A two-armed household robot for 1,688 dollars: that is the price American manufacturer Nori Robotics is displaying on its site for the Nori A3. The manufacturer presents it as the full price, with no deposit, with delivery announced for autumn 2026. The first units left the workshop on 21 July 2026. That first batch went quickly, according to the manufacturer, and a second, limited batch ships in autumn 2026.

How much does it cost?

1,688 dollars, with no deposit on ordering. To put that in perspective: 1X’s NEO sells for 20,000 dollars to buy outright, reports Komando, which also puts a figure on a monthly subscription of 499 dollars offered as an alternative (500 dollars according to Road to VR). That comes to nearly twelve times the price of the Nori — the ratio being our own calculation.

What remains to be seen is what that gap buys. During the Wall Street Journal's test of the NEO, not a single task was carried out autonomously: all of them were remotely piloted by a human operator wearing a virtual reality headset. The robot took over a minute to fetch a bottle of water sitting a few steps away. The price changes segment; the degree of autonomy does not.

What’s in the box?

No legs: the Nori A3 rolls along on a wheeled base. It has 19 degrees of freedom — meaning 19 independent movements — including 7+1 per arm. Its central lifting column is rated for 55 kilos, but each arm carries only 1.5 kilos when stretched out at full extension, Interesting Engineering explains. For a sense of scale, 1.5 kilos is roughly a full bottle of water. The image is worth what it is worth, but it gives you the measure of what you can put on the end of its arms.

On the senses and stamina front, the manufacturer announces:

  • a lidar — the laser rangefinder that maps the room — with a range of 12 metres;
  • four 720p cameras running at up to 30 frames per second, spread across the head, the neck and the grippers (720p is a modest resolution, below that of a present-day phone);
  • a speaker and a microphone;
  • a battery rated for 6 to 8 hours.

Those 6 to 8 hours are the battery's endurance: how long it lasts. Nothing to do with decision-making autonomy, a machine’s ability to fend for itself.

What have we seen it do?

The tasks shown in demonstrations are: taking food out of the fridge, pouring a drink, loading a dishwasher and folding laundry. What the manufacturer doesn’t say is whether those demonstrations were performed by the robot alone or piloted by an operator. No public document specifies as much. In 2026, in this market, the absence of clarification is not neutral.

The robot is not designed to match the speed or the capabilities of pricier humanoid platforms, reports Interesting Engineering.

What it doesn’t have out of the box

The Nori A3 arrives with no ready-to-use household skills whatsoever. The manufacturer describes Nori Lab, its laptop application, as serving to "train, operate and manage" the machine. Three verbs, and the second one matters: to operate is to work the device, so a human at the controls. The owner demonstrates the tasks to the robot themselves, and the same software then serves to pilot it. Nowhere does the manufacturer announce that the A3 performs a learned task with nobody behind it.

Those learned tasks can subsequently be shared, or downloaded, on what the manufacturer calls a skills marketplace — a library of know-how, in short. It has been announced. Nothing indicates today that it is open, nor what can be found on it.

So you are not buying a finished household robot, you are buying a machine to be trained — and nothing says, for the time being, that it will work without you once it has been trained. The time spent showing it how to empty a dishwasher is part of the price, even if it doesn’t appear on the invoice.

What if I order one?

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

One point remains open for a French reader: Nori Robotics does not specify whether the A3 ships outside the United States, nor what a European buyer would have to add to the displayed price. Until that is set down in black and white, the 1,688 dollars remains an American price.