The Litter Robot is a self-cleaning litter "box" from Automated Pet Care Products, Inc. The version reviewed here is actually the "Litter Robot II"- I'm not sure what the improvements were over the original LitterRobot. I bought it from Litter-Robot.com for $299 after reading some positive reviews. I was a little skeptical since my previous automatic cat litter cleaner did not perform as I expected, but the Litter Robot turned out to be a great buy.
The shape of the Litter Robot is actually not very box-like. The cat enters the Litter Robot via a large opening in a hollow sphere which rests on top of a toilet-shaped bottom. Part of the bottom portion of the "robot" is an extended platform that a cat would step on to climb into the sphere. The platform has a sensor where it could tell if a cat has stepped on it and would shut-off or delay any cleaning process. The waste reservoir consists of a drawer on the bottom of the unit, and you can use any standard garbage bag to line the drawer. This is a money-saving feature that other self-cleaning litterboxes don't have.
The Litter Robot will automatically clean itself by rotating and depositing waste to the drawer seven minutes after the cat has left the sphere. The design is a departure from the moving rakes you see in most other automatic cat litter boxes, but it's been five months and I haven't had any problem.
The Litter Robot works and works great, period. It is more expensive than most automatic litter cleaners on the market but since it works so well I find it well worth the price. In the past I spend an average of about an hour a week cleaning the cat litter box for Puffy & Nowby. Nowadays that has been cut down to roughly 5 minutes a week. Once a week I pull out the waste drawer of the Litter Robot, remove the bag containing kitty by-products, and replace the bag. Then I simply add more litter into the top spherical portion of the LitterRobot and I'm done! It doesn't really get much simpler than that. Not only do I save time I also save my lungs from having to breath in the dust that drift up whenever I used to manually clean the litter box. An additional benefit I've noticed is a reduction in the cat litter odor- not surprising since the waste is enclosed in the bottom drawer rather than exposed to the open air.
The only complaint I have with the Litter Robot is that it doesn't deactivate a pending cleaning cycle when the waste drawer is removed. There was one time when I took out the drawer and the waste bag, but got distracted for about half an hour. Wouldn't you know it one of the cats went into the sphere, did her business, and the Litter Robot cleaned itself and dumped the waste onto the drawer-less bottom of the unit. I learned my lesson and always returned the drawer back right away after replacing the bag. This could have been avoided, however, if the Litter Robot had been designed to pause cleaning when the drawer is removed.
Overall, however, I highly recommend the Litter Robot II. It's a smart, time-saving purchase for any cat owner. There were concerns that my cats would be afraid of the Litter Robot, but Puffy and Nowby became acclimated with it so quickly that I was pleasantly surprised. The Litter Robot definitely deserves a perfect 5 out 5 stars!
Design: 5/5
Construction: 5/5
Aesthetics: 4/5
Value: 5/5
Overall: 5/5
