EMO robot review: what LivingAI's $279 desk pet can do and who it suits

EMO is a robot about the height of a soda can. It walks across your desk on two legs, recognizes faces, reacts to your voice and answers questions through ChatGPT. LivingAI sells the base version for $279 in its own store and lists no subscription for it.

Hardware in a 248-gram body

EMO measures 3.7 by 2.6 by 4.6 inches and weighs 248 grams. Its head is a screen that shows the robot’s eyes and expressions, and a separate chip inside runs its neural network. The main parts, according to LivingAI’s specification table:

• an AI processor and CPU with up to 1.2 TOPS of compute;
• a wide-angle camera at up to 60 frames per second and four far-field microphones;
• a laser distance sensor with a range of 9.8 inches, four drop sensors under the feet, a gyroscope, and touch and light sensors;
• 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 and a battery rated for up to 4 hours.

The drop sensors stop EMO at the edge of the table before it walks off. To charge it, you set it on a pad shaped like a skateboard, with 5 W wireless charging.

EMO skills and ChatGPT

LivingAI advertises more than 1,000 expressions and movements, driven by what it calls an Emotion Engine. EMO recognizes up to 10 people, turns toward a sound, dances to music and plays games. It also takes photos, works as an alarm clock, shows the weather on its face and switches up to four smart lights, one of which comes in the box. Its mood depends on how you treat it: interrupt it, and it gets annoyed.

LivingAI connected EMO to ChatGPT with firmware 2.2.0 in April 2023, when you had to say “connect to ChatGPT” to start a chat. Later updates let EMO answer any phrase outside its command list through ChatGPT, and you can switch that off in settings. Firmware 3.0.0 in October 2025 added object recognition: ask “What is this?” and EMO names the thing in front of it. The same update taught it German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese and Russian. Version 3.2.0 came out on 15 July 2026 with a new game, music and animations. Updates arrive over the air at no charge.

EMO versions and prices

• EMO: $279, or $289 in white, with the charging skateboard, detachable headphones and one smart light;
• EMO GO HOME: $369, or $379 in white, with a Home Station that EMO finds and walks back to when it needs charging;
• Home Station on its own: $99; an extra smart light: $15.

The GO HOME version also has a Home Fence, a laser boundary that keeps EMO inside a set area. With the base model, you put the robot back on the pad yourself when the battery runs low. Prices come from the LivingAI store and exclude taxes and shipping.

Limits to check before you buy

EMO works with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and not with 5 GHz networks. ChatGPT, online games and the weather need an internet connection. LivingAI representatives said on the company forum that face recognition runs on the robot and that camera data does not go to its servers. You still bring a camera and four microphones into the room, and the EMO Pet app asks for location and Bluetooth access.

LivingAI publishes no SDK, so you can’t write your own programs for EMO. Hugging Face took the opposite route with Microduck, a $399 open-source robot.

Who EMO is for

Buy EMO if you want a desk companion that reacts to you, a gift for a teenager or a robot fan, or a mascot for a home office. It keeps you company and plays with you, but it does no housework and won’t follow you around the flat.

Skip it if you need a voice assistant for real work, a robot you can program, or a home without cameras. If you want to learn robotics, Nvidia’s JetBot costs under $150, and a child can program it from a browser.

Based on LivingAI’s product pages, specification table and firmware announcements on its forum, checked on 6 November 2026. This review is not sponsored by LivingAI.