So this is an experiment I’ve been wanting to conduct for quite some time now. I’ve received quite a few questions from some of the viewers of my channel about how accurate the measurements are from Cubicasa floor plans and I’ve also been meaning to find this information out for myself as well. If this is a product we are selling I feel we should be educated on it as much as possible.
I was asked to do floor plans the other day for a home I was shooting so I seized the opportunity to run this test. I also had the Matterport Pro 2 camera with me so I knew I could also do a floor plan through Matterport as well so I could see which one was more accurate. So first I did the floor plan with the Matterport Pro 2 Camera and then I went back through the house and did a floor plan with Cubicasa and then finally I used my laser measure and measured all the rooms so I had fairly accurate measurements to use to see how both Cubicasa and Matterport compared with the actual measurements as far as accuracy is concerned. I should also state that I am using an iPhone 12 Pro to do the CubiCasa scan which has lidar. Cubicasa says phones equipped with lidar are more accurate so if you have an older iPhone or a phone with no lidar then most likely your results with CubiCasa will be less accurate.
So to be fair, before we get into these results I just want to make clear that both Cubicasa and Matterport state that their measurements are approximate so they are not claiming to be perfectly accurate. I’ve always been aware that they are approximate but I wanted to find out just how far off they might be. I’ve had clients ask me how accurate they are as well so now after doing this I have a general idea of their accuracy and after watching this video you will as well so you don’t have to do this experiment for yourself.
Alright, so now let’s take a look at some of these results and see how they compare. I always assumed Matterport was more accurate with Matterport claiming the Pro 2 camera has accuracy within 1% (I assumed that claim applies to their floor plans but I’m not entirely sure). I also assumed the Matterport camera would be more accurate being that it is a dedicated 3D image maker vs CubiCasa being made via an app on your phone through your phone’s camera but I have to say I was pretty surprised with what I found. Also, I completely realize that I am not perfect either and my measurements with the laser may not be 100% accurate. There is definitely a margin of error in each one of these approaches so take this all with a grain of salt. Alright, let’s take a look.
RESULTS:
Ok so I’m not going to take you through every single room and bore you to death. We will just take a look at a select few rooms to see how the CubiCasa compares to the Matterport and how they both compare to the actual measurements. At the end I will give you an overall consensus on which, If either, was more accurate overall based on my measurements.
First let’s take a look at the living room. CubiCasa’s measurements are 15’5” x 14’6”. Matterport’s measurements are 15’1” x 14’10”. The actual measurements with the laser measure were 14’6” x 14’3”. So Cubicasa was off by 11” in one direction and 3” in the other (11” is quite a significant difference). Matterport was off by 7” in one direction and 4” in the other. So neither seemed to be very close to accurate in this room with Cubicasa being almost an entire foot off in one direction and Matterport being just over half a foot off in one direction. Matterport however was the more accurate in this instance.
The overall measurement with the lowest margin of error was by Cubicasa and it was in the garage for whatever reason. CubiCasa’s measurements were 20’2” x 21’4”. Matterport’s measurements were 21’1” x 21’10”. The actual measurements were 20’5” x 21’2”. CubiCasa was only off by 3” x 2” and Matterport was off by 7” x 8”. So Cubicasa was obviously the more accurate here and wasn’t off by a ton but sadly not all that accurate even still.
Finally let’s take a look at one of the tighter spaces and see if that had any effect on the accuracy of the scans. For the laundry room, Cubicasa’s measurements were 5’3” x 8’11”. Matterport’s measurements were 5’10” x 9’4”. The actual measurements were 5’3” x 8’8”. So CubiCasa was spot on with the one measurement of 5’3” in this instance and only off by 3” in the other direction. Matterport was off by 7” x 5”.
Ok, so I’m not going to drag this out by going through more rooms because I think you have the general idea by now. So you can see there is a margin of error by either CubiCasa or Matterport anywhere from a couple inches to almost a foot in most cases. Neither one of them got any of the rooms perfectly correct however one of them had 3 instances of spot on measurements for one of the dimensions and that was Cubicasa. That was the big surprise to me because as I stated earlier I thought the Matterport camera was accurate within 1% and it's not even close to that. Cubicasa did have the biggest inaccurate measurement. In one instance it was off by 17” but the Matterport wasn’t far behind as it was off by 16” on one of its measurements.
When it comes to who is more accurate overall, it's really difficult to declare a winner. They both had a similar margin of error throughout the floor plans however since CubiCasa actually had 3 accurate measurements I would have to give the prize to them. I would also give them the prize as the best choice because it only takes about 5 minutes to create a CubiCasa floor plan vs over an hour for the Matterport which is a huge advantage. I thought the advantage of the Matterport was that it was accurate which might make it worth the extra time to do if it yielded accurate results but from my findings that is definitely not the case. There is no accuracy advantage to Matterport floor plans whatsoever and it takes so much longer.
I also want to add that you can go in and change the measurements for either CubiCasa or Matterport floor plans so if you want accurate measurements you could take your own and then plug them in later when you get your floor plans back. It takes only like 15 minutes or so to do laser measurements at a house so that combined with doing the floor plans with Cubicasa you are still only looking at 20-30 mins time investment on site which is still way faster than just doing the scan with Matterport not even including doing the laser measurements.