The Litter-Robot 5 Pro is Whisker’s most ambitious automated litter box yet. At $899, it promises to do far more than just scoop waste. It uses a dual camera system, an onboard scale, and a suite of sensors to identify which cat is using the box, track their weight, and even tell the difference between urine and feces. After spending six months with the device and two cats, I can say the basics are outstanding. The AI, however, is not.

A great pooper-scooper

At its core, the Litter-Robot 5 Pro does exactly what a litter robot should do. The cat enters the large globe, does its business, and leaves. A sensor detects the visit, and after a short wait, the drum rotates to sift the clumped waste into a sealed drawer below. The process is quiet, relatively compact, and almost entirely hands-free. Instead of scooping twice a day, I empty the waste drawer about once a week.

The 5 Pro is the largest model Whisker sells, standing almost 30 inches tall. It takes up roughly the same amount of space as a small side table. It’s bigger than the Litter-Robot 4 and the newer Evo, but that extra size comes with a more spacious globe. The larger opening and bigger interior make it suitable for households with multiple cats or larger felines, with a capacity of up to five cats and 30 pounds each.

The build quality is solid. The globe is easy to access, the waste drawer slides out cleanly, and an LCD screen on the front provides clear status updates. This is a notable improvement over the older Litter-Robot 4, which relied on a series of sometimes confusing LED indicator lights. The 5 Pro also includes a night light, which my cats seem to appreciate, and it’s quiet enough to sit in a bedroom without disturbing anyone.

The Evo’s tradeoffs

Whisker also sent the Litter-Robot Evo, a $599 model with a smaller footprint. The Evo is shorter and narrower than the 5 Pro, making it a better fit for tight spaces. It also has an LCD screen, and it works well as a basic automated litter box. But there are tradeoffs. It lacks litter-level monitoring, so the app won’t alert you when the litter is low. It supports fewer and smaller cats, has a smaller waste drawer, no night light, and doesn’t work with Whisker’s optional litter hopper accessory.

I tested the Evo in my daughter’s bedroom, and she never complained about noise or odor. However, the build felt flimsier than the 5 Pro. The waste drawer was finicky and sometimes didn’t close properly. I also encountered repeated phantom errors, including alerts about the bonnet being detached when it wasn’t. Whisker said this was likely a hardware issue with my specific unit, so other users might have a better experience, but the Evo’s lower price is reflected in its materials and feature set.

AI that doesn’t work

The Litter-Robot 5 Pro’s main selling point is its AI features, accessed through a $8-per-month Whisker Plus subscription. This subscription unlocks the camera recording, Cat ID facial recognition, WasteID waste classification, and detailed health insights. On paper, it sounds like a dream for cat owners who want to monitor their pets’ bathroom habits for signs of illness. In practice, it was a constant source of frustration.

The first major problem was Cat ID. The front-facing camera is supposed to recognize which cat is entering the litter box and assign each visit to the correct cat in the app. My two cats look nothing alike. Smokey is a large gray and white tabby, and Boone is a small, sleek tuxedo cat. The robot still got them mixed up constantly. After about a week, the app’s PawPrint setup presented me with images captured by the camera and asked me to choose the best ones for facial recognition. The images were all blurry, poorly lit, or at awkward angles, and there was no option to upload my own photos.

Whisker says poor lighting and bad initial imaging can confuse the system, and when the camera isn’t sure, it falls back on the onboard scale to guess which cat it is. That led to another problem: the scale was wrong. Smokey weighs about 13.4 pounds, but the robot started recording his weight as Boone’s, and within a week both cats were showing the same weight. The app essentially decided the two cats had swapped bodies. This isn’t just a minor annoyance; it creates misleading health data. If a cat’s weight suddenly changes, an owner might worry or, worse, miss a real problem because the numbers are inaccurate.

WasteID was equally unreliable. The system is designed to identify whether a deposit is urine or feces and dispatch waste accordingly to reduce odors. But during my testing, it frequently failed to classify the waste at all, and sometimes couldn’t even provide a weight for the deposit. Whisker said my unit’s feces-sensing gas sensor was off, and they attempted a remote correction. When that didn’t help, they determined the scale was also miscalibrated, which may have affected both WasteID and PawPrint. Their eventual suggestion was that I would need a whole new machine to fix the issue.

Camera privacy concerns

The 5 Pro has two cameras: one facing the front of the unit and one inside the globe. The front camera is used for Cat ID and records clips of each visit. The internal camera is supposed to provide a view of the litter tray, but it only offers a live feed; it doesn’t record. I was disappointed by this, because the advertising implies both cameras record. Whisker told me that the poop-view recording is “coming soon,” but that doesn’t help current owners.

There’s also a privacy consideration. The front-facing camera is always watching, and if the unit is placed near a bathroom or hallway, it can capture more than just cat activity. I put my 5 Pro in a laundry room across from a powder room, and the camera caught anyone using that bathroom when the door was open. The app has a setting to record only when a cat is spotted, but cats love to follow their owners into the bathroom, so the camera still recorded humans from time to time. If you buy this device, place it carefully and review your privacy settings.

What actually works

Despite the AI failures, the Litter-Robot 5 Pro is still the best pooper-scooper I’ve used. My cats both adapted to it immediately. Smokey jumped in and did his business without hesitation. Boone, the younger and more playful one, took a little longer. He sometimes waits for the cycle to start, then bats at the inside of the globe to interrupt it. He also shredded the optional litter mat accessory within a week, so I ended up removing it.

The app’s remote control is genuinely useful. I can check the waste level, litter level, and see when the last cycle happened. If the robot detects an obstruction or a cycle is interrupted, I can look at the front-facing camera to make sure no cat is trapped inside. That’s a nice safety feature, and it worked reliably.

Whisker has also been adding new features over time. A recent update introduced “Patterns,” which provides a daily summary for each cat. For example, it might say, “Yesterday Smokey weighed 12.52 lbs, visited the litter robot 1 times, and spent .9 minutes in total.” That’s a step in the right direction, but the weight is still wrong, and there’s no information about waste type. It also doesn’t make up for the fact that owners have been paying $8 a month for months while the AI features were broken.

Which one should you buy?

If you don’t care about AI features and just want a reliable automated litter box, the $699 Litter-Robot 4 is a better choice than the Evo. The LR4 has a better build quality, a larger waste drawer, and includes the same core scooping functionality, but without cameras or facial recognition. It supports up to four cats and is a proven design.

The $599 Evo is only worth considering if you’re truly tight on space. Its smaller footprint is nice, but the build quality, smaller bin, and missing features like litter-level monitoring make it hard to recommend over the LR4 at just $100 less.

As for the $899 Litter-Robot 5 Pro, I’d suggest saving $100 and buying the regular Litter-Robot 5 instead. The regular 5 model keeps everything that makes the Pro great—the bigger globe, the LCD screen, the quiet motor, the improved waste drawer—but drops the camera and Cat ID. It still includes WasteID and the health tracking, although my experience suggests those features are still works in progress.

The lesson here is familiar to anyone who follows smart home technology: don’t buy a product based on promised future updates. Whisker put too much faith in AI’s potential capabilities. In a lab, facial recognition and waste detection might work flawlessly. But in the real world, with different lighting, playful cats, and messy litter, the variables are endless. The Litter-Robot 5 Pro is a fantastic invention as a pooper-scooper, but the AI that surrounds it just isn’t ready for prime time. For now, the best use of this machine is simply to handle the dirty work—and to let your cats enjoy the clean box without being misidentified by a camera that can’t tell them apart.

Source:The Verge News