I bought a cheap $29 Melokia soprano off Amazon
in order to practice my setup skills.
The instrument itself is very lightweight and resonant and has a pleasing tone, even if it feels like it is made out of balsa wood...LOL.
However, the fret edges were sharp, frets were uneven (and in need of leveling and re-crowning), action at the nut and 12th fret was a mile high, and the saddle was placed about 10mm too close to the nut to achieve anything close to reasonable intonation (likely the bridge was placed incorrectly), yet the instrument had 17 frets, which I wanted on a soprano, and is rare on soprano...
After I corrected ALL of the above issues, and many hours of iterative tweaking, the instrument now intonates within 2 cents all the way up the neck, the action is great and it does not sound bad at all...
But I would
not recommend one of these unless you are willing to put in the work to fix the issues that it has coming from the factory, but
I was not disappointed because I wanted a cheap project, and boy did I get one.
Be careful what you wish for.