A two-armed domestic robot for $1,688: this is the price that Nori Robotics, an American manufacturer, displays on its website for the Nori A3. The manufacturer presents it as the full price, without a deposit, with delivery announced for autumn 2026. The first units left the workshop on 21 July 2026. This first batch went quickly, according to the manufacturer, and a second, limited batch is being shipped in autumn 2026.

How much does it cost?

$1,688, without a deposit at the time of order. To gauge the order of magnitude: the NEO from 1X is sold for $20,000 at purchase, reports Komando, which also figures a monthly subscription of $499 offered as an alternative ($500 according to Road to VR). That is nearly twelve times the price of the Nori — the ratio, itself, is our calculation.

It remains to be seen what this gap buys. During the test of the NEO by the Wall Street Journal, no task was executed autonomously: all were piloted remotely by a human operator, virtual reality headset on the head. The robot took more than a minute to bring back a bottle of water placed a few steps away. The price changes the segment, not the degree of autonomy.

What is in the box?

No legs: the Nori A3 rolls on a wheeled base. It counts 19 degrees of freedom — meaning 19 independent movements —, including 7+1 per arm. Its central lifting column is given for 55 kilos, but each arm carries only 1.5 kilos when extended to full extension, details Interesting Engineering. For reference, 1.5 kilos is the order of magnitude of a full bottle of water. The image is worth what it is worth, but it gives the measure of what can be put at the end of its arms.

On the side of senses and endurance, the manufacturer announces:

  • a lidar — this laser rangefinder that maps the room — with a range of 12 metres;
  • four 720p cameras going up to 30 frames per second, distributed between the head, the neck and the grippers (720p is a modest definition, below that of a phone today);
  • a speaker and a microphone;
  • a battery given for 6 to 8 hours.

These 6 to 8 hours are the autonomy of the battery: the time it lasts. Nothing to do with decisional autonomy, the capacity of a machine to manage on its own.

What has it been seen doing?

The tasks shown in demonstration are: taking food out of the refrigerator, pouring a drink, loading a dishwasher and folding laundry. What the manufacturer does not say is whether these demonstrations were accomplished by the robot alone or piloted by an operator. No public document specifies it. In 2026, on this market, the absence of precision is not neutral.

The robot is not designed to equal the speed or the capabilities of more expensive humanoid platforms, reports Interesting Engineering.

What it does not have out of the box

The Nori A3 arrives with no ready-to-use domestic skill. The manufacturer describes Nori Lab, its application for laptop, as serving to “train, operate and manage” the machine. Three verbs, and the second counts: operate, that is to make the machine work, therefore a human at the controls. The owner shows the tasks to the robot themselves, and the same software is then used to pilot it. Nowhere does the manufacturer announce that the A3 executes a learned task without anyone behind it.

These learned tasks can then be shared, or downloaded, on what the manufacturer calls a skills marketplace — a library of know-how, in short. It is announced. Nothing indicates today that it is open, nor what one finds there.

You are therefore not buying a finished domestic robot, you are buying a machine to train — and nothing says, for now, that it will work without you once trained. The time spent showing it how to empty a dishwasher is part of the price, even if it does not appear on the invoice.

And if I order?

The order gives access to a free software toolkit for developers (an open source SDK), to the brand’s Discord community and to priority shipping. Assembly is done in San Francisco, by the founder Antonio Sitong Li, but the majority of components comes from abroad.

One point remains open for a French reader: Nori Robotics does not specify if the A3 is shipped outside the United States, nor what a European buyer would have to add to the displayed price. Until it is written in black and white, the $1,688 remains an American price.