Why hardware wallet?

I'm very close to having this click in my head, I just need a tiny bit of help in the final lap.

The general advice I've heard is to get a hardware wallet to store my crypto, and then store my seed in some non-digital form. For example on a paper that you secure away.

But if you were going to have a paper with text anyway, what's the need for the wallet? Don't I still end up with a paper that would compromise everything if stolen?