Romi: a palm-sized talking robot whose first 10,000 units sold out

A talking robot MIXI began in 2017

Romi is a talking robot made by MIXI of Tokyo. MIXI started the Romi business in 2017. It has a round, palm-sized body with a screen face, and the first generation weighed about 320 g. Romi uses deep learning to generate its own sentences. In May 2021 a Japanese certification body recognised it as the world’s first home-use conversation robot to work this way. Before general sale, 200 people tried it for ten months.

A sold-out first run, and a second generation at twice the price

The first generation was first sold in 2020 and went on general sale on 21 April 2021 (sources differ). It cost ¥49,280 plus ¥1,078 a month. According to Business Insider Japan, all 10,000 units produced sold out. Pre-orders for the second-generation Lacatan model opened in October 2024, and general sale began on 25 July 2025. At ¥98,780 it cost twice as much as the first, with a ¥1,958 monthly fee. It gained a bigger screen, vision and long-term memory. The Lacatan model was a CES 2025 Innovation Awards honoree and was shown at IFA 2025. MIXI planned an initial run of 20,000. A new conversation model arrived in December 2025, and an official repair service started in January 2026.

Someone to talk to about anxiety and loneliness

In its CES entry, MIXI wrote that many people in Japan use the original Romi “to ease their anxiety and loneliness.” AdverTimes reported users of all ages, many of them young women and parents of small children. Notebookcheck wrote: “The tabletop robot is designed to be a companion much like a pet without the restrictions of owning one.” At the 2025 launch demo, though, Romi sometimes answered slowly or misheard, and MIXI blamed the noise in the room.

Conversation in a small tabletop robot

Romi is a palm-sized tabletop robot whose core function is conversation. After the first run sold out, MIXI released a second generation at twice the price and set up a repair service. That suggests it expects owners to keep Romi for a long time. Like RoBoHoN and NICOBO in this archive, it belongs to a line of Japanese social robots that rely on a small body and speech.

When conversation is the core of a robot, what should its body contribute?

What we haven’t confirmed

• When the first generation was first sold (sources give June 2020 and April 2021)
• Second-generation sales and whether it is still on sale in October 2026
• The second generation’s weight (385 g or 400 g, depending on the source)
• Independent research on long-term use or effects