I review cat products like self-cleaning litter boxes and cat litter for a living, but it took me a minute to set up the Litter-Robot 4 in my own home due to space issues. It's big, and my Brooklyn pad is small. It's also a pricey piece of equipment. But the appeal of not having to scoop is real!
The Litter-Robot detects when a cat has done their business and whisks the yuck away. Colleagues, friends and Good Housekeeping Institute home testers have all given it great reviews — so I had to take one for a spin. I've used the Litter-Robot 4 for a couple of months now and I have a lot to say about the $700 device.
Pros
- No scooping
- Wi-Fi enabled
- Tightly traps smell and dust
- Quiet
Cons
- Expensive
- Tall
How does the Litter-Robot 4 work?
If you’ve never used an automatic cat litter box, this might give you a visual: Your cat jumps in to do its business and a sensor registers that the cat has been in there. Nothing happens immediately, giving the cat a chance to scratch and leave, and the litter some time to clump. Then the machine rakes or sifts the litter to separate the clumps from the clean clay litter.
The Litter-Robot 4 works a little differently than others in that the entire dome rotates to do the cleaning. After the cat has used it — the default setting is seven minutes later, but you can set it to clean after only a few minutes or to wait 15 minutes — the dome slowly rotates. The clean litter passes through a large sieve and the clumps are directed to a chute which sends them to an odor-trapping bin below the dome. The dome rotates back again, closing the waste chute. Clean litter is filtered back into the litter box.
The whole cleaning process is quiet. Sometimes I catch the sound of the litter sifting, which reminds me of the sound of a rainstick. It's kind of soothing.
What are the benefits of a self-cleaning litter box?
What motivated me was travel. My husband and I have been going away on weekends and coming home to a very full litter box. I wanted our two cats to have a clean bathroom, whether we were home or not.
Other Litter-Robot users buy one because they hate the hands-on chore of scooping. The self-cleaning device only requires you to dump a bin, and an app alerts you when the bin is full. You can line the Litter-Robot 4 waste bin with liner bags that make the dumping even easier, or you can recycle grocery bags for that purpose.
Cat owners who don't want any visitors to glimpse a dirty box, or smell it, are also into the Litter-Robot. It does a fine job of hiding all the pee and poop under the dome. Again, you only see your cat's business when you dump the bin. In my house, that's about once every week.
Transitioning to a Litter-Robot 4
Transitioning myself, the owner
My hangup was and is the size. The Litter-Robot 4 is tall — at nearly 30 inches, it won’t fit under a sink, for instance. We live in a small home in Brooklyn, and our regular litter box sits outside our one and only bathroom, in a corner cabinet, hidden from view. The Litter Robot has no shot at fitting in that cabinet.
The Litter Robot has a 22" x 27" footprint, and it needs to be plugged into an outlet to work. So to get the ball rolling I sat it in my son's bedroom since he's away at college. (Thanks, Joe!) Per instructions, I left the old litter box alone so there was no sudden change for my cats.
Transitioning my two cats
Cats are naturally curious, right? I figured one of my cats would hop on into the new, fancy box. Wrong! They ignored it.
My two tuxedo cats, Azula, a feisty 3-year-old, and Helen, a 9-year-old scaredy cat, are largely cooperative. They've posed in cat carriers for me and eat pretty much whatever I put in their dish. But they were 100% not interested in trying the Litter-Robot.
My husband and I had a trip planned and I got desperate. I moved their regular litter box outdoors to the patio to "force" them to use the Litter-Robot 4 while we went away for a weekend. That move is not at all recommended by the company. In their article on switching your cat to the Litter-Robot, Whisker recommends:
- Keeping the Litter-Robot 4 unplugged at first (I was impatient)
- Setting it next to the old box (I did not have the space)
- Leaving the old box out but letting it get pretty full, motivating the cat or cats to try the new one
Anyway, my cats staged a boycott. I returned home and saw the empty Litter-Robot and began to panic. First, I let the cats go out on the patio to use the old box. Then I moved the Litter-Robot in front of the cabinet that had been housing the old litter box, to properly communicate what the Litter-Robot was for.
I also started an email exchange with Whisker customer service. As I was typing, "They won't use it," the little one, Azula, got in and peed, probably to make me look like a liar. The good news was that Azula was using the Litter-Robot. She did catch it moving, and properly freaked out, but she got over it.
Helen, meanwhile, would "hold it" until I opened the patio door and let her run to the old box. Finally, I moved the old box back to its former position in the cabinet, and I heaved the Litter-Robot 4 across from it, between the doorways to the kids' bedrooms.
For a month, Helen used only the old box and Azula used both boxes, depending on her whims. But now I've caught Helen using the Litter-Robot 4 as well. It's taken about six weeks of it sitting across from the old box for her to get curious enough to go in there.
I don't love that our hallway is fairly dominated by the Litter-Robot 4. I wish we had a bigger home for it. Here are two other issues that I've had to make peace with:
- Azula required some modifications. She pees with her rear end almost out the door, so I have to use the included fence piece on the front of the Litter-Robot 4 to keep her pee inside. Users can also upgrade to a larger fence if necessary. Reddit was super useful for addressing that Litter-Robot hurdle. There are about 33,000 people in r/litterrobot which feels very validating when you're working on Litter-Robot tweaks.
- Litter-Robot 4 can't tell my cats apart. A big plus of the technology is that you get reports on the app when your cats use the Litter-Robot. I was looking forward to monitoring their weight and having a record of which cat uses the box and when. But I've discovered that if two cats are within a pound of each other, the Litter-Robot can't distinguish between them. Azula is about 12.5 pounds and Helen is closer to 12 pounds and the app marks every visit as Azula.
Pros and cons
A few of my favorite things:
- The Litter-Robot 4 is Wi-Fi enabled. In addition to showing me when a cat has used the litter box, the app shows the level of waste in the bin and the level of litter in the box. It tracks "scoops saved" to make me feel good.
- The controls are on the top of the dome. The former version had the controls placed on the front so that you had to bend down to see them. Now the control buttons are easier to use. You can set a nightlight, run a cleaning cycle and more.
- Not having to scoop is even better than I expected. I'm still scooping the old box, but the Litter-Robot 4 has cut down my scoop load considerably. It saves time and frankly makes cat ownership a lot nicer.
- It's probably best that I now have two boxes. Veterinarians and the ASPCA recommend you have one litter box per cat in your household, plus one extra. So we were not great cat owners to be operating with that one original litter box for the two cats. Now we're a two-box household, no matter how small our place is.
However, if you want to save money, the Litter-Robot 3 Connect is still available, and it's more than $100 cheaper than the Litter-Robot 4. In addition to those front controls, it has a more narrow opening and only works with cats and kittens who weigh 5 pounds or more. The Litter-Robot 4 has other improvements, including a larger waste drawer and a quieter cleaning cycle than the 3, so there are reasons to pay the extra money if you have multiple cats.
One setup tip: Give yourself an hour to properly set up the Litter-Robot. I rushed through it and added litter right away — only to realize I needed to turn the machine around and tip it to scan a QR code for the app. Whoops! I also had to pair the app twice before it finally connected, but the good news is that it has never gone offline for me since.
What’s the best litter to use (and how long does it last)?
It's simple: Litter-Robot uses any premium clay clumping litter like Tidy Cats, Scoop Away and Arm & Hammer. Crystal litter or paper litter won't work because the pee will just sit on the bottom of the drum rather than forming clumps that can be sorted out.
I thought I would be more obsessed with finding the right clumping litter but honestly, picking a litter has not been a big deal. The traditional box is my problem because odors are a problem with that one. Odor is so well hidden with the Litter-Robot 4 that I am less concerned about the brand and version of the litter.
I've been thrilled with the litter efficiency of the Litter-Robot 4. I have to top off the litter much less often than I do with the regular box. I think I try to scoop the regular box so quickly, to get it over with, that I throw out a lot of clean litter with the dirty.
The Litter-Robot 4 is cleared for up to four cats, but the more cats you have, the more often you will be emptying the waste receptacle. For four cats you might want to try having two Litter-Robots and both can be simultaneously connected to the Whiskers app.
The bottom line
Is the Litter Robot 4 worth it? Yes, but only if it's in your budget. The $700 price tag is steep, even if it does save you some litter and a lot of time. "You won’t be disappointed with it," said GH Contributing Product Analyst Lynn Redmile, who has been using a Litter-Robot for years with her kitties at home. "The design of the dome with its rubber liner makes its automatic emptying process almost infallible."
The U.S.-based company's 20 years of research and development continually improve the Litter-Robot product offerings and its app features. "It's an impressive piece of engineering and it really works," Redmile says. Amazon sells a $900 Litter-Robot 4 Complete Bundle that includes all the accessories you might want, like drawer liners and a mat.
That said, even with all the research, it's not worth it to go over your budget or overspend on something that isn't a required essential for your everyday life. Invest in this feline accessory for added ease, but don't forget that at the end of the day, two gloved hands, a scooper and a trash can work just fine too.
Why trust Good Housekeeping?
For decades, the Good Housekeeping Institute has been providing expert reviews and advice on appliances, cleaning products and pet products. We have tested Litter-Robot products in our Good Housekeeping Institute Cleaning Lab for setup, easy clean-up and clump removal. In our Lab, we simulated a cat using the litter box with water and a small weight to trigger the sensor and observed the cleaning process.
Contributing Writer Jessica Hartshorn uses her decades of experience as a cat owner and an editor to help evaluate pet products that families use in their homes. In addition to testing the Litter-Robot 4 firsthand, she also interviewed Lynn Redmile, who has been a testing and product review analyst at the Good Housekeeping Institute since 2012; she has tested the Litter-Robot 3, Litter-Robot 3 Connect and the Litter-Robot 4 in her home with her three cats.
Jessica (she/her) is a freelance writer with several decades of experience writing lifestyle content and evaluating home and parenting products. A mom of two teens and two cats, her previous work can be seen in American Baby and Parents.
