I have wheel steering, it would not matter if I had a tiller. In about 9000 miles or so now I have hand steered about 5% of the time. About 4% of that was due to the autopilot being broken . I'm not talking about a wheel pilot or a tiller pilot or something you have to drag out and set up. The really HUGE convenience is the ability to push one button, at anytime, and instantly the pilot is now steering. A second big convenience at certain times is a remote control for it, which lets you steer to trim, or dodge, or whatever while anywhere on the boat.

Even if you have a vane for long distance sailing or to reduce power consumption, the setup time of even 30 seconds reduces the convenience factor by about 90%, for singlehanded sail handling.