These things aren’t bad, I’ve got a few that I use sort of successfully, but the speaker and mic aren’t very powerful. I was thinking of building one with an ESP32 and i2S (not i2c, that threw me off too) speaker/mic, but I’m wondering if I’d be reinventing the wheel here if there’s a better alternative already out there.
I saw something that might be using that Korvu board, the S3-BOX. Unfortunately, $50 and out of stock as far as I could find.