A friend from our Portuguese forum has donated me (well more a lend than a donation) an android box for the development of p2p-streams. It was pretty much a pain in the ass every time I needed to do or test anything android related without proper hardware for it.
I'm actually suprised by the performance of the box. I had the idea that xbmc playback in android without an AMlogic processor would not behave so well but...it actually does.
Navigation is fluid and quick, site scapping is much faster than the pi, 1080p video files play without any issue, it's running the latest version of android, it can use any other regular android app, I can use heavy skins (something I can't do on the pi), etc.
There are some limitations with audio (as I don't have a receiver i don't mind), there aren't any pvr backends for android and sometimes xbmc is still a bit buggy. For what I've seen in my friend's shop he sells this box for 86euros (without xbmc/any other app installed) which means that retailer/quantity price is below this value.
Comparing to the price of the raspberry pi for example (+acessories) it really isn't much more expensive.
For anyone interested it is a cs968 RK3188T and got an antutu score of 21711. A few videos of the box with xbmc/games/apps:
* video Antutu 5 @ 1280x720 -
https://db(dot)tt/t5dRbFXa
* video XBMC 13.1 -
https://db(dot)tt/fZyRiHeO
* video Asphalt 8 -
https://db(dot)tt/Wp7uCsi9
* video Geekbench 3 -
http://browser.primatelabs(dot)com/geekbench3/759390
* video Riptide GP2 -
https://db(dot)tt/PMCEVbkt
When I've some time I'll write a proper review. So, for a while...I've an android box