I have tried twice and have been disappointed both times.
But that was 10 years ago.
The folks on TikTok seem to be in love with their newest ones.
So now I’m thinking maybe I should give it another try?
I dunno. The whole cat beheading thing kinda puts me off.
My wife bought one a month or two ago. She seems to like its performance so far. When it’s in its cleaning mode, it creaks and groans like it’s always on the verge of failure. In the early days, several times we’d be watching TV and say to each other “what the heck is that noise? Oh, it’s just the litterbox”.
It works by rotating the litter pan in cleaning mode to dump and filter it, so there’s a motor and gears involved that, coupled with the dust that kitty litter generates, I fully expect will fail at some point and probably not too far in the future, judging by how it sounds now. At least once it froze mid-rotation and my wife had to reset it or something.
Neither of our two cats have been beheaded yet, at least.
I haven’t tried one since I bought one of those open top rectangular boxes with the comb that slides from one end to the other, which was at best OK. I mean, it worked, but it wasn’t exactly easier than using a scoop. You’d have a bag full of poop and pee that you’d have to wrangle out of the machine, fit a new bag in place, deal with anything that didn’t get successfully raked. Best thing is that it cleaned itself for the next use, in case you had a finicky cat.
What I can say with 100% certainty is that TikTok’rs aren’t in love with anything they aren’t paid to be in love with.
Yes I think I had that same litter box. Hated it.
My wife uses one for our cats. It seems just OK. Hard to clean; more work than just scooping, IMO. Expensive and prone to failure.
One cat doesn’t seem to want to use it at all, but the smaller ones do.
I have finally settled on what I believe is the Rolls Royce of litter boxes. Not automatic, but otherwise great.*
Read about it in the reviews and become convinced.
That litter box and the Litter Genie (same principle as the Diaper Genie) have made life bearable now that my two cats are 100% inside.
I have made peace with the necessity of scooping cat poop & pee until the day I friggin’ die.
My 2 cents.
* Not as great as those few years at the house (before I moved to The Home) when my (then) three cats (Still miss you, Max… 
) ALL went outside to relieve themselves and I didn’t even have a litter box in the house. Good times. Sigh.
I have settled on the VW Bug of litter boxes. Dirt cheap, lasts forever.
I guess there are a lot of dangerous ones, but also a few acceptable ones that mostly do the job but still leave poop stains once in a while. This guy has like five thousand cats and reviews a bunch of machines, both the safer ones and the Meowy Antoinette kind.
(Playlist of several videos)
I’ve used two self-cleaning litter boxes. Neither is designed in a way that it can decapitate a cat.
The first had a disposable tray with blue crystals and a box at the end. It scooped the poop and the crystals neutralized the odor of the urine. When enough of the crystals turned white, it was time to throw away the cardboard tray and insert a new one.
https://www.chewy.com/petsafe-scoopfree-complete-plus-self/dp/55637
It worked superbly. It was expensive. Oddly, i kept track and it didn’t result in a lot more volume of waste than clumping litter. My prior cats loved it, and appreciated that their box was always clean.
My current cats believe that litter is supposed to clump and wouldn’t use it, so i gave it to a friend.
I’m now using one that takes clumping litter and rakes it into an open-topped plastic box at the end. (That box is covered by the machine, until you slide it out.) In theory, you can put a plastic bag in the box to line it. In practice, i just remove the plastic box and dump it directly into the trash can in the garage once a day. (Then reinsert the box.) It’s noisy and fussy and sometimes jams. Probably it’s best feature is that the box has limited capacity and forces me to clean the litter boxes (3 boxes, four cats) daily. I remove the box and manually scoop litter from the other two litter boxes into that conveniently-sized plastic box and carry it to the garage trash. No more smelly litter collecting in the room with the litter boxes. It’s working for me, but i don’t really recommend it.
Litter Robot and Petkit have both been great form me.
My wife has purchased both the current and previous versions of the Litter Robot and both work great. The previous version was pretty quiet and the version 4 is nearly silent. They have sensors that shut them down if a cat enters during cleaning cycle. Though the only location that could injure a furry overlord would be the the opening into the disposal tray and I don’t think any cat would be interested in putting an appendage in there.
Wirecutter (NY Times) just reviewed them. They liked the Litter Robot best.
I picked up one of these last year after seeing one in the living room of a client’s small suite and not smelling a thing.
I assume it is a rip off of the Litter Robot. Works great, low odor, I really do not see any safety risk with it, there is no guillotine. We have two cats and a couple standard litter boxes as well as this one. It deposits the goodies in a compostable litter bag in a compartment on the side, we just change the bag and use it to collect the litter from the other trays every day.
It does need to be cleaned every now and then, as wetter productions can stick to the catch screen. It is a little more work than cleaning a litter tray but not much. The cats use it about the same as they use the two other trays.
It much less daily fuss than the trays.
I want to point out that two of the units in that article have designs that create a pinching hazard.
The rotating drum design for dumping litter works well, but the entry opening NEEDS to be on the axis of rotation so it is never closed. I am sure they have safeties, but still have a dangerous failure mode. The cat can always safely escape Litter Robot design harmlessly. The other two are guillotines.
I’ve been using Litter Robots for a while now–had the LR2, currently have a LR3.
They’re definitely a time savings overall. But they can get finicky, and I find I have to disassemble them and clean them out on occasion because the sensors have gone wonky.
They can’t decapitate a cat, and have at least 4 levels of sensors to prevent a trapped cat. Aside from the fact that a cat isn’t likely to stay inside when they’re moving.
My current one has gotten more finicky over time, and I think it’s nearing time to get a new one. I wish they had more competition since they aren’t perfect, but I’ll probably just get the LR4 since it still seems to be the best out there.
I know, right? Even if it was a freak accident that can never be repeated, that’s the first thing I thought of. I’ll never ever ever get one.
It wasn’t a freak accident. It was a shitty design that had literally no safety features at all. It was inevitable that it would happen.
This is not possible on high-quality designs like Litter Robot.
Or on either of the two i posted about (which weren’t reviewed by wire cutter.) Both of the automatic litter boxes I’ve used are just an open tray, with a rake that passes through the litter a little while after a cat uses it. The rake is low enough that a cat can easily step over it, and moves very slowly. As the rake approaches the poop-box, the lid of the box opens, but neither opens far enough to trap a cat, and both just close with their own weight, which is small enough that a cat’s foot would easily prevent it from closing, without damage to the cat.
They aren’t odorless. (Although they are low-odor.) They aren’t covered. Cats might scratch litter out of them. But they are safe, and the one with the weird blue crystals worked incredibly well, when i had cats who liked it. I just swapped out the used tray about once a week, and dumped the old one in my trash can.
This is the one that I bought after my LR3 bit the dust. The LR worked OK but never perfectly which I would have expected given its cost. I really like the crystals and the system overall. Looks like it’s going to about $25/month and I’m OK with that since I never have to scoop or mess with litter bags.