Customer Reviews

CatGenie-Self Washing, Self Flushing Cat Box

5 star:		(107)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(27)
2 star:		(27)
1 star:		(71)

 

 

I have two cats, one 5yo and one 2yo, both female. I got the Cat Genie for them, after dealing with several other auto-scooping litter boxes that broke after maybe 6 months each.

In terms of cleanliness and maintenance, this is a great product. If you can put it in your laundry room, you'll be much happier than if you put it into a bathroom that sees any kind of frequent use. If you DO put it into a bathroom, make sure you flush the toilet at least once a day (but NOT while the cat genie is in a cleaning cycle!)

Some words of warning:
1) the little plastic pellets that act as "litter" get all over the floor. You'll have to sweep them up occasionally and dump them back into the bowl for cleaning. This isn't from the cats kicking them up, it's from the normal cleaning cycle ... there's a mechanism to shake the rake free of pellets, which causes some to scatter.

2) Be prepared for a long adjustment period with your cats. The 2yo took to it pretty well, but the older cat had a hard time. She used a laundry basket, a bathroom rug, and my bed before she finally came to grips with it and started using the genie. (Laundry hint: white vinegar in the washer gets out the smell of cat urine!)

Now that the cats have adjusted and I've gotten used to the new sounds and smells of cleaning (the cleaning solution has a potent but not terrible smell), I'm happy with this product.

Cat Genie takes the small unpleasantness of daily cleaning the litter and it saves it up and releases that unpleasantness as one big unscheduled, unpleasant inconvenience every week or two. Advanced monitors will ensure that the device failure will occur during the workday, as you prepare for your important meeting with your prospective client. Nothing like cleaning out wet cat poo in your nicest suit. Or, you may be pleasantly awoken in the middle of the night by the repeating three beeps of "there's poo and hair in the hopper." You will become more familiar with your cat's feces every day as the cat genie gently fills your home with the aroma of baking excrement. Plus, you get to pay over $300 for technology that was "designed" and built for less than $2. The "processor" unit was designed in 1967 and allows all the functionality of the most advanced microchip devices of its era. It has both on and off modes. (Note: off mode available only while unplugged.)

Actually, the real reason for the high cost of the device is to cover the costs of all the customer support that they must provide and to cover the costs of all of the returned units. The question is not IF, but WHEN you will find yourself hunched over your cat's feces floating in a pool of fetid water, picking small plastic pellets out of the opaque, pungent water with your fingers so that you can get the device put back together.

And your cats will thank you by depositing their love bundles beside the machine that's half filled with water and beeping away forlornly if you happen to be away when it fails.

We have three cats, they had no trouble adjusting to the machine over about a week. The small plastic pellets getting everywhere in the house is not really any big deal. Roomba takes care of most of them well. We've now had the machine for three months. We received a replacement base last week for a leaky drain hose. We've called their customer service line enough times that we now know the "secret" diagnostic techniques of their experts. We don't know if we're going to keep it or return it. If we keep it, we're definitely going to install an exhaust fan in the laundry room, and set it to a timer to go when the unit is on. For some reason there are little bits of poo that fall between the tines of the hopper, and they get slow baked every time the unit dries itself. The stench is really outstanding. It's hard to describe. I'm a doctor, and I've rarely ever smelled anything so bad.

My recommendation is to wait for the next generation cat sanitation solution. That device will need to be a complete redesign to solve the myriad of problems with this unfortunate device. To say something positive, the customer support line is manned by kind, well-meaning kids who really do feel badly that you're having a hard time with your mechanical poo soup maker.

If you do buy this device, get some thick rubber gloves and a couple of towels that you won't use for anything else.

This is a great product when it works. I have two cats and I am now going on my fourth unit from PetNovations. Here is the list of problems I have had with the unit(S) since receiving my first unit in Januaray of 2007:

First Unit: The first unit that arrived and the very first time it ran, it was not working properly. The unit was lifting out wet granules and clogging up the impeller. Let me tell you that if it clogs, you then have to handle liquefied poo water which is not very pleasant to say the least.
Result: Called tech support and they were very friendly. They sent one overnight fedex. They even said they'd send an extra box of granules for my trouble. So I went two nights without it and reverted to the normal clump litter box. I felt by the end of the call that they provided excellent customer service. (They did not send the extra box of granules though. But at the time I didn't mind, I still thought it was a great product.)

Second Unit: The second unit worked great for about 2-3 months. However I had a more difficult time adjusting my two cats to the second unit since they went back to scoopable litter. One day the arm that lifts the scooper stopped working. This time around I did not have to deal with liquefied poo water (I'm trying to look at the upside of having to return the unit again).
Result: Called tech support again and again were friendly (not so friendly as the first time I have to say) and offered to send another unit. At this time I asked if sending in the unit is a common thing. They replied that it was not common at all. On to my third unit.

Third Unit: The third unit has just ceased to function as of yesterday. (That would mean that it has worked for about 5-6 months since the second unit went ka-poop). I have had the toughest time reintroducing the cats AGAIN to the unit. One of the cats is ok with going in the unit, but the second cat has not liked the switching of the litter boxes every few months and has decided to go else where in the house. Yesterday the unit stopped dispensing water. This leaves the impeller grinding up solid poo without liquefying it. It is the middle of the night and I do not have extra kitty litter on hand. I had to find a place that was open that sold kitty litter so that my cats can have a bathroom.
Result: Called tech support yet AGAIN and left a message for them to call me back. To tell you the truth I am not sure I am willing to have them send me another unit.

Final review of the unit:
Positive Aspects
1. It reduces the smell of a litter box.
2. You do not have to empty the waste by hand.
3. The customer service is great (so far).
4. When it works, it's great.

Negative Aspects:
1. The granules get EVERYWHERE. Even if the cat doesn't track the granules out of the box, the box blows granules out on its own.
2. This is not good for cats that have soft stool. Many times the stool will get everywhere and will not fall off the scooper on its own.
3. It is very loud when it runs and it wakes me up when I sleep in the next room.
4. When the scooper misses a piece of stool and when the heater dries the granules (along with the remaining stool) it reeks so bad that the cats refuse to use the unit.
5. When the wash liquid runs out it constantly beeps. This is not so much a problem when we are home. However when we are not home and it keeps beeping, it frightens the cats from using the unit.
6. The unit is so large and requires plumbing near by that it doesn't fit well in confined spaces such as a small bathroom or laundry room.
7. Dispite the advertising, the graunles and washings do not last as long as advertised. Therefore the graunles and the washings get pretty expensive.
8. Maybe it's just me but I am going on my fourth unit and it has only been 8 months since I received my first unit.

26 Jan 2008
After receiving my latest unit, it seems to be working. They shipped me the later model which has taken care of some of the problems I was having. It seems that this new unit has lowered the volume of the beeping so that it does not startle the cats as much. Like before the customer service was great. Will provide update in a few months.

17 Oct 2009
It stopped working months ago. Decided not to go with a fifth unit. I threw it out. I was told by the cat genie rep that the unit is recyclable. The fact that she knew this scared me.

I have now owned 2 versions of a self washing cat box: a Litter Free, and now a Cat Genie. The Litter Free, while not perfect, made me appreciate how nice it is not to tend a litter box. However, that unit had plenty of flaws, and a newly formed company engineered a better unit that fixed a lot of the issues the Litter Free.

I purchased the unit in September of 2006. I am on my 10th month. Up until recently, I was not the happiest person with the unit... I had a lot of clogging issues. Had I given up on the unit a few months ago, my review would have been very mixed, with the unit failing to process its daily duties a few times a month. However, I knew the company was working on some improvements to the most common issues, and my patience was rewarded (more on this later).

If you read the other reviews, you probably have an idea how the unit works. Up to 4 times a day the unit will clean the box. First, the stool is removed by a scoop. The stool is dumped into a processing unit. The litter box is filled with water, which also fills the stool processing bin with water. There is an impeller which spins the stool around the processor, that dissolves the waste, and then the waste water is pumped out through your sewer connection. The unit is filled with water and flushed several times. During the last flushing, a sanitizing solution is dispensed into the water. Once that water is removed, the litter is dried, and the process is done. This takes about 30 minutes.

There were two big problems that affected some early purchasers of the box. Due to a packing issue with the original unit, some buyers got warped bowls that would not spin properly. This wasn't a hard fix. You either got a new bowl with their excellent customer service, or they walked you through a process to unwarp the bowl. The packing issue was resolved, and this is no longer a problem. The biggest issue was clogging of the water exhaust line from undissolved stool. Not only did it stop the show, but the unit would not drain (leaving it filled with water), but cleaning up this mess is not fun. This is the part of my Cat Genie experience which was not fun. I have a single cat that uses the litter box once a day. Her stool is small and hard. It was clogging a lot. I found a dietary solution before the mechanical solution came out. I bought her food high in fiber, which softened the stool, and the unit processed without any failures for 2 months. That seemed to do it. Then the makers of Cat Genie came out with a new impeller. It prevented the hardened small stool from making it into the water drain line before it had been properly reduced. From all the comments I am reading from owners on forums where litter boxes are discussed, this fixed just about all those problems. People that had nightmares before replaced the impeller (again, all under warranty) to have the unit operating correctly without issue.

The Cat Genie folks said that the actual number of people with the clogging issues was a small percentage, but they are very vocal group.

The biggest problem I now have with the box is the plastic granules that get tracked through my house. The company is going to have some mats that catch these granules as the cat gets out to help mitigate this, but at the time of this review, they were not available. I think the price of the supplies is reasonable, and cheaper than buying normal litter on a regular basis.

You should read other reviews for information on cat acclimation to this box. My cat was raised on plastic litter granules. That is all she knows, and has not problem using this box. So for that reason, I can't really tell you much about in this area.

One thing I want to note for people on the fence: You get a 90 day money back guarantee if you don't like it. The customer service for this unit is TOP NOTCH. They will do just about anything to make you happy. The unit has a 2 year warranty, which is better than just about any major appliance you could buy. Assuming your cat adjusts to the box, this will make a noticeable improvement to the quality of your life.

I have owned this litter box, I'd say about 3 months now. I have to tell you, this is such a cool concept! However, I would be happier had I just set my money on FIRE. I'd sure be a lot less stressed at least.

The first few days, it worked fine. I was so excited. My cats suprisingly used it, and I had no problems at all. I thought I was in heaven. But such is life, all good things must come to an end. It started erroring.. EVERYTIME I used it. Sometimes... for no reason. It would all finished drying the granules and everything would be dandy and BEEP BEEP BEEP.. so then I'd hit the button, and it would start all over again!! To be honest, I think this is a built in scam just so it uses more of that solution and you have to buy more... which btw, I'm pretty certain that solution is nothing more than a gimmick so they can get more of your money. The 300+ bucks just wasn't enough.

But anyways. Back to the errors. It would error every time I used it. EVERY time. And it would always be a different error. I'd fix it (which btw, it drains like CRAP)... and then go on about my day. Well one day, I forgot it was running and went over to my neighbors. I was there about... 2 hours ish. When I walked outside her door, to my annoyance, I could of course, hear my "so awesome" cat genie... beeping in error. And to my even WORSE annoyance, apparently the long term beeping kept 2 of my 3 cats, from ever wanted to go near it again. So 1 of them kept trying to go outside to use the bathroom... and she's not an outdoor cat... and the other one just took it upon herself to pop a squat wherever she felt comfortable.

Now fast forward about 4 days ago. My cat genie just STOPPED draining. Altogether. Stopped. I walked in and saw that it was about to overflow.. (the one time it doesn't give me an error beep!!) so I frantically turned it off and tried to fix it. It didn't work. I tried again... and tried for about an hour when finally, I accepted defeat and took it apart... and dumped the water. Most of it got on my floor.. which I was ecstatic about since that's what I was trying to prevent in the first place... went to my computer... and e-mailed the company. That was about 4 days ago... and I've not heard back from them since.

So I assume they're realizing what a huge peice of crap they're selling and hopefully they either fix said peice of crap, or stop selling it altogether..... because I'm not happy that I spent so much money, on such a huge worthless peice of junk.

Like I said, it's a cool concept...... but it just plain doesn't work. And for the people on here that it DID work for... Congrats. But 300+ bucks is too much of a gamble for something that just "might not work".

Stick to the regular old litter box for now. That's where I'm back to..

The Cat Genie is a nightmare. What they don't tell you:

-the machine beeps for a lot of reasons, not just to tell you to buy more washing fluid. It beeps if it thinks your water pressure is low (even if its not), if it has a clog, if it thinks you are low on fluid when you are not, for a whole bunch of reasons that you have to figure out- by taking the machine apart while its full of old cat excretions

-the timer can not be set for specific times. you have to set it when you want it to go, then calculate how many cycles within 24 hours you want it to run. So if you happen to want it to run at 8 in the morning, and 6 at night, you can't. If the machine has an issue, it will beep- even in the middle of the night, then you have to go attend to it or it wont stop beeping. Then you have to reset it's timer, again waiting for the time you want it to run, to set it, or else it will now run the cycles from the time it started beeping in the middle of the night

-the washing fluid has a chip that is read by the CatGenie. Once it has counted the cycles, I think it's 60, it wont run any more. Even if there is solution still in the container. Even if the chip is wrong. Even if you had to run the machine to get it back to the start time- there is no other way to set the timer, you have to run the machine. The chip in the solution cartridge is often not working correctly, then they tell you to shove cardboard into the slot to force the chip to make contact, or use an eraser on the chip...

-breakdown of good cat habits: when it breaks down, which, if you have a long haired cat is going to be often, it doesn't always beep. My cat started peeing and pooping in different places in the house, on the rugs, because the CG basin had a half inch of water that I couldn't see on what looked like clean granules. So i didn't know it had stopped and my cat is confused where to go to the bathroom.

-baked poop: when it breaks down, which again, is going to be often if you have a long haired cat- and if you do you should quickly get yourself a furminator or just forget the CG, it wont work at all- you have to as I said above, take the whole machine apart, since it's broken you are dealing with either pee and poop diluted pools of water, or sometimes baked poop, because if the arm breaks (which it does often, there is a design flaw in the arm axle where a small metal piece breaks off, can't be repaired, the gear spins freely and the arm doesn't lift, you have to wait for them to send you a replacement arm axle, until then you will be straining the poop pretty much like you do with a regular cat box) then the poop just stays in the granules spinning round and round and being broken up a bit when the hot air starts blowing the aroma of the old poop into the room

-fetid standing water: if the processor breaks down, again you are waiting for replacement parts, and you have no way to drain the machine, so it begins to smell much like I imagine the Houston Astrodome did after Katrina

-even if the processor or the arm is not broken, the regular maintenance requires you to take the unit apart to clean off the water sensor, remove built up hair, check for loose granules- this is NORMAL and its revolting. YOU HAVE TO GET UP TO YOUR ELBOWS IN DISGUSTING OLD CAT POOP WATER

-granules breakdown: if even one granule gets into the space between the processor and the bowl, which WILL happen no matter what kind of cat you have, because the cycle pushes the granules into that area, the machine will stop. The granules are intended to crush up to wash out of the bowl, but they crush up and get into all the places they should not. Not only that, but once you have put it back together it starts the cycle again from the beginning, and another count on the cartridge chip.

-there is actually a way to get the different functions to work separately, like to make it drain or just blow the granules dry, but the company hides the information. Its called "Diagnostic Mode". Hold down the two buttons while reseating the processor until a second set of beeps begins. Then each time you press auto set up, a different mode will be available when you press start/pause.

-Damage to your floor. Absolutely if you have a CG get a big thick rubber mat to go under it and check for water leaks constantly. The water leaked out the back of my processor after it was replaced with the silt of the granules and sat under the machine as it vibrated on the limestone tiles in my bathroom. The edges of the machine, the hose, everything that is the outline of the underside of the machine is now permanently engraved, with the sick color of the granules, into my floor. Deeply, because I didn't notice it and didn't realize what it was until it was too late. Damage to your home is NOT covered by the CG warranty. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

When it works, it's great. But you can't count on it working, to maintain it is a a LOT more trouble than a plain old cat box. I don't like to clean cat boxes, that's why I bought a CG, but I have had to clean so much more cat pee and poop, more carefully, older more fetid diluted cat pee and poop, and at all sorts of odd hours- like when I am on my way out to dinner dressed nicely and the machine starts to beep, the cat needs to pee, and I can't risk what will happen if I leave the house without fixing it. Or if I go away for a couple days and have someone watch the cat, I can't rely on the machine to work, can't expect anyone to go through this craziness to fix it. Or coming home to a beeping CG with old poop and pee in it and my cat looking at me with a pained expression. I can't go to sleep with the timer on, because if ti runs a cycle and has a problem it will wake me up with it's beeping. The whole point was to have the cat box clean itself while me and the cat were peacefully sleeping, right? It makes a TON of NOISE when it runs.

I used to have a Litterfree, it was WONDERFUL and I never had a problem with it. You could set the timer for real times, it NEVER beeped, never needed any kind of maintenance, when I ran out of solution it would run with water until i could get more solution, and I know of people who used different solutions that suited them.

Currently I have had to buy several replacement rugs after my poor cat soiled them looking for a place to go when the CG failed him and me, I have to pay my building to replace the floor in the bathroom (I rent), my cat has forgotten where to go to the bathroom, I am keeping all rugs out until he finds his way back to the cat box, I can only run the CG by hand, when I know I will be around for an hour or so to tend to it if it breaks, and when I figure the cat will not be needing it.

I found a barely used Litterfree on eBay, and I am going to have to segue the cat from the CG nightmare to an old fashioned plain cat box and then back to the Litterfree.

This doesn't even address the many people who say they can not get their cats to use the CG.

Bottom line: This machine exists to make the manufacturer money with planned obsolescence and outrageous built in devices to force you to pay and pay and pay- which would not be so bad if the blasted thing worked! It will damage your house and wreck your cat's good bathroom habits, force you to do disgusting clean up. If you buy it, keep the packing materials so you can send it back under the 90 day trial period. Use the diagnostic mode I outlined above to drain it, or if that function stopped working already, make sure to tip out the dirty water from the front, because the back will pour out two sides at once. Save yourself a lot of trouble, don't buy this.

There is NO substitute for the standard scoop method.
I received the CatGenie on a Friday, assembeled it on Sunday evening. A customer service rep said to give them a call and they will walk me through the initial wash cycle. Sounded GREAT, so I called them on Monday evening after one of my cats peed sometime earlier in the day. With the rep on the phone, I pressed the start cycle and the arm came down but the bowl did not spin. Luckily the rep said it might have gone off alignment during shipping and asked me to help the bowl to spin. I did, and it worked like a charm. To watch it was fascinating. (Note: As I had one rep on the phone, a second rep called, having received my voicemail for the initial cleaning.) -Very impressive indeed!

HOWEVER, the second evening I got home from work and pressed the start cycle button (because I could see my cat had peed again. Just pee.) The system started and about 10 minutes into the clean cycle, I noticed the water was getting a bit higher than the prior night, and sure enough, the error button started to blink and the machine made a beeping sound! (I called costomer support and left a message -stupid system. Keep leaving messages and apparently they pick and choose who to call back. Everybody wanted to call the easy first wash customer, but when there was a problem, (because they ask you to leave your name number and a brief message), nobody wants to deal with it! It is going on 24 hours and NOT A PEEP from their customer serivce!!! I have left two messages, and finally went to the handbook to figure out and clear the clog on my own! -My guess is these things are breaking down left and right and customer service is tired of it! Luckily I had the litter box on standby, because it saved me and my babies last night!

And the granules do go everywhere. After having taken the thing apart to try and figure out why it was not draining, following the instructions in their manual, I saw straw granules EVERYWHERE in that system. And it was just one night!

Of course I didn't pin point the problem so the granules are left in a cat pee swimming pool all night and day today. Tonight I will have the very unpleasant task of somehow draining the pee water system and throwing away the granules and putting that big piece of junk back in the box! -good thing I used my digital camera in unpacking it, so I can put it back together!

The way this machine throws granules, especially in raising and lowering the rake for the emptying the poop cycle, wet ones (saturated with cat urine), bits get flicked onto the surrounding areas.

Can't wait to hear from customer service! Big waste of my time and money with no support! Thank God it's only been two days and I learned my leson, but more importantly, can get a refund! Because when it acts up and you have to go back to the old litter box and then back to when the CatGenie feels like working, cats must get confused.

There are a handful of automatic litterboxes on the market now, and they all collect the stool and seal it (more or less) into a container so you can conveniently dump it out once a week. If you've dealt with any of those though, you'll know that they work so-so, and that you won't get rid of the smell of the box and/or the trash can. All you can do is get used to it, and hope that your friends will, too.

This machine is very different. The stool goes out into the sewage system, like it should, and the litter itself (and the rake, and the bowl!) is thoroughly washed when the cycle runs. These two feats make all the difference. It is as if you scrubbed clean your litterbox and replaced the contents every day! Actually, it's even better than that, because the plastic pellets used have no scent themselves, so your cat will never come up to you smelling of damp clay litter.

The execution of this machine is above average. It's modular and it easily comes apart for cleaning. Unfortunately, mine came with a warped bowl which would stop spinning every now and then when I first ran it. However, all I did to resolve that was to manually help it spin during its first cycle. I read in a forum that the heat of the built-in blowdryer during the cleaning cycle would help unwarp the bowl, and it did. It is true that the "shake the rake" mechanism spills a few pellets onto the ground, but I find this minimal - and again, they are just plastic pellets, not clay which discolor your socks/carpet, etc.

The machine uses sanitizer cartridges which supposedly last for 60 washes. I'm a bit on the fence on this - it's clearly a money- making scheme, it even has a tamper-proofing chip in it for the "protection of your cats". The price is just so that you will let it go, although that won't help the landfills. N.B. I haven't found any instructions of how to refill those things on the internet either. Minus 1 star for this!

Speaking about consumables, I was surprised to find an extra sanitizer cartridge and pellet container (to top off those that stick to the waste and go down the drain) in the box - apparently CatGenie is running a promotion and Amazon mimicked this despite the lower price and free shipping. I don't think they'll honor the extended rebate though.

My 2 cats took to it easily. All I did to acclimate them was to move their clay litterbox to the new location the day before the genie arrived, then swapped them without further ado. And one of the cats is a 8-year old wuss, the kind that doesn't like change and can't be located one hour after the doorbell rings.

I'm quite happy with my purchase at this point; this ingenious solution does away with the century- old cat litter problem, and I think it's competitively priced as well.

One thing I should mention though: I don't trust the timer. The thought of an overflowing and incessantly beeping (because that's what it does when it malfunctions) cat toilet keeps me running this device on manual.

My wife and I are tired of cleaning up after our 4 cats. Though the Catgenies are terribly expensive to purchase and to keep stocked with Sanisolution and granules, it would be worth it for more free time and a cleaner basement. Unfortunately, they just don't work.

Becuase we have 4 cats we bought 2 Catgenies. Even with 2 of them it was more than the machines can handle. Even when we ran them right after the cats made their deposit the impeller was never able to grind up the turds properly. They clogged everytime and beeped incessantly.

Another problem is the scoop. Even though it scoops 3 times for every cycle, it always left turds behind. Those turds would then go through the whole cyle, which includes drying. That means that, even if they're scooped up the next time it cycles, they're going to be so dry and hard they'll never be ground up properly. Again, this results in clogs.

We had them for a little over 2 weeks. In that time we had to run extra cyles, backflush and even take them apart and clean them.

This product results in far more work, not less.

My wife and I have owned the Cat Genie for about 4 weeks now and love it. When I first read about it, I thought it was a joke and couldn't stop laughing at the cat toilet that someone had 'invented', but the thing really works well. We have 2 cats (sisters, 9 months old) and they seem to do very well with it. One of the cats started using it immediately and preferred it over the old litter box. The other took about a week to train (suggested time frame from the company). In the training process there were a couple of accidents, but they were all in our laundry room. Ironically, one of the accidents was on the instruction manual for the Cat Genie! After this initial phase-in of 1-1.5 weeks, we haven't had any problems. We set the device to clean itself 2 times per day when our cats are inactive (4am and 4pm) and that works well. We have it hooked up to our laundry drain pipe for waste disposal and that works well (no clogs so far, although I have heard that others have problems if the waste isn't removed often enough, i.e. less than once per day)

We both love the device and think that it is worth the price that is being charged and the fact that we don't have to scoop and dispose of normal cat litter. We had been thinking about getting one of the other 'automatic' litter boxes, but you still have to empty these devices on a weekly basis and I've heard that they don't work well.

As with any consumer product there are faults, but I feel the gains much out way the faults.

Pros:
-The first fully automatic litter box!
-only $ 330 (not much for what it does)
-relatively reliable (could take vacation without too much worry for litter box, although I would want someone to check-in once or twice)
-The box is always clean for the cats (they seem to prefer this now that they are used to it)
-The plastic litter pellets are clean and are easy to sweep up

Cons:
-somewhat loud (not as loud as a washing machine though)
-litter pieces tend to scatter out (we are buying a special hood that just came out)
-smell of cleaning solution is strong (it is a pleasant smell, but it smells like cleaning solution in a large part of the house for an hour after a cleaning cycle)
-$330. Thats a lot of money for anything, but especially on a litter box
-somewhat large (the bowl is larger than a standard toilet bowl, but is about the same size as our previous litter box, so it makes sense I guess)


Also, some people complain about the cost of the consumables (litter pellets, and cleaning solution), but I think I agree with the company in that the consumables cost about the same price as the normal litter, if not a bit cheaper.

Improvements I would like to see for V2.0:
-more flexible cleaning times (for 2 times per day it cleans 12 hrs apart, 3 cycles is 8 hrs apart, and so on). I would like it to clean at 4am and at 1pm but this isn't possible now.
-It would be nice if it came with a hood, but that is an add-on now
-deeper litter depth (right now it can only allow for 3-4cm of litter depth and its seems like our cats would like to bury their waste a little deeper
-quieter cleaning cycles (but a more flexible cleaning time cycle would make this point moot if we were gone for the day or asleep)
-smaller total size, although the litter bowl size is about perfect

So, if you have the initial $330 for a litter box and want it to be automatic, then this thin is awesome and I highly recommend it. However, if your mission is to save money, then it doesn't make sense as a purchase.

Hope this was helpful!