The insides revealed a mix of genuine components (probably off of scrap?) and an assembly-line quality bodge-work. (I didn't take any pictures, but I still have it -- so I can post some pictures if anyone's interested.)
Would be quite good content to let other places know too - hackaday for example.
I recall that I'd already de-soldered a few components (for the salvage-drawer!) and cleaned the awful flux residues so the my pictures look much cleaner than how it was when I opened it [2].
It still turns on though, so I might end up doing more digging into it. I'd add whatever I find in the repo soon.
Hope that this is useful for "reasons"!
[1] https://github.com/prashnts/mods/tree/master/devices/dubious...
[2] https://github.com/prashnts/mods/blob/master/devices/dubious...
That's been my one line of defense against knockoffs after hearing in the past that was the case. Whereas an item that's "Sold by Sony and fulfilled by Amazon.com" will pay Sony for the sale but might actually use co-mingled inventory that came from a fraudulent seller.
I guess neither of them address the problem in the article though which is now a new source of issues I didn't know I needed to be looking out for, of getting a return which may have been tampered with or swapped out instead of a brand new product.