I have been watching the SLAM scanner category get crowded fast, and I want a read on where this community actually sits right now.

A few years ago the conversation was basically Leica BLK2GO versus NavVis, and the price of entry kept most of us on the sidelines. That is no longer the case. Buying guides now put the handheld range at roughly 15K on the entry end to 90K and up for survey grade with colorized point clouds, and the middle of that range is filling in fast.

Two brand new ones worth your attention:

NavVis CLX. Announced this month as the newest member of the LX series, sitting alongside the MLX and the VLX. NavVis is positioning it as an agile handheld built for high volume, everyday documentation at an affordable price point, rather than for maximum precision. It uses a dual LiDAR architecture with live 2D and 3D coverage feedback on an integrated screen so you can confirm you got the space before you leave site. Target work is area referencing, site assessment, quantity surveying, and LOD200 scan to CAD or BIM. It ships with a pole, supports extended pole adapters, and there is an optional harness for hands free capture. If you have been waiting for NavVis quality at a price that works for routine jobs, this is the one to look at.

Feima Robotics Pocket 3D. Launched globally on July 20 and pitched as the first prosumer grade handheld 3D modeling system. It weighs about 700g without a camera, and it pairs with a DJI Osmo or an Insta360 for the imagery. The headline is that a single scan produces four deliverables: a centimeter level point cloud, a mesh, a BIM model, and a 3DGS Gaussian Splatting model. Feima is openly aiming at the gap between expensive professional scanners and phone based scanning apps, which is exactly the gap a lot of us have been complaining about for two years.

Others that have landed recently:
- CHCNAV RS7, unveiled in February for BIM documentation and indoor surveying, with a next generation sensor rated over a million points per second
- GeoCue TrueView GO, GeoCue's first handheld, in 16 channel and 32 channel versions
- GreenValley LiGrip O2 Lite, using multi sensor fusion positioning aimed at featureless spaces where SLAM usually drifts
- Feima SLAM200E, which added resumable scanning, aerial to ground data fusion, and 3DGS output
- Tersus MVP S2, also sold as the Metaverse Painter S2
- Mosaic Xplor, a 360 backpack rig for hard to reach environments
- Plus the established field: XGRIDS Lixel L2 Pro, FARO Orbis, NavVis MLX and VLX, Stonex X120GO, FJD Trion P1 and S2

So I want to hear from you.

If you already pulled the trigger:
- What did you buy, and when?
- What made you pick it over the others on your short list?
- What are you scanning with it? Residential, commercial, AEC, as-builts, heritage, forensics, something else?
- Is it paying for itself? Are you billing more per job, winning different work, or both?
- What does your processing workflow look like, and how long does it take per project?
- Anything you wish you had known before you bought?

If you are still shopping:
- Which units are on your short list?
- What is your realistic budget ceiling?
- What is holding you back? Price, accuracy, software, client demand, or something else?
- Are you waiting on a specific release or a specific price drop?

If you looked hard and passed:
- What killed it for you? I think the no answers are just as useful here as the yes answers.

One more thing I am curious about: how many of you are looking at SLAM hardware mainly to feed 3D Gaussian Splatting deliverables, versus point clouds, floor plans, and BIM? Between the Pocket 3D and the 3DGS output now showing up across the Feima line, that feels like the fork in the road for our side of the industry, and I am not sure which way most of you are leaning.

Reply below with what you own or what you are eyeing. I will keep a running summary at the top of this thread so we all have one place to compare notes instead of hunting through a dozen vendor pages.