The question every contractor asks first: can I trust the numbers? Here's the straight answer.
The realistic expectation
On a typical residential room, expect wall lengths within roughly an inch, and often better. Apple's RoomPlan fits walls as planes across thousands of LiDAR samples, which averages out sensor noise — that's why a recognized wall measures better than any single point-to-point pick on a raw mesh.
Accuracy degrades gracefully with distance and room size: short runs are tighter, long open-plan spans a bit looser. Scan quality matters too — a steady walk with attention to corners measures better than a hurried spin (our pacing nudges exist for exactly this reason).
Sufficient is a number, not a feeling
Match the tolerance to the task:
- Floor area for flooring: an inch on a wall length changes a 200 sq ft room by under 2 sq ft — inside the waste factor you were adding anyway.
- Paint: wall area shifts by well under a gallon's coverage.
- Bids and floor plans: an inch is indistinguishable at drawing scale.
- Cabinet fabrication and countertops: this is tape-measure territory. Scan for the layout and the bid; verify the critical runs by hand before you cut anything.
That last one isn't a concession — it's how the tool is meant to be used. The scan replaces the two-hour survey, not the final field verification a fabricator would demand from any measurement source, including your own tape.
How to get the good end of the range
Walk slow, hug the perimeter, give corners a beat, don't linger on mirrors. Twenty minutes of habit and your scans sit consistently at the tight end.
Trust it for what it's for — the survey, the takeoff, the bid — and it will not let you down.