None the less the same very real issues we all have had - my ol' boy in Heaven was exactly this way and when I exclaimed my issues time upon time with littermaid boxes I was met with 'well your cat must be a special case' - yet my vet says it's very common. This series is a Godsend!! 🙌🙌🙌❤️😍🤗
Yes, very useful. You're saving me hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Because otherwise, I'd have to try to do something similar, only with fewer cats, and probably a lot less rigor. Not to mention the fact that your cinematography is GORGEOUS! Thank you again!
Insulting Harriet is just a dealbreaker, isn't it?! Honestly! Altho my vet did refer to one of my cats as (and I quote...) "he's, er, a little round"! I covered his ears in front of her, and burst out laughing. She did have the grace to laugh too.
I was so stressed about looking up all this information and you’ve made it all so easy to digest along with positives and negatives of almost every possible situation. This is the best product review I’ve ever seen of any product line
Your channel is so so so helpful, thank you! I’m leaning towards the new litter robot and it’s such a large purchase, so good to see how it compares and know it’s worth. Btw, Bertie is ruthless, no f’s given when he’s gotta go.
Thanks! Your reviews have been astoundingly exhaustive and beautifully produced. Buying one of these is a big decision and I feel like I know what I'd be getting into thanks to your hard work.
I am super glad for these reviews. Hubby and I are considering self-cleaning boxes but our senior is a wall pee-er like Bertie. These videos have given me many things to consider before choosing a box.
Same, I have one that starts low and raises her behind as she goes and it always ends up over the side of even the high sided trays! *sigh* Good thing we love them so much, isn't it? :)
@@catsandcrafts171 For years, we've used a deep sterilite bin so he has to jump all the way in and the walls are high enough that he can't get over the edge while peeing. It's an inelegant solution, but it worked. At least until his arthritis set in! He's in a lidded box now which seems to get the worst of it, but we really want an auto bin once we can afford it. Looks like the LR4 is going to be the one, after they release the new fence.
Your reviews are just WONDERFUL, and cats truly ARE top notch testers; all your kitties are beautiful! Thanks so much for being so thorough, you have saved me hundreds of dollars let alone so much aggravation. Much love from me and my 3 kitties from New Mexico USA ❤❤
Great video! As a Pura Max (and former LR 3) owner, I've been looking forward to this one ever since the first one with the LR 4. As mentioned in a previous comment, for some reason we haven't had any leaks from inside but I'm chalking that up to dumb luck with the manufacturing tolerances on our particular liner. It's the same current fabric one with the hard plastic ring. I'll request the new drum from them for comparison as suggested (thanks for that info!). My hardware complaints: The first issue we ran into was our cat likes to pee facing inside with her tail sticking out of the entrance. Some urine was landing on the lower lip and dripping down the front of the drum into the basin below. I made a fence out of ~3cm vinyl weather stripping and velcro tape which goes across the inside of the drum just above the lip of the entrance. It's been completely effective at resolving that pee issue and I haven't seen any urine outside the drum for months. I plan to make a 3D printable version to clip onto the lower lip and will post the design once it's completed. There's a recently introduced "Continuous rotation" setting in the app that toggles whether the proximity sensor at the front is ignored during cleaning and leveling. I'm not sure if the sensor stays active during leveling when that setting is off. That setting helps in our case, because we have fabric curtains over the outside of the entrance (not the official ones that attach to the inside) to encourage the cat to stay inside when using it. The curtains tend to drape over the sensors when the entrance is facing down for leveling so the setting prevents the cycle from being interrupted by this. We haven't been as lucky with the waste drawer design. The waste seems to pile up more quickly than in our LR 3. We only have one cat, but within the first 4 to 5 days after putting in a fresh waste bag, I get a dreaded bin full notification and have to pull the drawer out and shake it to get a particularly wide and flat clump to settle so the lid can close. Sometimes I have to shake the drawer before I can pull it out, to keep a clump from smashing into the front wall of the compartment. The other main complaint is with the app: The app only allows one mobile device to be signed into an account, which is mostly fine because you can share access to a litter box with other users who have their own accounts. Or it would be, except that the other accounts can't receive notifications from the litter box. I thought this was a bug at first, but after a long email exchange with support troubleshooting the issue, they finally confirmed with the technical team that notifications to other users sharing a device weren't yet supported. I had hoped this would be addressed in an update but it's been several months since then and the app has gone through one significant refresh without any changes to this functionality. The other, more minor complaint with the app is that while the weight tracking in the litter box usage records seems pretty accurate, and it consistently recognises our cat by comparing the sensed weight to the weight we input in her profile, it doesn't automatically update our cat's profile for these small fluctuations. This is a shame because the profile can display a nice graph of weight changes over time, but these are all manually updated values.
I too, have the pura max that has worked perfectly out of the box. I guess i got lucky. But i am looking to buy the litter robot 4.I am on the fence because of all the issues they are having.
@@LindaBardin as I said in this video, my two machines have been working perfectly since around October after niggling problems. It’s the best machine on the market in part because they have proper customer service, extended warranty and spare parts. 1 year warranty is not enough.
@@brittanymueller171 the main issues were the loud motor near our bedroom, weight sensor issues that kept it from detecting usage sometimes, and the pinch sensor frequently needing to be cleaned or adjusted.
I think I'll go for litter robot 4. Thank you for the un depth review! It answered all of my questions and worries and gave me some things to think on.
I’ve absolutely loved this video series, I never thought I’d enjoy watching videos about litter boxes but I have to say, you pulled it off! 😊 I was surprised you had the leaking issues with the Pura X, I guess it goes to show how different everyone’s needs are We’ve got the Pura X and two Burmese and we love ours, we even had a great experience with the PETKIT customer service who sent us a replacement outer shell/robot when ours encountered a fault well outside of the one year warranty
Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful comparisons. It's quelled a lot of my uncertainty over whether another litter machine would have been better. I started with a Litter Robot 3 (the Litter Robot 4 was not yet announced at this time). My first impression was soured, because I received one with a dead-on-arrival Wi-Fi chip. Customer Service was good, and I was sent an entire replacement base quite quickly. The noise was annoying but not a deal breaker. After about 30 days of use, the machine just started smelling absolutely putrid, and no amount of cleaning would make it go away. I believe this issue is due to the waste drawer not having any sealing. I returned it without issue. I've had the PetKit Pura Max for almost a year now, with two cats that have surprisingly good aim. (They both stick their head out the front when peeing and pooping.) The machine requires very little effort to maintain, aside from regular wipe downs and the occasional deep clean, and most importantly it contains the smell. Even so, I feel your review perfectly captures my concerns with the machine breaking down. All-in-all, my impression is that Whisker is a good company with phenomenal customer service policies, but lacks the product development and manufacturing expertise to make truly reliable products. On the other hand, PetKit has solid product engineering and manufacturing, but basically no customer support. Having to make the choice between reliable and fixable is a dreadful dilemma, and feels a lot like buying a car. When the Max eventually does break down, I will likely switch to the Litter Robot 4 (or Litter Robot 5 if the Max lasts long enough for that, hah). The dread of potentially being left with a $500 paperweight is quite powerful, and I was quite happy with the Litter Robot 3 aside from the noise and smell, which Whisker has addressed in the Litter Robot 4.
The timing is eerie, I JUST checked the channel early this morning during a bout of sleeplessness, trying to find something to watch and hoping a follow-up video hadn't been missed to this series. And now, a new video is out 😅.
I so appreciate these videos! I am still undecided on a robotic litter box after watching your reviews. I am currently using 3 large storage bins as litter boxes, and it works very well. Extra room, deep litter, and I only need to scoop once a day. I do want the convenience of a robotic litter box, but not if they have so many flaws that require constant care and attention.
Been using the pura x for about a year now and it’s working wonders for me personally! Initially it was a bit of a struggle to find litter that worked well but once I did it was incredible.
I loved this series even though I’m cat-free atm, so thank you! And I cannot wait for the catio series, I’ve been looking forward to that for a while 😊
Pure delight this has been! I laughed and was greatly appreciative of the well done information! Bravo my friend! Indeed, Litter Robot 4 is likely the best on the market, but she is spendy. I have remarked on several sites, that unless you have 3 or more cats, it's simply not worth the price. People who have 4 or more cats, likely NEED this thing, at least one. I have 2 LR3's and 1 LR4, plus a nice big covered old fashion deep pan litter box. All get used, but the robots have saved my back from all the scooping on the daily required for 6 feline furr-babies. The LR4 has improved on the product and for now still has the best customer service. Yet like the good man says: it's a machine and it will break down/ have issues. So invest wisely I say. Out the door LR is an ouch, but I've found over time it pays for itself in back breaking scooping and litter waste. I use less litter and the machine makes the most of it. Now, if only we could find a dust free safe great clumping litter...sigh... that doesn't break the bank. Note: I know it may seem extremely crazy but I will say that over 30 years I've found ironically, cats are allergic to humans...lol. You know...90% of our "dust" is our skin... well turns out that dust is not agreeable to our feline friends any more than theirs is to us. I have 3 terribly allergic cats to this problem... it's truly mind boggling that it never occurs to anyone. Since we focus on our allergies to things or animals. Turns out, cats bodies filter and deal with fine actual dirt dust particles than that of the human fluff. Small world...lol. thanks again one guy and six cats... smiles and blessings...
감사합니다. I had no idea you paid for all of these machines for RU-vid except Leo!!!!!!! It/s not much but i hope this helps. I loved loved spending my last 3 hrs watching all of your self cleaning litter box review videos as they were so humorous and cinematic are very beautiful to watch! I have litter robot 3 and i think i am not going to change to anything else yet 😅! I think anyone looking to buy automatic litter boxes should watch your reviews videos😮
Thank you for the series! That catbula looks like it’ll either beat the others by a mile or be a complete nightmare to work with haha. Either way I can’t wait to see more!
I got a Pura max from Amazon here in the UK, it’s great, I keep it in the living room next to the sofa because it’s so quiet and handles odours really well. Haven’t had any leaks but maybe my cat is just well behaved and does his business directly on the litter every time.
@@OneManFiveCats I didn’t know about 2 years, cheers for the advice. Petkit keep messaging me on amazon asking me if there are any problems but there haven’t been any so it seems they’re putting effort into customer service… for now.
I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the effort you put into this, I was considering several of these brands since the Litter Robot is insanely expensive In Canada ($1,000 for the base model 4 with no accessories or extended warranty) but frankly, after watching these it seems like that's the best purchase since there's the least amount of issues.
I’m struggling with this as we all are, but I’m also reminded of the distant past. My neighbor had a huge pile of sand which served the kids *and* the cats of the area. It was the site of huge artillery campaigns and spreading ranch/farmland, and the play continued over many days. We and the cats coexisted peacefully, and the kids were expert at scooping and tossing the clumps of sand. Nobody got sick, as I recall. Simpler times.
Hi! Just watched your self cleaning litter box. I had already purchased the Popur litter boxes. I still like it BUT to your safety point, one of my foster kittens did get trapped in the box behind the scooper gate. I was able to get him out but it was tough & he was so scared. I am just thankful I was awake at the time he got himself scooped up & I heard him crying!
Darn it! I heard Part 3 was out, only to discover I had already watched Part 3, and it was Part 4 I was waiting for (or the individual reviews that will take its place). Good thing this were the first of your videos I watched. There are many, many more to go! And more to come! Many thanks!
Great review. I did extensive research before settling on Whisker’s litter robot 3. A huge factor for me was the ability to purchase replacement parts for the unit which others didn’t offer. Also, it has the largest interior for my very large and tall kitty. She loves it and took to it right away. While no unit is perfect, I do find the Litter Robot is tried and true being the original automatic litter box.
We have a leo's loo and have been mostly happy with it. We had a pipe burst and flood the room it was in with 2 inches of water. This fried some of the electronics. I contacted the company about purchasing replacement electronics, and they sent them out for FREE! They were polite, and didn't make me go through a bunch of troubleshooting like most companies do. I had already isolated the problems and taken the litter box apart to identify the failed components. My big complaint is the notifications from the app are an all or nothing thing. I only want notifications when the drawer is full, but I get a notification every time one of the 3 cats uses it. That's the big thing keeping me from buying a second one. Also, for larger cats, they can't use it. I've found putting a stool or a step in front of the unit makes them more likely to use it.
Thank you and your kitties so much. I spent hours trying to find info on the models they had on sale for Prime Deals. Your wonderful videos and actual experience by Jimmy, Berta, and the rest helped me immensely. Instead of ordering the Pur Max Amazon had on sale for $409, I decided to get the Litter Robot 4. Best Buy actually had a starter bundle on sale with the LR4, litter mat, extra refills for bags and the filters for $799 and with my BB reward points u got it for $754. Thank you so much for your help. As a teacher I always try to do extensive research before making costly purchases. Hard to know anymore if reviews are honest, fake, or paid for. Knowing I could trust your reviews and the products were cat tested made this so much easier for me. I appreciate you so much. My oldest son has the LR 4 and has raved about it for the last 3 months, but it is a lot of money for me to spend on my cats. I have 4 in total, 3 senior boys and a brand new little girl kitty named Lily. Someone dumped Lily at our school and the vet said she was between 5 and 6 weeks old. I have become very attached to the little cutie. 4 cats is a lot of litter to scoop each day. The kitten is now only 8 weeks and is too small for the LR 4, but it will be amazing to get rid of the 3 litter boxes for my mail cats I scoop daily. We have a litter kicker here, so I will be looking for the extra guard like you designed. I am looking forward to watching your other content and I signed up to join the FB group. Again thank you for helping me. Your content is not only informative but it is humorous and so useful 😁
Thanks for the extensive review. I've determined the way my cats use the litter box, self cleaning boxes are not for me 😢 lol. Looking forward to your catio series.
Great video as always. Your cat's quality assurance work should be the standard. Our new cat is against covered litter boxes at this time so we need to work on that first.
Thank you! Yeah, despite trying so many, it kept coming back to the LR4. I still think they need to fix front leak issue without needing the large fence as the LR3 didn’t have this problem. Still at least that large fence works.
Phillip, Thank you for this video. I have followed you for YEARS on your other channel and didn't realize you had this one until I was watching reviews. Cheers!
Can’t wait to see you cover the new Pet Snowy! Especially because I cannot use clay litter. So would love to use tofu litter but couldn’t do it for LR!
Thank you, I have taken the plunge and got a LR4, you will have to get an affiliate link for the UK, so they can give you some commission for all your fantastic work.
Switched to the pura max from the litter box 3 last year. It’s been great so far. I especially like the smaller form factor. Definitely can be better - but overall good.
So detailed, funny, perfectly edited with music, voice-over and top graphics… unbelievable! This is a pro production, I guess it’s in your line of work 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
Just ran across your channel tonight and loved this video! I plan to do a deep dive into the rest of your channel after some sleep. I'm particularly interested in the video you do where you take a look at the Snowy+ because I was just looking into that one but was stunned at the price-point. You are a very brave man to take on all those automated cat boxes on your own! It really looks like so much work! And after seeing your photos of the catio you built, I can't wait to see those videos! Thanks for sharing your entertaining work here. 😃
Thank you! Yes I totally regret starting this. The time it’s taken is ludicrous, if they all worked perfectly it would have been easy. The Snow+ is a good one but also with issues. My review is late as I am on my third machine now. 😵💫 Enjoy my other videos, not just the reviews as the documentaries are my favourites. 🙂
Ive been trying to find a good review on most of the branded available litter robot machines but yours are so exte sive! Thanks for all the hard work amd dedicatio
I gave up waiting for the LR4 to come to the UK and got the PuraMax. Luckily I have compatible cats so no issues. One cat likes it so much she’ll come in from outside, use it, then go back outside. 🤔
Incredible quality, thank you for such a detailed review! Your cats are adorable btw! Keep these videos coming, you are really talented! Would love to see cat toy reviews or scratch posts reviews, for example☺️☺️
Thank you so much for these informative and entertaining videos! I appreciate your thorough explanations and your cat's varied and comical testing. Looking forward to the future testing and any updates. As a geriatric cat owner of six myself I can say that for the most part I've been down the same road though not as numerous with my list. My choice of settling on the Popurx5 stems as much from a monetary decision any other but I am very happy with it. BUT I must add that I understand after receiving it that there could be severe dangers to kittens...and it's not the only one. It's concerning that there are not more warnings against letting kittens near many of these. For the record all of my cats are fully grown and by fully I mean mostly over 2 years old and over 15 pounds. Please , I know I should run them around the block more but alas I am unable to move about much myself. One thing I will say is the Popur is much heavier than expected and therefore a bit of a stretch for me to clean and it does indeed take a large space to be able to get behind and all around it. But after 2 months of using I am so happy with it. The odor is practically non-existent and it's pretty quiet. I cannot use the app at all but the settings it came with are perfect. I can understand why it would not be the best choice for everyone but I can't wait to see if they decide to upgrade it and fix a few issues. And I can't wait til you review the two new choices and for you to put out your catio video! What an amazing looking refuge for your family. Stay happy!
These videos are amazingly helpful and I found them just as I'd started considering buying one. I just wish I'd been a little more patient because I bought the Pura X just before this video came out. It was the one most readily available to me so I hoped for the best... and then the review started with "And it's probably worse with the Pura X." Ah. I hoped for the best because maybe I wouldn't have such a bad experience with it, and while I wouldn't say I regret buying an automated litter box, I do regret that it was this one. I underestimated just how high up the entrance was, and having also got a munchkin kitten, it was obvious he wasn't getting inside without buying a step for him. While it seemed like we were waiting forever for him to grow big enough to let the Pura X run fully automated, these days he's a BIG boy. The entrance is one thing, but the space inside seems pretty cramped and he's started preferring to pee outside on the mat. It doesn't even surprise me that he's going there, because if we don't keep on top of it, it accumulates so much litter! Our other cat loves to redecorate and she'll spend plenty of time rearranging the litter until it's perfect, much of it ending up outside. It's not 100% her fault though since when the waste is full, the barrel will spin the entire way around which makes the litter fall everywhere instead of shifting back into place. So surely the answer would be to empty the waste before that happens. Haha, no. The Pura X will let us know the waste is full whenever it feels like it, including right after a total deepclean. And don't get me started on that! The barrel is cumbersome, the liner has some staining due to clumps sticking to its non-stick stickiness, and for some reason the machine just gets so full of stray litter! I think we're now just outside of the warranty but even so, the cats and I are very ready to move on to something bigger and better. I hope this horrible wall of text finds the next person here who might be considering the Pura X. While it works, I wouldn't say it works well, and after a year it's beginning to malfunction. Someone we know also bought a Pura X just before us and theirs has just died. They didn't replace it with another Pura X.
I've always scoffed when I saw the prices of the self cleaning litter boxes. But seeing your (very thurough) reviews, I am now thinking of saving up to buy one for my two hellions
Loved this series, super excited to see the catio episodes. I’ve had cats all my life and now have 2 new kittens who we want to be indoor cats so we need a catio
Thanks Matt, can’t wait to get that series going. There’s so much to cover and every episode covers a different aspect rather than the review after review of this series which has been repetitive to make and very challenging creatively! 🙃
Super thorough, helpful and funny, thanks! I think my solution for now is to try and fix my 4+ year old LR3 that keeps getting stuck upside down, and eventually probably buy an LR4. I was interested in the Popur as I was sick of ours not even being a dumb tray when it was stuck but no tray at all forcing toileting happening in all sorts of places! But now I think learning how to replace bits myself is definitely preferable! Thanks again.
Got the pura max 2 weeks ago, can confirm it helps abit with leaking also you gotta admire them actually acting in a timely manner when it comes to improvements. From what i've seen from litter robots i think i might stay with petkit specially when im in the EU and can get most of their products from amazon often with alot of discounts. Thanks for all the testing of the robots, have helped me while looking into a robot before purchase! Also mine did come with the litter remover in the package and i could easily clean the whole drum with 2 wet wipes, seems like my litter barely sticks to any part of the drum. Also i have 2 year part warrenty from amazon which i feel like is fine for the price, could use a extension but i can live with 2 years.
Are you sure about timely? They said to me they had reports about the leaking from the start. Took over a year to bring out a new drum which only half fixes it! :)
@@OneManFiveCats Probably not the right word to use i suppose, but then again you see alot of crowd funded machines stay as is from release. The fact that they also ship with the plastic fence cover for litter removal now aswell is also something , i definitely feel like they are abit more active when it comes to the other companies or at the very least a close competitor to litter robot in my experience. Also got mine for 500 pounds with that 2 year part warranty so that was also a big factor i feel like, whilst also looking abit more slick in a modern home but the community of petkit is mostly chinese. But i do envy that litter robot has alot more control over SoMe's and they answer on reddit posts aswell when issues arise.
Thank you Sooo much for sharing these videos !!!! I can't tell you how much this has meant to me! 🥰 I have just now learned about self cleaning boxes and I have 6 cats; so I am eager to get 1 as I'm so tired of cleaning & changing the 1 huge box I have every other day. Seeing what can happen to a cat with some of these robot boxes and their unsafe features is a nightmare! 😱 I am appalled. Again, thank you for all your hard work with these helpful videos. 💜 you've saved me money and saved my cats from danger. Bless you! 🥰🙏
I think all your hard work (and of course, the dedicated cats!) simply shows me I can't afford these machines. The risk of not being able to fix breakdowns is my dealbreaker. Even with a 2 year warranty, that's £200-400/YEAR on a cat litter box for 3 cats, assuming faults will inevitably arise and I will be stuck with an intriguing smelling plastic ornament at some point. Not good enough. Perhaps with time, there will be more developments and more sense of security when shelling out so much money. By contrast I spent £600 on a washer/dryer about 4 years ago - the control dial is starting to go wonky, but it's a well known brand (coughHoovercough), and I know I can get any number of local engineers at varying costs to come fix it with proprietary replacement parts, at a fraction of the cost of buying a new machine. I'm disappointed, I honestly thought at the beginning of your reviews I would find an option that would suit me, but I am enormously grateful for your honesty (and investment), which has possibly prevented me from making a grave error. You're a star Philip, you really are!
Thank you. I used about 15 pieces of music but yes, Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances” was used in two places, the fast part in the intermission and the slow opening for the end of the video. Music is massively important to me in my videos. 😊
@@catsandcrafts171 Oh, I have 4 cats, one dainty (Kichi) 2.7kg Tabby. Next, Oogie and he is grey and I think part Norwegian or else part Main C, thus 9.2 kg. One of my son in law's Canadian and he calls him "The Beaver." Then Duke 7.4kg who is Oogie's brother, and last (Seven) at 4.4kg Calico short hair Queen. My 2 cats are big and they take over the bed! Cornish Rex sounds very fancy.
My mum’s Flora, who actually is massively overweight and on a super urgent diet, is 9kg and uses the LR3 just fine. The key thing they need is the ability to turn around. If they stick their heads out the front then there’s no problem!
You do have the cats paw prints on the talent release forms? Very informative and entertaining video. I plan to share it with my cats. They are somewhat old fashioned and prefer to GO outside.
I wish I had found your video earlier. I only found it as I was looking for troubleshooting with my Lavviebot. What a load of junk it is. If I had seen your very informative videos first I never would have bought it! Now because of your video I am through trying to get help repairing it (which they were not helpful anyway) and I am taking the damn thing to the tip this afternoon.
I have loved this series! I started while I was searching for a automatic litter box. I have the little Leo’s loo too but I’m contemplating getting the litter robot 4 as well. Thank you for all your hard work and dedication 😄 can’t wait for the Catio Series!