Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

UPDATE 1/15/23: So I've had this thing for eight months, and my enthusiasm for the PetKit Pura X has steadily waned. This device is so finicky and irritating that I would NOT buy it again. When it works, it's a reasonably good automated litterbox but there are a LOT of things that prevent it from working properly which should be addressed in future designs: 1) The box is just 'way too shallow for one of our cats and she is a very small cat. But she tends to jump into the box and pee without turning around because, honestly, there's not a lot of space in there. Roughly 30 percent of the time, she's peeing on the ledge of the opening to the box, or even outside the box, which causes all kinds of mess inside. The box needs to be a bit deeper to prevent that. 2) Once you've been using the box for awhile, it becomes difficult to see exactly how much litter you've added; the LED indicator will say "100%" even if you have twice as much litter as you should. This means that a lot of litter will be dumped into the waste receptacle below, filling it up. 3) Once it's been used for awhile, even if you clean it thoroughly, the device will start dumping litter outside the box, which makes a mess. 4) The "purifying" liquid receptacle is located on the bottom of the box, underneath the litter drum. This means that when it runs out, you must disassemble the unit to add more liquid. This time around, I did all that, added a bottle of liquid, and I'm still getting "insufficient purifying liquid" error messages. (It's also not the most pleasant of smells, but that's a minor point.) 5) I've tried just about everything but I'm still getting "waste collection bin full" errors. I've reseated the bags (which don't really fit the bin very well), I've taken off and replaced the little orange rim that holds the bags in, I've replaced the bags, I've cleaned off the sensors, I've powered down the machine hoping it will reset, and I'm STILL getting the waste bin full errors, even when there isn't a speck of litter in the bin. It's extremely annoying, and makes it difficult to know what's actually going on. One GOOD update: You can now select which notifications you want, and there is one for "Waste collection bin," so I've been able to turn it off. It wasn't accurate anyway (when it's working, it notifies you about a day after the bin is actually full, which makes a mess), so now I just make sure that I'm checking the bin manually once or twice each week. 6) If for any reason I take the lid off the unit, it will always give me a "paused/in use" error message, and the box will not function. The only way to reset it is to pull the plug, take the lid off again, unlock the unit, pull up the entire litter cylinder and replace it firmly, then close everything up, relock, and wait about five minutes to repower it. Sometimes not even that works. 7) The interior of the unit (surrounding the litter cylinder) tends to become very dusty and caked with litter clumps, so at least once a month I need to do a major cleaning. This involves pulling the whole unit apart and disassembling it, dumping the litter, then carefully cleaning all parts, reassembling and starting up. It usually takes two or three tries to persuade it that there isn't a cat in the box. All told, that's about a 90-minute job, so I'm not sure how much time I'm really saving. Honestly, I knew there was going to be SOME maintenance involved, but this is simply too much. I'm looking around for something better. ORIGINAL REVIEW: We have two cats--one would probably use the litter box if it hadn't been cleaned for six months; the other will find somewhere else to do her business if there's so much as a crumb in the box. We tried several solutions: A litterbox in every room, self-contained "Modkat" boxes that better contained things, scooping 2x/3x per day, an automated "raking" litterbox that also raked the cat...nope. Six hundred bucks for a litter box seems really stupid...until you shell out $8K to refinish pee-ruined hardwood floors. A week after the new floors were in, she started up again...and we bought the PetKit (it had the best reviews). It literally changed our lives: We no longer had to chase the cat around, waiting to scoop her up at the first squat, our litter cleaning went down to weekly, and we started contemplating reducing the number of litter boxes to...this one. Almost exactly a month later, it started acting up, which is why it gets 3 stars instead of the 5 it otherwise deserves. Good things LOTS of them. --It's very quiet and as unobtrusive as a 30-inch white cube can be (I wish it came in black or bronze). --The app controlling the box isn't that hard to install and use once you've attached it to your wifi network. It allows you to run the litterbox from your phone, so you can keep an eye on things while you're away. --It monitors WHO is in the litterbox, so that you have a record of when stuff happens for the vet (very useful as your cats get older). It goes by the weight of the cat, so this might not help much if your cats are the same weight. --The "odor control" spray is not obnoxious and does a good job of hiding smells, even if it's not my favorite scent (it smells like odor control litter). --It works with standard clumping litter (I THINK, more on that later). --It notifies you when the clump receptacle needs changing. --We worried that the cats wouldn't use it, but they had absolutely no problem...while it was working. --As a side benefit, our dogs are terrified of the thing, which keeps them from reaching in to munch a few "tootsie rolls" (and even if they did, they're in a sealed compartment below) Mildly bad things --The app notification needs to be fixed--it has a tendency to text you EVERYTHING that is going on. A lot. It's not unusual for me to have six or seven notifications waiting. There is a setting to turn off notifications, but then it seems to turn off all tracking. I've finally shut down audible notifications on my phone, and just put up with the rest. PetKit, I would love to have a notification setting that simply alerted me when the machine needed servicing, and didn't tell me every hour that something was being cleaned, sprayed, pooped on, etc. --It uses PetKit's special trash receptacle bags, so you'll be buying those from the company. --You can purchase PetKit litter, apparently, and given today's problems, that might not be a bad (if costly) option. The worst You know the old rhyme "when she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid?" That would be the PetKit experience. While it's working, it's wonderful. When it stops working, it's a little piece of hell. Two days ago I'd changed the receptacle bag, carefully pushing it into the corners as per instructions, and topped off the litter since it was down to 68%. When I tested it, it worked just fine, but apparently shortly after that it just...quit. I'd receive the usual "pet is toileting" messages, so I assumed it was working. Then I noticed that it was saying that with no cat in the box. I dove further into the app, and saw a notice that the receptacle bin was full and the litter was at 41%, while the box itself kept insisting that a cat was inside. I looked inside the unit and saw a very very dirty litterbox instead of pristine litter, caked on the walls and the grill that separated clumps from clean. The waste receptacle was about a quarter full of cat urine, no clumps. I spent the next 90 minutes hauling the box outside, breaking it down to its separate components, and scrubbing thoroughly. It was a nasty, messy job, much worse than simply cleaning a standard cat box, in part because pulling the receptacle out had spilled used litter all over the floor. I cleaned off the rollers, checked operation, put the machine back together, filled it with fresh litter, and verified that it was working. It appears to be just fine, but now I don't trust it, and will be checking/testing it at least daily. Strangely, though, I would buy this unit again. While it's not exactly a vacation from litter box cleaning as promised, when it's working it completely fulfills my main requirement: Keep the litterbox clean. If PetKit can figure out the "reliable" part, it'll be the perfect cat companion.