Desktop robots: the full category guide. Offbrand Human

A "desktop robot" is the one category in consumer robotics where you can actually walk up, pay, and have a working device on your desk this week. No preorder theater, no teleoperator in a warehouse. The trade is that these are companions and toys, not assistants. They emote, they roam, a few of them chat. Nine are genuinely orderable today, from $60 to $499, and a tenth, the $799 EBO X, is out of stock. What separates them is less the spec sheet than where the brain lives and what it costs to keep running.

A black Vector sits in an open human palm, green eyes lit, treads and lift arm folded, the whole robot smaller than the hand holding it; that is the scale of this entire category. — The size of the thing, in the maker's own imagery. Nothing here is a household assistant. Photo: Digital Dream Labs

The price ladder

Every one of these is orderable now from its official store unless noted, at the price that store shows.

Robot	Price	WiFi / AI	Subscription	One line
Eiliko	$59.90 (reg $69.90)	WiFi "AI brain" chat	None	Tiny AI charm bot, cheapest way to a talking one
Eilik	$139.99 (reg $149.99)	Offline, no account	None	The breakout reactive emotive toy
Vector 2.0	$199.99 base	Cloud AI + Alexa	$11.99/mo or $99.99/yr	Charming, and its brain is rented
LOOI	$239 (reg $259)	Uses your phone's compute	None stated	Dock that turns a phone into a robot
EMO	$279	Cloud + app	None advertised	Autonomous desk pet, cloud-dependent
Miko 3	$299 (sold out at miko.ai, still at retail)	Cloud "safe AI" chat	Miko Max from $8.25/mo	Kids' learning robot, heavy upsell
Loona Deskmate	$299	iPhone-powered AI	None required (optional paid credit tiers)	Newer desk unit, phone does the work
Casio Moflin	$429	On-device emotional AI	None in the US (Japan has an optional Club Moflin care plan, ~6,600 yen/yr)	The one with no face
Loona Petbot	$499 (reg $529)	ChatGPT-powered	ChatGPT free "for the moment" per KEYi's FAQ	Mobile "pet," the classic Loona
EBO X	$799 on sale (reg $999, out of stock)	GPT-4o mini + Alexa	None stated	Self-balancing family + security bot

Price ladder of ten desktop robots, cheapest first, from the $59.90 Eiliko to the $799 EBO X. Every rung carries a photograph of that robot next to its price and its subscription line: Eiliko and Eilik with nothing to pay monthly, Vector 2.0 at $11.99 a month or $99.99 a year, Miko 3 with Miko Max from $8.25 a month, LOOI and Loona Deskmate each wearing a docked phone as its face, Casio Moflin as a faceless pink ball of fur, and EBO X at $799 and out of stock. A few tiles are maker shots of non-standard versions: Eiliko in one of its dress-up outfits, an orange Eilik on its charging dock, a red-shelled Vector, and the basketball-edition Loona Petbot

The category really lives between about $140 and $500. Below that is Eiliko, which is a toy with a chat feature. Above it is EBO X, which is a home-security robot that happens to be friendly. The heart of the desk tier is the eight in the middle.

The two you will actually cross-shop: Eilik vs EMO

Eilik ($139.99) is the one everyone's seen. Energize Lab's emotive desk toy runs fully offline, no WiFi, no account, no setup past charging it. It reacts to touch, goes to standby with spontaneous expressions after a minute of no interaction, sleeps after fifteen, and shuts off after thirty. Battery is small, roughly 1.5 hours per charge over USB-C. The signature trick: multiple Eiliks recognize each other and play or fight, which is why people buy them in pairs. It is not an AI assistant and never claims to be, and doing exactly what the box shows is how it took the mainstream slot. Making one talk means buying the $99 AI Station dock, which adds a camera and a microphone and hides Eilik's own games for as long as the robot is sitting on it.

Two white and teal Eiliks stand on their round bases facing each other on a dark green miniature set, one showing crossed-out eyes while the other leans in with an arm raised and narrowed angry eyes lit; this two-unit squabble is the trick that sells the second Eilik. — The pair behavior, staged on Energize Lab's own miniature set. Image: Energize Lab

EMO ($279 from Living AI) is the step up in ambition. It roams your desk autonomously, has over 1,000 expressions and movements, recognizes up to 10 faces, responds to "Hey EMO," and comes with a wireless-charging "skateboard" dock that can also top up your phone. It evolves a personality over time. The catch is that EMO is cloud and app dependent. No mandatory subscription is advertised, but its longevity is tied to Living AI staying operational, and owners report charm alongside slow, buggy updates. Buy Eilik if you want a self-contained toy that outlives its company. Buy EMO if you want the more capable creature and accept the cloud dependency.

Living AI's own launch reel; the roaming, face-tracking, sulking behavior is the whole sales pitch, and stills cannot carry it.

Neither one has been on my desk yet, so treat this as spec sheets plus consistent owner reports, not a hands-on verdict. When a review unit lands, this section gets rewritten.

The subscription robots: read this before you fall for the demo

Two robots in this category are cheaper on the shelf than they are to live with.

Vector 2.0 is the cautionary tale. The base is $199.99 (open-box drops to $139.99), but the cloud AI that makes it answer questions runs on an $11.99/month or $99.99/year subscription. Digital Dream Labs, which owns the Anki IP now, carries a long community record of missed crowdfunding timelines and server worries. Local-server escape hatches exist precisely so Vector keeps working if the cloud goes dark: Digital Dream Labs sells its own "Escape Pod" ($99), and the community built the free, open-source WirePod. If you buy Vector, buy it knowing its brain is on loan.

Anki's Vector AI Subscription page listing Current Subscription Pricing as Monthly $11.99 and Annual $99.99, above a feature table where Hey Vector voice commands and ChatGPT connectivity carry a red X in the Without Subscription column and green checks under Monthly and Annual, while cube games and Alexa voice commands are checked in all three columns. — The rented part, priced by the seller itself: "Hey Vector" commands and ChatGPT connectivity are the rows marked unavailable without a plan, at $11.99 a month or $99.99 a year. Source: anki.bot Vector AI Subscription page.

Miko 3 is $299, though both colors are sold out at miko.ai. Retail still carries it (Costco, Walmart, Target, and Amazon), so check a retail shelf before you plan around the direct store. The Disney content, Story Maker, and enhanced parental controls sit behind Miko Max, from $8.25/month billed annually ($99/year, down from $180) or $14.99/month on a 30-day plan. The hardware is well liked. The relentless upsell and ad-like content pushes are the recurring complaint.

The phone-as-brain options: LOOI and Loona Deskmate

Two products dodge the "buy a whole computer" problem by borrowing the one in your pocket. LOOI ($239 at looirobot.com, marked down from $259) is a motorized dock: your phone is the face and brain, LOOI adds a tilting head, obstacle detection, and 10W wireless charging, with on-device data emphasis. The ~$179 figure in older coverage was Kickstarter-era pricing; retail settled higher.

A black LOOI and a white LOOI on a sunlit white desk, each holding a phone sideways as its face: the black one winks with one round blue eye and a dash, the white one shows two half-moon eyes and small red hearts; the phones are drawing the faces, which is the borrowed-brain idea in one frame. — What you buy is the wheeled base and the tilting neck. The face and the compute arrive with your phone. Image: TangibleFuture (LOOI)

KEYi's Loona Deskmate ($299) takes the same bet with Apple hardware: an "iPhone-Powered AI" desk unit with Qi2 magnetic-snap charging. It works out of the box with no subscription, though KEYi now sells optional Plus and Pro credit plans for heavier AI use. The page quantifies those tiers in credits (200, 1,000 and 3,000) and puts no price on any of them, so what the upgrade costs is not published anywhere I can point to. Both get to "AI face plus motion" without carrying their own expensive compute, which is the whole trick.

The ceiling: Loona Petbot and EBO X

Loona Petbot ($499, reduced from $529) is the classic mobile Loona: ChatGPT-powered conversation, facial recognition, sound-source localization, autonomous navigation, self-charging, and kid-friendly Blockly programming. On fees, its own FAQ asks whether it will charge for the ChatGPT 4o function and answers that it is free "for the moment." No fee today, an explicit hedge for tomorrow, so treat the free AI as a current perk rather than a promise. Also note KEYi's own blog runs templated "every robot for sale" listicles and ranks high in robot-pet searches, so treat its editorial as marketing, not a neutral source.

KEYi's demo reel for the Petbot; useful for judging the navigation and gesture play, as long as you remember it is the maker doing the selling.

EBO X ($799 on sale from $999 at Enabot, still out of stock) stretches the definition of "desktop." It is a self-balancing two-wheel family companion with a 4K stabilized camera, night vision, GPT-4o mini voice, Alexa, and elderly fall detection. That last feature is why it bridges into eldercare. If a moving camera in the house is a dealbreaker, it is not your robot. If watchful company is the point, it is the most capable thing here.

A maker hero render, not a photo of one working in a home. Render: Enabot

How to choose in one paragraph

Want a self-contained toy with zero ongoing cost and no cloud: Eilik. Want the most capable desk creature and you accept a cloud dependency: EMO. Buying for a kid: Miko 3, budgeting for Max. Want real conversation: Loona Petbot or Eiliko on the cheap. Want a pet that bonds instead of chats, on-device AI and no face: Moflin. Want a watchful companion with fall detection: EBO X. And whatever you pick, check two things before you pay: is the AI on a server you do not control, and is there a monthly bill hiding behind the sticker price.

For a deeper look at that first question, which robots run a real language model and which just react, see AI companion robots, explained. For where to buy Eilik without getting a fake, see Eilik price and where to buy it.