In my opinion? No. It would not. The end result is the same, FSFE is distributing non-free softawre to people, and asking them to pay to get this non-free software.
The process is a high chance that there is more freedom in the end. Compromises like this - take proprietary stuff to liberate it - have been made by GNU hackers and FSF before, e.g. running on proprietary operating system when the other have been unpractical.
The process is that there is a random chance of more freedom at the end. You simply have no clue if these people will be able to liberate these devices. You have no knowledge about these developers are capable of. People have suggested several ways that the FSFE could do better instead of having a raffle that gives out non-free software to people, my personal favourite is that the FSFE gives it to the first person(s) to liberate the device in question, and on top of that, you should give them a life time membership in the FSFE. _That_ would make it a high chance of more freedom in the end, but not by distributing things randomly, and on top of that asking people to pay for it.
While this makes things it a bit better, it still does not make it right. What would happen if nobody does replace the non-free software on these devices?
Then it is likely that it was too hard. We cannot be sure that it can be done, until somebody has done it. Writing a report about this, will be quite an effort. If this person has demonstrated the technical abilities the time of the report will be worth more money then the device itself.
So since it was too hard, then it is OK to distribute such devices?
Does the person(s) send it back to the FSFE? Do they keep it? Do they get a refund?
They keep it and do not get a refund, because of the time spend trying to liberate it and writing the report. Also it might be that they later get better ideas and progress with the liberation.
And distribute non-free software to people? I'm really questioning what the heck is wrong with the FSFE, are you really only looking for money to fund non-free software or are you trying to spread freedom?
This opens up alot more problem than it solves, and probobly alot more work on FSFE's side that could be spent doing something more useful.
It is just a proposal for doing something useful with the devices. Sending them back will also not be good, as the necessary public reasoning will be quite a lot of work and negative one as well.
Distributing the device will do even less good: The FSFE ends up supporting non-free software and distributing devices that contain non-free software to Fellows.