AM I reading you correctly? You are refering to the DR70d as a functional machine, but you'd skip it? I thought it was the cat's meow of portable recorders from Tascam.
Yes. I still have issues with firmware 1.14. I feel like it doesn't accurately light the USB indicator every time USB power is removed. I am testing a new USB battery pack and I am not used to it. The DR70D makes it very hard to know if the external battery is working for certain. The first try in the field with the new USB battery pack, I wound up plugging into a handy A/C outlet, but the Tascam problem remains.
Tascam has not:
1 - acknowledged that there was a real issue with SD card compatibility
2 - acknowledged that the issue with SD card compatibility has been fixed (since they have not even acknowledged the issue, how can they have a fix?)
3 - updated or revised the list of compatible cards since October 6, 2015
4 - updated firmware since 1.14 came out (June 21, 2016 is the current version on Tascam's site)
And now the deck is set to be discontinued? I doubt that all the fixable problems have been addressed, and I doubt that Tascam will ever do so.
Also, after what I went through, I don't think I'll ever purchase anything from Teac/Tascam again, and would find it tough to suggest that path to others.
I am not going to tell you it's not a functional machine, but I think it's best to skip it.