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Litter-Robot 4 Review: The Best Self-Cleaning Litter Box On The Market
In the world of self-cleaning litter boxes, there's arguably no model on the market more coveted than the Litter-Robot 4, manufactured by Whisker. Although the category boasts plenty of trustworthy brands, the Litter-Robot has consistently been touted as the crème de la crème—and for good reason. From innovative Wi-Fi capabilities to real-time monitoring, cleaning up after your cats has never been easier or more efficient (or, dare we say, enjoyable).
Whisker's Litter-Robot 4 is an excellent choice for anyone looking for a self-cleaning litter box.
WhiskerLitter-Robot first entered the market back in the year 2000, but the most recent model—and the brand's most technologically advanced to date—reigns supreme. In fact, our team spent five months testing all sorts of different self-cleaning litter boxes and proved as much. Ahead, I'm sharing my review of the Litter-Robot 4, which my two cats have been using for over a year. From overall design specs to ease of use, here's my perspective—alongside some feedback from my cats.
Litter-Robot - Self-Cleaning Litter Box
Footprint: 22 x 27 x 29.5 inchesWeight: 24 poundsMinimum cat weight: 3 poundsAvailable colors: Black or white, with eight bezel color options
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When the Litter-Robot 4 arrived in the mail, my first impression was, "This is massive." The device and all corresponding accessories arrived in one extra-large box, and I realized right away that it was going to be a challenge to find a big-enough space to keep it out of the way in my small city apartment. That said, I loved that it came already assembled and ready to use with one simple plug of a cord. Setting up the machine was also extremely easy; it took me less than 10 minutes, thanks to an easy-to-ready instruction manual. All I had to do was plug one end of the cord into the wall and the other into the device, then press the "Start" button. After quickly running through a few more minor setup tasks, it was running seamlessly.
The Litter-Robot 4 also comes with an app to use so you can monitor things like waste drawer capacity and general cat usage data, but keep in mind you don't have to use the app in order to use Litter-Robot (I often forget I even have it).
A Sleek, High-Tech Design That's Ideal For Multi-Cat HouseholdsThe Litter-Robot 4 is a particularly excellent option for homes with more than one feline friend. In fact, this device can actually accommodate up to four cats. The Wi-Fi-enabled machine has a large waste drawer that reduces the frequency with which users need to empty it, and it has capabilities for real-time monitoring of waste drawer fullness and litter levels, too—meaning it will quite literally let you know (via both the app and an indicator light) when you need to add more litter or empty the waste drawer.
Other standout features include a patented sifting process to efficiently separate waste from clean litter and keep dust to a minimum, an advanced odor trap system to limit waste odors and real-time monitoring technology. The latter not only tracks litter levels, but even monitors your cat's weight to determine which cat is using the litter box at any given time. Finally, a back-up battery system ensures that the device can still operate even if the power goes out.
From an aesthetic perspective, the Litter-Robot 4 is also, in my opinion, the best-looking litter box on the market (which is a good thing, considering its large size). The device comes in both a black and a white color choice, with eight different options for bezel colors, including everything from lilac to marble.
Easy And Straightforward For Both Cats And OwnersFrom an owner's perspective, the Litter-Robot 4 is incredibly easy to operate. A panel of buttons next to an on/off button indicate what stage the Robot is operating in at any given moment; users see a different color depending on each cycle. A blue light, for instance, means the machine is ready to use, a red light pops up to indicate a cat is nearby (and therefore pauses any motion for safety) and a yellow light appears if the 'bot enters the cleaning cycle and the drum is rotating. The interior of the machine is lined with gray rubber and a marked litter line, so you know exactly how much litter to use.
The sifting grate is another helpful feature. After your cat is finished doing their business and hops out of the machine, the drum slowly (and very quietly) rotates to efficiently remove the litter clumps without discarding any of the clean litter. The litter clumps then fall into the odor-controlled waste drawer before the machine spins back to its original configuration, ready to be used again. Even with two cats, I rarely have to empty the waste drawer more than once a week, and other than that weekly empty, there's little to no maintenance required on my part. The exception: a full cleaning of the machine every several months, which involves unplugging it and fully taking it apart to clean each piece thoroughly. I wipe the exterior clean with a wet rag every couple of weeks to remove some of the built-up dust particles.
Helpful 90-Day Return PolicyTo my dismay, only one of my cats enjoyed the Litter-Robot 4 at first. My male cat, Bear, loved the machine from the get-go, and his curiosity continues to keep him obsessed with it. In fact, I find him hanging out in the drum all the time, even when he's not actually using it. Bear just genuinely seems to love the Litter-Robot and "bonded" with it immediately.
Meanwhile, Bear's sister, Beulah, had the exact opposite reaction. She was absolutely terrified of the device, and despite my attempts to help her out, she refused to go anywhere near it (as a result of her fear, she even peed on my bed several times). On the Whisker website, the brand provides helpful advice for how to acclimate your cat to use the Litter-Robot; I decided to take their suggestion and unplug the machine for a couple of weeks entirely. This worked: Beulah was no longer scared off by the noise and movement of the drum, and we haven't had any accidents since.
But it's worth nothing that not all cats will love their self-cleaning litter box as much as you do. For that reason, Whisker offers a 90-day return window to get your money back in case the experiment with transitioning to a smart machine goes awry.
So, what's my overall verdict? I highly recommend the Litter-Robot 4. It's been a game-changer in my household, and despite its large size and hefty price tag, I've had a great experience adding this self-cleaning litter box to my arsenal of kitten products. Now, if someone would only develop an automatic cat brusher, I'd have it all.
Is It Worth Getting A Litter-Robot 4 Over A Litter-Robot 3?Based on the results of our team's tests, yes: It's worth the $150 price difference between the two models to splurge on the Litter-Robot 4 vs. The Litter-Robot 3. The Litter-Robot 4 offers better odor control, a bigger waste drawer and upgraded design elements. It's also technically smaller, but it's worth noting that this is still a very large device. Finally, the Litter-Robot 4 is a better choice for multi-cat households.
My ExpertiseI'm the features director at Forbes Vetted, and I've been covering a wide array of topics in the lifestyle space for close to two decades. I've owned the Litter-Robot 4 for a year now, and my two cats use it daily; I've also been testing products for more than seven years, and I've been some form of a cat mom for three decades. For this story, I leaned on my extensive product-testing background coupled with my personal experience as a cat owner (but let's be fair, the cats really own me more than I own them).
Trash Gobbling Robots Cleaning Lake Tahoe And Beyond!
Speaker 1: From the beach to the water itself. Machines are helping remove plastic, pollutants and invasive species. We got up close and personal with these trashy robots to learn about how they work and how they fight pollution beyond just cleaning. Let's get into it. We begin with Bebot, the fully electric, solar powered beach cleaning robot made by the cereal cleaners. We covered Bebot a few years ago and finally got to meet it in person at EcoClean Solutions in Lake Tahoe. Speaker 2: I found [00:00:30] out about the Bebot through a video the CNET actually did about three years ago. Speaker 1: Bebot works like a sand sifter propelled by tracked treads. As bebot moves along the sand, sifter dips down into the sand, a few inches scooping up sand as it goes. The sand is brought over the sifter, which shakes back and forth, releasing the sand and holding onto any bits of debris stored inside it. The debris then gets emptied out and examined. Speaker 3: Human power comes back into the fold and we actually sort [00:01:00] and remove trash, inorganic debris, and anything organic or natural to the environment gets redistributed into the sand. Speaker 1: Bebot is operated by a remote control that looks something like a video game controller. Speaker 2: I joke with my fiance that I've been training my whole life for this by playing video games. Speaker 1: Pixie Drone is another electric trash eating machine made by the cereal cleaners that's found work at Lake Tahoe. This version is remote controlled like Bebot, though the company [00:01:30] makes an autonomous version as well like a Roomba for the water that can be operated at night while boats are docked. Speaker 3: What it kind of looks like is essentially like a baline whale in which it has an open mouth. It skims the surface, and then it has a mesh collection reservoir, and so as it moves through the water, what it's doing is it's bringing material into the mouth of the pixie drone, and then it hits that mesh and the water flows out through the backside, but then any material that's caught up in the pixie drone is then collected. Speaker 1: [00:02:00] The pixie drone was initially designed to filter trash or with the addition of a hydrocarbon filter, it could be added to remove contaminants like oil from the surface. However, the folks at EcoClean Solutions found another use for Speaker 3: It, the warming of the climate. It creates this really good stew to grow aquatic invasive weeds, and it's been the single biggest issue in the Lake Tahoe basin for the overall health of the lake. Speaker 2: It just takes a little fragment the size of my thumbnail, and that can start a whole new patch. Speaker 1: Just like with [00:02:30] the debris gathered by Bebot, everything gathered by pixie drone is sorted by humans to ensure that the materials collected are handled properly. The serial cleaners also make a stationary collection device called the Collector. It attaches to docks or floating structures can be plugged into the Standard Shore power system. Most docks use for electricity and gather surface waste 24 7. Speaker 3: The benefit of the collector and even the pixie drone is you can actually install hydrocarbon sponges in it, so only is it capturing [00:03:00] inorganic debris and material, but it can also capture hydrocarbons, things like surfacing oil and gasoline to really purify the waters. Speaker 1: It pumps through 32,000 liters of water every hour can store over 200 pounds of waste at a time. An EcoClean solution says they're bringing one to Lake Tahoe. Speaker 3: It doesn't create enough suction where if you're a duck, you're going to get sucked in or anything like that. Speaker 1: Since the collector is not mobile, the way that Bebot and pixie drone are, the waste needs to come to it. This [00:03:30] can be accomplished by placing collector in areas where waste tends to accumulate naturally, or by utilizing the fourth final and perhaps most unique offering In the serial cleaners lineup Beat Invis Bubble, this curtain of bubbles is made by pipes filled with small holes and connected to an air compressor. Blowing air through the pipes unleashes millions of bubbles creating two types of movement, a gentle upward movement from the rising bubbles, as well as the movement at the surface outward where the bubbles break through. These forces together are what allow Invis [00:04:00] bubble to block debris from target areas while guiding it into collection points where something like a collector or a pixie drone can finish the job and remove it from the environment. Collector costs about $25,000, including delivery and installation. The remote controlled pixie drone is under 40,000 while the autonomous version is closer to 60,000. The cost of Envizi bubble varies more depending on the specific project, how many lines of bubble curtain are being installed and things like that, but it can be anywhere between 50,000 and $150,000. [00:04:30] The target customers for these machines are things like nonprofits, hotels, and marinas that have an interest in keeping the waterways clean, Speaker 4: And that's why I'm telling to the marina industry, to the hospitality industry. Don't always wait for the government to take strong actions against the problem because you can do it to yourself Speaker 1: Together. Tools like Bebot, pixie Drone Collector and Envizi Bubble can help remove trash, pollutants and invasive species after they've [00:05:00] arrived. The larger goal is to prevent trash from showing up in these beautiful places in the first place, and the serial cleaners technology may be able to help with that too. Operating these machines in public can start conversations with visitors about environmental pollution and the struggle against it. Gathering trash also means gathering data about what type of trash is most commonly showing up in a given area. By tracing that trash back to its source, it can be used to inform advocates and policymakers about where to focus [00:05:30] their efforts to be most effective Speaker 3: By approaching them from a data perspective and say, this isn't in your landfill, it's not in the recycling, it's in your beach, so what are you going to do about it? That they take those real courageous approaches to do things like plastic water, bottle bans, policy implementation, and things along those lines. Speaker 1: That information could also be used to pressure the companies producing the trash to change their practices or start paying to up the mess that they're profiting from creating. Speaker 3: In a perfect [00:06:00] world, we put ourselves out of business. Speaker 1: Such a world still looks to be a long way off. According to a 2023 report on plastic makers from Minderoo Foundation, more single use plastic is being produced than ever before. Speaker 4: It's so important to give this message that the technology is not going to fix the problem. Only humanity by changing consumption habits can fix that problem. Speaker 1: As always, thanks so much for watching with the fan. I'm your host, Jesse Yal. See you next time. Speaker 5: I.
How Found Energy Went From 'self-cannibalizing Robots' To Cleaning Up Heavy Industry
Found Energy doesn't have the typical startup origin story: It began with a space robot that was supposed to eat itself. Now, the company is developing that same technology with an eye toward powering aluminum smelters and long-haul shipping.
Nearly a decade ago, Peter Godart, Found Energy's co-founder and CEO, was a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He and some colleagues were brainstorming how to power a probe that might visit Jupiter's moon, Europa. The team was debating the energy density of batteries that might be suitable when a stray thought landed in Godart's head. The aluminum used to make the spacecraft held more than 10 times the energy of any cutting-edge battery. Why not use the spacecraft's parts to power itself?
"They gave me a bunch of money to start a program that I lovingly called the 'self-cannibalizing robot lab,'" Godart told TechCrunch. "We looked at giving robots the ability to consume their vestigial aluminum components for fuel."
But as he continued his research, Godart had another thought. "I had a moment where I realized my time would be better spent solving Earth problems," he said. His timing couldn't have been better. Congress cut some of the funding for the Europa missions, and JPL let Godart take the intellectual property to MIT where he continued to work on the problem during his doctorate.
To Godart, aluminum had several obvious upsides: It's the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust, it can store twice as much energy per unit volume as diesel without being volatile and it's possible to recover as heat 70% of the original electrical energy used to smelt it. "I was like, oh my god, we got to do something with this," he said.
To release the energy embodied in refined aluminum, Godart had to figure out how to get past the metal's defenses, so to speak. "If you throw a chunk of aluminum in water and try to oxidize it using water, it would take thousands of years," he said.
Godart's process is much, much faster. Once water is dropped on aluminum coated in Found Energy's catalyst, the metal's surface quickly starts bubbling as the reaction releases heat and hydrogen gas. Within seconds, the aluminum starts expanding as the hydrogen bubbles force it to exfoliate. That allows water to penetrate further into the metal, repeating the process over and over again until all that's left is a gray powder. "We actually call it fractal exfoliation," Godart said.
[youtube https://www.Youtube.Com/watch?V=Fy69Qt7Heow?Version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=640&h=360]
Found Energy harvests the resulting steam and hydrogen, each of which can be used for a range of industrial processes. "One of the hardest elements of heavy industry to decarbonize is the heat," Godart said. "And now here we have this really flexible way of providing heat across a very wide range of temperatures, all the way down from 80 to 100 degrees Celsius all the way up to 1,000 degrees Celsius." In total, about 8.6 megawatt-hours of energy can be recovered per metric ton of aluminum.
What's left isn't waste, either. The catalyst can be recovered, and the powder is aluminum trihydrate, which can be smelted once more to create metallic aluminum. Any contaminants, including food waste, plastic soda can liners and mixed alloys, remain larger than the aluminum trihydrate powder and can be easily filtered out.
"All of that stuff works in our process, because our catalyst just eats aluminum and basically leaves everything else untouched," Godart said.
Found Energy recently raised an oversubscribed $12 million seed round, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Investors in the round include the Autodesk Foundation, GiTV, Glenfield Partners, Good Growth Capital, J-Impact, Kompas VC, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and Munich Re Ventures.
When using scrap aluminum, which is Found Energy's initial plan, the process is carbon negative. The startup is targeting industrial heat in its go-to-market strategy, but Godart also sees applications in marine shipping and long-haul trucking. Aluminum is slightly heavier than diesel or bunker fuel, but its energy density could be game-changing for those industries.
One could imagine future ships
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