I tried to put together the cheapest panel with a voice assistant. Pros: price; both the mic and speaker + wifi work out of the box.
Would I recommend it to anyone? No.
Acer Iconia
2GB RAM
Intel Bay Trail
14" 1920x1080 touchscreen
Price: 300 CZK (second-hand)=12,5€=14.5$
To get it to boot and install Linux, I had to download bootia32 and create a live USB. Then came the first hurdle: the Acer has Mini-USB, Mini-HDMI, a headphone jack, and a power port, while the flash drive had a standard USB-A connector.(It wouldn’t boot from the microSD card.) I solved this using a USB-C to Mini-USB adapter connected to a USB numeric keypad that had three built-in USB ports, allowing me to plug in a keyboard as well. However, it didn’t boot up automatically after installation—as you might expect, you have to do it manually: locate where the EFI boot files were installed and launch it from the terminal. Fortunately, there was a workaround; from previous testing, I had a live USB with antiX (a lightweight Linux distro) that offers a “boot repair” option during startup. It lists the available boot options—normally there’s just one, but after all my installation attempts, it showed me four. Some good news: Wi-Fi, the mic, and—after a few tweaks—the sound all work. But there was a display issue: it’s a high-resolution screen split into two halves, each with its own data channel. The kernel was sending incorrect data during boot, resulting in the left half appearing on the right and the right half on the left, with a line dividing the display down the middle. Luckily, the fix wasn’t complicated; the display issue only occurred right after booting, so I simply configured the system to put the display to sleep briefly after logging in; upon waking up, it displayed correctly. After these fixes, I still had to reinstall/register the bootloader.
And finally, I installed.touchkio. So, for 300 CZK, you get a functional control panel with voice control—but it occasionally freezes or shuts down, and the speed isn’t exactly blazing, though it is usable. If you’re thinking of trying something similar, I’d recommend paying a bit more for a device with at least 4GB of RAM and definitely avoiding anything with an Intel Bay Trail processor. It won’t cost 300 CZK, of course, but it will save you a lot of hassle and provide a much more pleasant user experience. However, if you do want to go down this route, look at the Asus T100TA instead of the Acer Iconia; it has a larger community behind it, and you can find guides and patches specifically for that model online.