Livox, the LiDAR company DJI incubated in 2016 and still sells through the DJI Store, announced the Mid-360L on X on Monday: a cheaper version of the Mid-360, the 360-degree sensor it has shipped by the hundred thousand for robot lawn mowers. The new unit runs at 100,000 points per second, half the rate of the Mid-360, and Livox has not published a price.
The Mid-360L keeps the 360-degree horizontal view and the 10-centimeter (4-inch) minimum detection range. The footprint is the same 65 by 65 millimeters (2.6 by 2.6 inches), 3 millimeters taller, and it weighs 245 grams (8.6 ounces), 20 grams less than the Mid-360. Livox’s X post calls it an “economical solution for large-scale robot deployment,” and its product page says the price is “highly competitive” without saying what it is.
I first wrote about Livox in January 2021, when DJI was hiring engineers to put its LiDAR in cars. Five years on, the volume Livox has put numbers on is in robot mowers, and it pitches the Mid-360L at exactly that kind of large-scale deployment.
Livox Mid-360L Trades Vertical View and Point Density for Lower Cost
The Livox Mid-360L cuts the vertical field of view from 59 degrees to 44 degrees and the point rate from 200,000 to 100,000 points per second. Range precision loosens from 2 centimeters or better to 3 centimeters or better at 10 meters (33 feet).
The vertical cut lands on the top of the view. The Mid-360 sees from 7 degrees below horizontal to 52 degrees above; the Mid-360L sees from 10 degrees below to 34 degrees above, according to the Livox spec sheet. A mower or a floor-cleaning robot looks down and around, not up, so my read is that Livox cut the part of the frame its biggest customers use least.
Not everything got worse. The Mid-360L is rated at 45 meters (148 feet) on a 10-percent-reflectivity target, 5 meters farther than the Mid-360’s 40, and it draws 4.2 watts against 6.5. Its operating ceiling rises from 55°C to 65°C (131°F to 149°F), which matters on a black robot sitting in July sun. Both figures come from Livox’s lab, which the spec page says is a 25°C (77°F) environment, so the range gain is a claim I have not seen tested outside. IP67 sealing, the ICM40609 IMU, Ethernet output and PTP and GPS time sync carry over unchanged.
Livox Ships the Mid-360 by the Hundred Thousand
Livox said in March 2025 that it had delivered 100,000 Mid-360 units under its partnership with Dreame Technology, whose robot mowers sell across Europe and North America, and that the two companies target one million units over three years. Livox lists the Mid-360 at $979 and notes that tariffs can change that price.
Livox credits the cost cut to three things: a sensor chip it now designs itself, algorithms rewritten to run on cheaper processing hardware, and production lines it says now turn out more than three times as many units per hour. The capacity claim is the only one with a number attached. As of Monday afternoon, Livox’s newsroom carried no Mid-360L release; the product page and the X post are the whole announcement.
Dreame, the mower customer, was advertising drone jobs last August in a move to compete with DJI, which puts DJI’s LiDAR offshoot in the position of supplying sensors to a company recruiting to build drones against the company that incubated it.
DroneXL’s Take
Washington ended 2025 by putting foreign-made drones, DJI’s included, on the FCC Covered List on the theory that Chinese hardware in American skies is a security risk. Meanwhile DJI-incubated Livox is working toward a million sensors in Dreame’s mowers alone, a share of them rolling across American back yards, and it has just released a cheaper model. I’d bet the price cut is aimed at the robot makers still on the fence. In April I covered the Wall Street Journal’s finding that Tesla’s and Figure AI’s humanoids depend heavily on Chinese-made components, and that Congress was already reaching for the same playbook. The Mid-360L is what that playbook is up against: a sensor that pipes point clouds over an Ethernet cable to the robot’s own computer, pitched below a predecessor that already lists at $979. A blacklist cannot keep pace with a supplier willing to halve its point rate to reach a lower price. The only thing that can is an American 360-degree LiDAR that sells for a few hundred dollars and ships in volume. If one exists, nobody has sent me the spec sheet.
Source: Livox, Livox on X
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
