LitterMaid Multi-Cat Self-Cleaning Litter Box

I would have rated this 5 stars, but like many others, the first auto litterbox was defective- the cleaner would not return to the "home" position. However, I repacked the litter box in the original packaging, and went through Amazon for the return and replacement. Everything went smoothly. UPS picked up my defective litterbox the next business day. Two days later, I received the product replacement. The second one works perfectly. I appreciate how many changes have been made to the newest version, making deep cleaning a breeze as you can now thoroughly clean all parts of the litterbox. As stated in the title, I have been a customer of this product for a long time- over 10 years. This is my 4th. This is the first time I have had any hiccups with defective equipment. If this Littermaid Litterbox performs as well as my last three (lasting 3 years each, and I have multiple cats), I will continue to purchase in the future.12/27/22UPDATEI have now had the replacement for about 2 weeks. Everything is still working great. It even held up to the three cats/pooping machines that were forced inside 27/7 because of the major winter storms that just came through. Still no smell from the box. Of course, I am making sure that the receptacle is changed as needed. My cats, dog, husband and I am happy with the odor-free house. REMEMBER: this product works only as good as the caretaker. Use high-quality litter (done!), change or add more litter as needed (done!), and change out the receptacle as necessary (done!) and this product is a miracle worker. Side note: after 7 days with 3 cats, I just now had to add more litter.

I want to preface this review with a little fact about me. I can usually see the good in products or see ways to make a product shine, even if it's not so great. This is not going to be one of those reviews.I bought this box for one reason, because I don't have room for a second Litter Robot. Being that I already had a Litter Robot, and while that product has it's quirks (I've literally had to have the whole unit replaced under warranty already, so don't think I am just biased, it's a love/hate relationship for sure) I got pretty spoiled not having to scoop litter everyday. My genius plan was to buy the Littermaid. Less expensive and seemed like a decent option until I move and have a basement for a second robot.Let's start out with the good. I have nothing except that it works really nice for about 3 cycles completely clean with the perfect amount of litter. From there it's all bad.The bad.A bit of background, I have 6 cats, but really only 3 of them use the Littermaid, the others prefer the Litter Robot. So in reality only 3 cats, with one other one who likes to poop in it every once in awhile, are using this thing. I feel like that is an average amount of cats a person would have if they bought this.1. The rake doesn't go all the way to the bottom of the pan. It doesn't even get really near the bottom of the pan. All pee clumps inevitably sink to the bottom of the pan, so the rake really just skims the top part of the pee clumps leaving pee clumps stuck to the bottom. I tried several litter types thinking it was just bad litter. Didn't make a world of difference. The best litter I found to use with it was Arm & Hammer Clump and Seal Slide. It still wouldn't pick up the bottom part of the pee clumps but just makes it easier on me when I have to manually scoop out the pee clumps.2. The pee clump part that the rake does pick up... yah it totally gets stuck to the rake. You are constantly having to clean off the rake of pee clumps otherwise more pee clumps just get stuck to the existing pee clumps. Before you know it, you have a large mass of pee stuck on the rake.3. Dear god if your cat has bowel issues, this thing just makes it 10 times worse! I have a cat with IBD. Unfortunately he is one of the cats that prefers this box. He is on meds, but sometimes he will have a bad IBD day and have a blow out in the box. The crappy rake can not handle that sort of issue. Unless your cats poop is perfect solid rolls, the rake will just rake right on through it making a huge mess.4. It goes through a ton of litter because the rake will often break up parts of the pee clumps and scatters little pee nuggets everywhere. I literally have to fully replace the litter every week.5. The plastic litter bins are a complete joke. With 3 cats using the box regularly I was initially having to replace the bin every day. I wised up and started using a bag so I didn't have to pitch a plastic bin every day, but this thing is so wasteful on resources. Compared to the Litter Robot where I only replace the bag every couple of days and my old way of daily scooping where I had a trash bag in a nearby trash can that I scooped into, this thing just blows through plastic bags. I did even "hack" the plastic bin by cutting out the bottom and putting a bag in that way, but it still is a bag every day, it now just doesn't spill everywhere after it runs for half a day.6. Speaking of hacking the plastic bin, the bins are flimsy. Insanely flimsy. Like how did they think this was a good idea flimsy. My husband is currently trying to 3D print a frame that will fit and hold a bag. You would think this company would have had that genius idea to reduce plastic waste, but then again, this thing is so poorly engineered, I guess I do see why they haven't.7. The litter kicks up into the grooves where the rake moves through. You can hear it through the whole house when it runs. It grinds and struggles and groans. I've literally ran to check it because it sounds like it's breaking while it's running. I've had this thing for just a few months and it literally ran nicely one whole day before it started sounding horrible. I have no doubt that this $120 box will probably fail before a year. Hopefully it makes it to July when we move.So there you have... I have to manually scoop this automatic litter box every single day to clear out pee clumps from the bottom of the pan. Honestly I should have given up on it within the first 30 days and returned it, now unfortunately it is too late. It didn't even come in a Littermaid box, just a brown cardboard box which I threw out. This thing may work great if you have one small cat. As a matter of fact, if you have three cats, just don't, you will hate yourself and still be manually scooping. If you have two cats you will for sure be throwing out bins/bags every day and scraping the bottom. One cat and you will probably be OK, but probably still scooping out the bottom of the pan pee clumps.

I had purchased a Natures Miracle box and ran that for several years. The mechanism stopped working correctly and under the tiniest bit of load (litter) the motor would just bog down and crack away trying to move. It was supposed to reverse and try again but that fail safe seemed to have stopped working.Before this failure occurred, I thought it was a good unit.Sure, I had to make sure to put a little bit less than the "maximum" litter or the motor would bog and reverse (the original function, until it broke and did the action above).I also got accustomed to taping the waste boxes after unloading them to dispose of them because they boxes didn't really lock together well.I also had to tilt my face to the side when pulling the box out of the cavity because little bits of litter might fly.It was a bit noisy but really not so bad, I barely noticed it.The filters usually didn't stick on the lid but it didn't matter much because the box was closed anyhow.If the power went out (i didn't use the battery feature) I would have to press the digital button to restart the machine when power came back on.Seriously though, with all this little stuff going on, I was completly satisfied with the unit.Once it broke down, I did some research and decided to give this one a try instead.My first comment is, despite what some information says, this particular model has a new type of disposal box which works differently than the older style. I realize that older models had an identical box system. So if you have a stash of old boxes, this may turn you off. However... Addressing point by point in order of my comments above...I seem to be safe to add more litter to this machine. This is nice because the rakes only reach so far and don't really do much if the waste is on the bottom of the tray.The new style waste boxes have built in lock tabs on them, which while I may want to add some tape anyhow, it was a nice touch. It looks like they are engineered correctly to provide some pulling force to keep the lid in place.The new box system is loaded from under the ramp, it doesn't really snap in the same way from above to have to worry about the litter flying about when ripping it from its place.The motor is not even close to as noisy as the first one, which is saying something.The filter system has an appropriately sized area to adhere to the box and a much larger tape to hold it in place.Instead of digitally controlled buttons, a nice simple analog switch allows the machine to regain use without user intervention if you don't have a battery. However, with this also comes the removal of the timer programming to disable at night. If that is important to you, you won't like it. But... Again, the motor is pretty quiet.Will this new box satisfy me? Only time will tell. I imagine it will break eventually like everything else. I do admit that there was a lot of thought put into the minor inconveniences of these boxes and I appreciate it.