Straight answers

Barely. Realbotix sold its six-figure Aria and Melody through September 2026, then stopped listing them; it now takes $199 reservations for its cheaper Echo line, with deliveries promised for the second half of 2027. UBTech says deliveries of its U1 have begun in China but won't say how many, and 1X's NEO is taking orders for the home. Most of the field (Tesla's Optimus, Figure, Apptronik's Apollo) is still pilot-only or built for warehouses rather than living rooms.

Far more than a gadget. Realbotix's Echo starts at $11,950 for a tabletop bust ($59,950 for the full body) plus an AI plan from $19.99 a month, and its F-Series Aria was last listed from $125,000. UBTech's U1 starts around $17,650 in China, 1X's NEO is $20,000 or $499 a month, and general-purpose humanoids run from about $13,500 (Unitree G1) to $250,000 (Agility Digit). Then add maintenance, repairs and subscriptions across the machine's life.

The most lifelike ones usually can't. Aria, the most expressive companion we track, rides a wheeled base with a static lower body, and Realbotix's Echo doesn't walk either. UBTech's U1 is the exception: its full-body Pro trim walks on flat indoor floors. Otherwise reliable bipedal walking belongs to industrial humanoids like Optimus, Figure 03 and Digit, none of which is built for companionship.

Some will. Aria recognises faces and voices and keeps a conversational memory of your preferences. How much it remembers — and whether that memory lives in the cloud or on the device — depends on the AI backend each maker uses.

Convincing in stillness, far less so in motion. A still face under good silicone can pass for human; sustained, reactive expression and natural movement are where the uncanny valley still lives. We score every machine on an editorial realism index across face, skin, movement and mind.

Six weighted dimensions — face (25%), body & skin (20%), motion (20%), voice (10%), mind (15%) and reality (10%) — each scored 0–100 from public evidence: demos, spec sheets, third-party footage and owner reports. Manufacturer claims are flagged and discounted until independently verified, and no maker pays for, previews or edits a score.

Two ways. The Briefing is a monthly digest of every price change, ship-date slip and milestone we log. And every machine's profile has a 'Track this machine' form for alerts on that specific record. The raw feed both draw from is public on our What Changed ledger, alongside the maker promises we're watching.

It varies. Aria is deliberately AI-agnostic — it can run a frontier cloud model or converse entirely on-device. Others ship a proprietary stack. The model matters: it shapes memory, latency, personality, and how much of your conversation leaves the room.

Assume it's listening. A companion is an always-on array of cameras and microphones, and most makers process at least some of it in the cloud while publishing little about retention or deletion. Treat privacy as a feature to interrogate before you buy, not after.

It's a real risk with cloud-dependent hardware. If the servers go dark, subscription-gated features — conversation, memory, updates — can stop, and your data's fate depends on the maker's policy. We flag cloud dependence on every profile for exactly this reason.

Mostly, today — the consumer companion market leans heavily female-presenting, though Realbotix and others offer male and customisable options. The general-purpose humanoids like Optimus, Digit and Apollo are non-gendered industrial machines.

No. We cover companionship and intimacy frankly, as an adult-interest subject, but there is nothing sexually explicit here — it's editorial, not imagery. Mature in subject, never in content.

We report on companions; we don't sell them. Coverage is editorial and independent, and where we use an affiliate link, we say so.