Lite 2-Mic Array Voice Kit, Compatible with ESPHome $30
I realized as I was writing this that the ReSpeaker Lite with Raspberry Pi is $25 but doesn’t come with the Raspberry Pi and the Pis they list as options at SeeedStudio do not include a Pi Zero. So it looks like that option is a lot more money.
I am leaning towards making another Pi Zero 2W with a 2 mic hat because it is something I have already made work. But I am hoping people chime in with their thoughts.
EDIT: I changed my mind and got a respeaker lite with a pre-soldered esp32-s3. Having done this both ways (raspberryPi and esp32) I found the esp32 to be much easier to set up.
Any particular reason why you wouldn’t just go with a Home Assistant Voice PE unit? It’s essentially the same as what you’re proposing here, but much more integrated/polished - literally plug-and-play.
Note: The Voice PE hardware was released after I wrote the initial post in this thread.
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If we omit some nuances, the functionality of rp zero 2w satellite should be compared with atom echo. To be even more precise, esp32+ INMP441+dac(e.g. MAX98357). You can compare the price yourself.
Power consumption of esp is three times lower.
As for ReSpeaker Lite, most of the price is due to the XMOS chip. It’s a whole different level of microphone sensitivity.
The Home Assistant Voice PE is more expensive. From SeeedStudio it is $59. The price difference might worth it for the ease of use. After all, if it saves you 2 hours of work, you are only being “paid” $10 per hour to go the cheaper route. But this is a hobby and I love a challenge.
If price is a major concern then have a look at Alexa or Nest - better quality and low price … but you have no control.
DO NOT spend money for reSpeaker 2-mic HAT … that is >2 years old technology with poor sound quality. If you want to use a RasPi 2W, better to pair it with a reSpeaker Lite (without ESP32).
The HA Voice PE, reSpeaker Lite, and a couple of other boards all include XMOS chips for Digital Signal Processing (DSP) which greatly improves the sound quality, and hence the chance your voice assistant will hear and understand you correctly. That’s got to be worth a few dollars 
The RasPi is a great general purpose microcomputer - but the ESP32-S3 includes instructions useful for the sort of AI to process voice.
So … at the moment the HA voice PE, reSpeaker Lite, Futureproof Homes Satellite 1 are technically better choices for a voice assistant satellite … but there is lots of development and this can change fairly quickly.
The big question is … how many dollars is it worth to not have big brother listening to all your conversations and accumulating data about you ?
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It seems like you missed this part of my post
The price difference might worth it for the ease of use. After all, if it saves you 2 hours of work, you are only being “paid” $10 per hour to go the cheaper route. But this is a hobby and I love a challenge.