I have exactly the same thoughts as you. However, this format of device is exactly what I want as I’d like to replace the increasingly useless Amazon echo show devices I have several of. Don’t want to do wall mounted tablets so these would be perfect. However, at £100 (new and used) and very limited supply on ebay in the UK, I’m gutted there aren’t the $20 equivalents here 
Are these still worth it at £100?
Just had a look at the open source ROM post too - looks pretty exciting. Do we think that the full potential of the device will be opened up? Audio, mics, HA voice assistant etc? Thanks.
Tried it and got:
Failure [not installed for 0]
OOBE was removed from the source rom, along with all the other Lenovo and Microsoft wares.
Don’t suppose anyone has these surplus to requirement in the UK and want to sell one or two?
If you are willing to pay for shipping which is about $20-30 USD then signup for a free account (single package) with https://www.myus.com/signup/?aid=1006656 and you will have a U.S address (tax free) that you can use to order the device from a U.S supplier (eBay as an example) then it will be shipped by myUS service to your U.K address.
Thanks - I’ll take a look 
Just came across this topic today and unfortunately there seems to be a big price disparity between buying in the US and Europe. I can only find it in the €120-€150 (USD 130+) range here in the EU.
You can run adb logcat to find out what is happening. This issue seems something to do with the ROM firmware of 8.1. It is totally the opposite for ROM firmware 11.
If you want to try a work around, check the findings in this comment where you can run a command.
You may want to try using automagic to run the command input keyevent 26
https://automagic4android.com/trigger_device_idle_mode_en.html
https://automagic4android.com/components_actions_en.html
You may as well use the same approach used in ROM with Firmware 11 where the camera shutter is used to wake up the device, in your case it would to turn off the screen. You will need to toggle the camera shutter and find out what are the key events using adb logcat
Hardware Key Event: Triggers
Hope this may help you out…
Check out this…
Good to know, thanks. I was referring to some comments from XDA forums so I presume it was the original firmware with the bloatware removed.
@pgale I’m not in a position to do too much investigating, but I could be interested in getting a couple shipped if we/you can find a route for getting them here at a reasonable overall cost.
Thanks Chris. I’ve literally just bought two from a US Ebayer - not too bad a price and i’m going to be paying $44 for shipping total. Plus 20% VAT of course. Used forwardtome.com as the freight forwarder. Will see how it goes.
Thanks. These are all ways to make the display sleep, but they all require some trigger, for which I don’t have a reliable solution. Android already has a reliable solution for that - inactivity timeout - I just want it to work
Is $40 for these still considered a good deal? Seems like they doubled in price in the last month or so.
They’re still $40 on Amazon
That looks good - can you share your config please?
I emailed the squeeze player developer and was sent an older version of the app that does not contain the Google app store verification. I’m currently struggling to get fully kiosk to keep the app open in the background, how is SB Player doing for you in that regard?
Has anyone been able to get the device to wake using the proximity sensor in Fully Kiosk? The app seems to have an option that very reliably turns the screen off when the proximity sensor detects my presence, which unfortunately is the exact opposite of what I want to happen.
Right, but the low point from mid-December to early January was about half that price (as per Keepa). Is $40 still considered a good deal for these?