Humanoid robot for $4,400 on Aliexpress

You have long been able to order your own robot online – even in Germany. At Mediamarkt, the Unitree G1 costs around 28,199 euros at the time this article was written – and therefore as much as a new small car. The Agibot A2 is also available online – for 161,500 euros. The R1, which is also built by Unitree, seems like a bargain. The Chinese company wants to offer the humanoid robot on Aliexpress. The machine with arms and legs will cost $4,370, reports the South China Morning Post. But what do customers actually bring into their home?

What can a $5,000 robot do?

The bad news first: The R1 is not a household helper like it was presented several times at CES 2026. This is clear from just a look at the manufacturer’s data sheet. The battery life is stated to be just one hour. Far too little to keep your home and yard in good condition. On its website, the manufacturer also focuses on the robot’s athletic abilities. Shadow boxing, handstands, cartwheels, kung fu, lying down and getting up again. According to a video, the R1 can do this without any problems. The robot has 26 joints, each with one degree of freedom. This results in 26 independent movement options.

The robot, which weighs 25 kilograms and is 1.20 meters tall, perceives its surroundings via cameras. An integrated multimodal model translates the image. It should also ensure that the R1 understands voice commands. It is equipped with four microphones. The robot also supports WLAN for installing software updates “over the air” and Bluetooth 5.3. The included controller, which is responsible for the control, is probably linked to this. Unitree does not reveal any details. According to Wired, coders can program the machine themselves using a developers kit.

Can it ever become an everyday helper? Rather not. As US magazine points out, the normal version of the R1 has no hands with working fingers and little torque. Instead, the manufacturer is aimed at researchers, developers or robot enthusiasts. Unitree also offers an “Edu” model for laboratories and universities. It is better equipped, for example it has a head with two degrees of freedom and a Jetson Orin module from Nvidia, which should deliver more computing power than the eight-core processor in the normal model. According to Wired, this variant is suitable for researchers who want to test programs and algorithms on robots that don’t cost a fortune.

When is the R1 available?

According to the South China Morning Post report, the R1 should be listed on Aliexpress in the US and Europe during the week of April 13th. As of now, it is not available there. The robot is already available for pre-order at Joybuy, a trading platform of the new Mediamarkt parent JD.com. Here it costs 4,900 euros. Since this advance sale is not scheduled to end until June 18th, a timely market launch is unlikely for the time being.

If you want to use it, you should make it clear in advance that private users in particular are getting a kind of drone on two legs that can perform fancy tricks, but has nothing to contribute to everyday work.