Bought a litter robot 4, wouldn’t do it again for the price. It’s a pain to clean and the cats are always peeing/pooping on the sides. It constantly stopped it cleaning cycle, and ended up growing a ton of bugs inside because the design had some cat poop inside the machine where I couldn’t get to it. I had to dismantle the entire thing taking out every screw to clean it. It’s currently sitting in my basement. I left a similar review on their website and they decided not to post it, I guess they don’t like unfavorable reviews.

I had a litter robot 3 for a couple years. The internals corroded and stopped working shortly after the warranty period expired. Bought a popur and it’s been a dream ever since.

Squeeze your cat like a tube of toothpaste into your back garden.

I’d like to go on record and state my opinion that the old school manual scoop method is the best and easiest if you do it twice a day. Takes no more than 30 seconds each time and gives you the added benefit of actively monitoring your cat’s waste for any warning signs of digestive or urinary issues.

Having a dedicated garbage pail for litter purposes only right next to the box makes things super easy and dirt cheap.

Really not worth it in my opinion. I’m hoping some day it will be, kind of like how robot vacuums used to ha e a lot more problems and be a lot more expensive.

We couldn’t afford any of the robot litter boxes for starters, even if we could manage the huge upfront cost (compared to the cost of even a high quality regular litter box), they all have some type of additional ongoing cost. Bags, or filters, or replacement parts, or more expensive litter.

Second, every one I looked at had reviews about cleanliness not being completely covered by the machine, so you sometimes have to clean a lot more parts than just quickly rinsing a typical litter box. Some people’s cats also get dirtier, or struggle to aim in some robot ones.

Third, I find the smell worse with any that you don’t dump or replace the tray every day. Using a diaper Genie honestly works much better for that for us. And I would rather know that I only need to take the 30 seconds to scoop every day as opposed to suddenly waking up to a broken litter box or having to spend an hour plus cleaning every part of it.

Lots of different opinions on here which is great, this is just my take!

I’d say it depends, do you have any long-haired cats?
I have had no luck with them in in the past, and have had to avoid them now as we have long-haired cats, which clumping kitty litter with long-hairs is usually a disaster with litter getting stuck on them.

I just think its part of the daily ritual, or in my case multiple times daily due to having a herd of cats. I don’t enjoy it, but its better than the house smelling like cat waste.

I used my Litter Robot for about 6 months, and ended up selling it because:

• It still has to be cleaned. Once a month you are supposed to disassemble and clean the various parts. I found this experience to be pretty nasty. Definitely worse than scooping a box.
• I have a Maine Coon, and she ended up with dirty litter in her fur all of the time.
  Edit:
• The drawer is small and has to be emptied often if you have multiple cats. I get that you’re still supposed to have multiple boxes available, but that thing cost exponentially more than other litter boxes, so it’s hard not to see it as an attempt at an all-in-one solution.

I have 1 cat and one of those crappy petsafe ones. But it actually works for me. On my 2nd unit in 10 years. I change out the litter refills every time the counter hits 20, a little more than a week. I buy the refills from Vietnam for half the price. With multiple cats I don’t know, gets expensive

I’ll go against the grain here and say that no, I don’t think they’re worth it. The litter that automatic litter boxes have to use doesn’t clump and isn’t as effective. Tried it for about a year and then went back to low-tech.

I have a litter robot, it’s brilliant. You can use any clumping litter, there’s a guide to get your cats used to it, no smell at all, no cleaning, and the bags in the base can be anything. I use a cheap clumping litter, the cheapest clay based one seems to work best for me but you can use any clumping that has small grains.

What happens is that I get a message to my phone about once a week telling me to take the old bag out and put the new bag in. I couldn’t live without it now.

We had the litter maid. It was good. You can put a grocery bag (or similar) into the litter scoop tray and reuse it for a while, but if it gets too gross, you’ll have to buy the trays and the potpourri packets…

This is the one I’m looking at currently, but I’m having a hard time with the price… https://www.amazon.com/ELS-PET-Cleaning-Automatic-Protection/dp/B0C2BVTFDP I would love to see what others are using and what they like and don’t like about it.

I have a couple scoopfree boxes. It’s just a classic litter box shape with a rake that auto- scoops for you. Doesn’t do anything for pee. It works well for me/my cat. I bought the reusable tray, the disposable ones became really expensive over covid and they don’t handle heavy pee-loads well (plus wasteful). I buy the cheap crystal litter from Walmart, it works as well as their more expensive refills.

The scoopfree is open by default but you can buy a lid for it. My cats really disliked it when the litter box was enclosed so the lid is in my basement now. Does mean I have to vacuum around it occasionally. Smell isn’t bad unless urine builds up in the crystals because the poop is covered (but not “sealed”).

The poop capacity is finite and if you have cats that pee a lot you might have to change the litter more often. I have 2 boxes as I had two cats originally. I had to change it out between once a week and every other week. With 4 cats you’d ideally have more boxes and given cats will often just use the same one anyways, you might need to pull the tray out, dump and wipe it, then refill it up to twice a week.

There’s a configurable delay before the rake activates so it doesn’t scare the cat. There’s also a safety sensor so it doesn’t operate with a passenger.