How to choose a companion robot

There are seventeen machines in our directory and no two are really competitors — a $16,000 faceless biped and a $125,000 silicone companion are answering different questions. So choosing well is mostly about asking your own questions in the right order. These are the six we'd ask, honed from tracking every machine in the field.

1. What is it actually for?

Be blunt with yourself. If the answer is presence — a face that turns toward you, conversation, something between company and intimacy — you're shopping the lifelike tier: Aria, Melody, the UBTech U1. If the answer is capability — a machine that walks, fetches, demos the future — you want the humanoid tier: NEO, Optimus, the Unitree G1. Machines that claim both exist mostly as promises; the U1 is the first mass-market attempt, and its deliveries only start this September.

2. Full body, or the parts that matter?

Legs are the most expensive, least reliable part of any humanoid — and for companionship, arguably the least important. A Realbotix bust from ~$20,000 delivers the same face and conversation as the $125,000 F-Series. If the fantasy requires standing and walking, accept the trade: today's walking companions can't handle stairs, and today's most lifelike faces mostly ride wheeled bases. The anatomy guide explains why this trade-off exists.

3. What's the five-year number?

Not the sticker — the whole bill. Add the subscription ($199.99/month at Realbotix, $499/month at 1X) across five years, assume at least one out-of-warranty repair on a machine full of motors, and remember there is effectively no resale market. If the five-year number makes you flinch, drop a tier; the cost guide maps them all.

4. Is it real yet?

The field's defining sin is the slipped ship date. Our rules: shipping beats preorder beats announced beats concept, and a beautiful render outranks nothing. Check the machine's status in the directory, then its paper trail — the dated log of what was promised versus what happened. A maker that has shipped anything on time before (Unitree, Agility) earns more preorder trust than one that hasn't. The timeline shows the whole field's promises in one place.

5. Where does it keep its memory of you?

A companion is a camera array with a personality, and it will know more about you than your phone does. Ask before buying: does conversation run on-device or in the cloud? Can you export or delete the memory? What happens to intimacy data if the company is breached — or acquired? The U1's encrypted on-device memory and Aria's AI-agnostic design (cloud or local) are the right kind of answers; silence is the wrong kind. The privacy guide has the full checklist.

6. What happens if the maker dies?

Most of these companies lose money; some will not exist in five years. If the machine's mind lives on the maker's servers, its personality is a service that can be switched off — owners of dead products have watched exactly that happen. Favor machines that degrade gracefully: local AI options, exportable memory, standard parts. It's the least romantic question on this list, which is why it's the one nobody asks.

The shortcut: we built the first four questions into the finder — four answers, honest shortlist, drawn live from the directory. Then put your candidates side by side and read their sourced profiles before any deposit leaves your account.