So this little guy, you pick it up and it handles like a tomahawk, as a pick you can break down metal doors, smash locks, shatter rock, it gives you that high end destructive power.
As a digging tool it helps you dig channels very easily or uproot things, so say you wanted to clear a camp site of small trees, shrubs, it's far better then either a hatchet or shovel.

And it has a great utility as a woodworking tool because of the way you can face timber with it. Remove bark, drill holes. You can button it to split wood, and you can re-handle it if it breaks. It's also entirely feasible to carry just the head if heavy digging is only a contingency plan. At which point you might find a full length handle because unlike a shovel it's not a lever so the handle can be green wood, it's got the inertia. You can also use them to cut sod, and there's a lot of reasons you'd cut sod. Firstly to hide holes you've dug, so for example when I dig a fire pit I then lay the sod over it. No chance of fire, invisible. And if it was armalite business you would sandbag with sod, forming a nature identical berm with a one foot trench behind it. And you can cover a fox hole with sod, because your trampling will have left prints all around the hole. And sod blocks thermals. Sod life.

But often I'm doing none of these this, so I'll just take a plastic hand trowel.i just don't see the middle ground.

Generally I prefer the really light ones because with a narrower bit they really don't need to be that heavy, and the way the point is used it's weight isn't that relevant either. You usually see them cast iron, but welded are far lighter, ideally you'd get steel.