This review is probably going to help a dog owner that's looking to save money, but it also should help cat owners that worried about all the negative reviews about bowl size. That group may actually decide to get this instead of eliminating it from their choice. And let's face it, there are not really any similar feeders on the market at any price point. It's almost as if the company understands this exclusivity and is taking advantage of dog owners by exploiting this relative shortage of other options. If I was a dog owner and read this review after spending double the amount for the dog bowl I would be very unhappy. The cost difference between a shallow vs standard silver insert bowl is nearly non-existent so does not justify the huge gap in pricing. However, I am not going to believe there is any nefarious reasoning in their marketing strategy, so don't read this as accusatory please.
I love this feeder, but not as it is shipped. It earned 5 stars because I had on hand what I needed to get it into proper working order. The star I removed for ambiguity in pricing was won back by the function of the product. So while one should be warned that this plastic feeder does not look like the image - which makes it look like deep gloss metal - you will love it. If you don't have such deep expectations on appearance alone, this really is a great unit! Don't get me wrong. It looks fantastic for what it is. Plastic can look like garbage or great high quality. This is for sure on the upper end.
I was very concerned that these bowls were not going to hold enough after reading some comments. It would defeat the purpose I had for this feeder if the bowls were not "standard". I did not want to go through the return process so I read the questions and answer section and noticed the Neater Feeder Company Representative had responded to a question about capacity with the suggestion to buy the "small dog" variation. At the time I bought this, the small dog in red was double the price! That's when I dug into the specs and saw that it appeared that the base housing on the variations were exactly the same. However, the food capacity of the dog unit was much larger. Hmm. How can that be? Then I realized it must be a different sized silver insert. As I mentioned, I did not want to have to return it but was much more comfortable that this could be hacked so i took the chance and ordered it.
Turns out my suspicions were accurate.. Therefore, if you are like many pet owners you probably already have extra, deeper silver bowls on hand and thus can use those with this frame. If not, you can find these inserts at Walmart or Dollar stores on the cheap. If you are getting a dog one, buy the cat bowl instead. The silver bowls they ship with the cat version are very shallow variations that I have never seen before. I simply put those in a drawer and used the silver inserts from the elevated bowls I was replacing with this unit. The size of all of these bowls are universal, and the space underneath this feeder is deep enough to accommodate the deeper bowls.
A caveat - when I ordered the red one, it was $20 and the dog one was $40 with the only difference being the size of the cheap silver insert. In that case then doing this hack is a no-brainer. But when I came online to write this review I saw a tan version of the dog bowl that was cheaper than this red cat bowl. In that case it makes sense to buy the tan bowl if you can live with that color. The point is that this hack can work either way so check out all the colors and price iterations of this feeder because you could end up saving as much as 100%.
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