It lights instantly, produces no smoke and no ash, and goes out the moment you turn it off. On a small patio or a balcony, where a wood fire would smoke out the neighbours and leave a bowl of wet ash to deal with on Sunday morning, that is the deciding difference rather than a nice extra.
At 40,000 BTU it puts out real heat rather than being purely decorative, which is what extends the number of evenings you can actually sit outside on either side of summer. The column shape matters too: the flame sits at roughly table height, where the warmth reaches people sitting around it, instead of at ground level where most of it goes straight past your knees.