Review: Petkit Purobot Ultra Automatic Cat Litter Box

It seems as if cat and pet tech has been growing and advancing hugely every year. Companies are in a race to get out the most tech-advanced pet gear for our feline friends by tracking behavior and patterns through an app and utilizing tech to do the dirty work like scooping the box. Petkit recently released its newest robo-box, the Petkit Purobot Ultra, which promises to be the first smart litter box that uses AI to recognize your cat's face, while also tracking and recording usage (and the cat’s stool itself … more on that later).

My two cats and I have been testing a fair amount of these pet tech products over the past month, from automatic cat feeders to automatic litter boxes—including Petkit’s PuraMax 2, which was my second-favorite automatic litter box. I have varying opinions on these boxes, but usually they're just different configurations of the same sort of premise. In general, automatic litter boxes work through sensors, either by motion or weight, to tell when a cat has entered or exited the litter box, and then begin the cleaning cycle a short time after the cat has used the box. The litter spins around inside a sphere, where the bigger soiled clumps will separate to be deposited into the waste basket behind, while the clean litter passes through the grates and gets recycled back into the litter box. Various settings can be adjusted and you can monitor usage via the app.

Large and in Charge

Photograph: Molly Higgins

This automatic litter box has a pretty big horizontal footprint (approximately 21 inches wide, 32 inches deep, and 24 inches high), and the front-facing opening rotates on an X-axis, staying open the entire time (super important, to ensure your cat can jump out of it if some malfunction happened). There’s also a camera on an arm in front of the opening, which swivels and follows your cat when it senses motion and records inside of the litter box (it also has night vision).

The box came in a couple parts that just needed to be connected. Directions were easy to follow and I got it set up in less than an hour, including linking the app to the box. To begin, you need to upload several pictures of your cat(s) from different angles to help the AI software learn which cat is which. Through the app, you can watch short clips of each time your cat walks near the litter box (the camera motion senses and engages, although sometimes it’d pick up someone doing laundry in the nearby dryer) and when a cat uses it. You can also move the camera through the app to pan to the outside or inside of the box. The app logs and monitors usage, including the number of times it was used and the average duration. It uses AI to identify which cat used the box, and while it doesn’t explicitly note whether a cat peed or pooped, you can review the footage yourself to determine.

Screenshots courtesy of Molly Higgins

Seeing Is Believing

When the box is first set up, you get a free trial of Premium Petkit Care+, which essentially lets you watch the entirety of playback when your cat uses it (without it, you can only see stills of the times your pet appears). The free trial of the premium plan lasts 30 days from setup, and has three tiers of subscription plans, starting at $4 a month for Basic and going up to $12 a month for Premium+. With the Premium version playback, you can literally watch how the metaphorical sausage is made inside of the box, as it records your cat using the litter box in all their glory, followed by a recording of the litter tumbling as the stool is separated from the clean litter and dispensed into the airtight bag below. After it shows the stool, there’s a chart where it has an illustration showing normal versus abnormal stool so you can identify any changes or abnormalities (one of the most effective ways to monitor your cat’s health). Although this is a good idea in theory, the video aren’t hi-def and were always in black-and-white, which made actually observing anything very difficult (I often found myself saying, “Yep, that's a small gray image of a tiny cat turd”).

One of my cats is a massive 20-pound gray tabby and the other is a super fluffy 12-pound calico. When I had the trial of Petkit Care+, it correctly identified the cats about 75 percent of the time, but once it expired, which cat was which was never identified automatically, despite them looking completely different.

Pack it Up

The litter box can use multiple types of litter, including clay and tofu, but has different grates for litter sifting to ensure it’s getting separated properly. The 10L waste bin lasts up to 20 days with a single cat, and is located in the very back of the device. Like other Petkit litter boxes I’ve tested, it smells great because of the proprietary odor eliminator ($20 for three refills) and sealed waste bag. When the litter waste bin is full, you open the trunk lid, take out the soiled bag, replace it with a clean bag, and clip in the refill ring cover to ensure it stays in place properly. Part of the reason the back trunk end is so massive is because of the auto-packing system. It lifts up during operation, and when the bag is full, it has auto-packing, auto-sealing, and auto-bagging. Then, when the sealed trash bag is ready, the user just needs to remove it (you need to do so manually with the buttons on the device, and be present to get it out and refill it). Because of this packing system, you’ll need Petkit’s special refill rings and trash bags (three for $35). Although the smart box shows images of the stool, they aren’t super detailed, so I’d still recommend checking the stool yourself to make sure there’s nothing wrong.

Screenshots courtesy of Molly Higgins

The smaller of my two cats used it regularly, and right away—I was shocked she wasn’t more scared of the camera arm rotating toward her. I was able to watch how everything went down, from her approaching the litter box to the stool exiting down the chute to the bin. The app not only replays the entire event, but compiles highlights from the toilet trip and the day as a whole, so I can know just how many times she walked past the automatic box.

I do have a complaint about the arm’s placement, as it can make for a tight space to enter the hole (why my 20-pounder wouldn't use this box). I can also see cats getting freaked out by the camera’s movement and abandoning ship. My biggest complaint, however, is refilling litter into the box. You have to hand-pour the litter into the front-facing hole, being careful not to knock the camera. Because the space is a bit tight, I had to scoop the litter with a cup and fill it in small increments. I wish the box somehow had a top filling hole, or a way to rotate so you can refill from the top like the PuraMax 2.

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Overall, my main issue with the Petkit Purobot Ultra is with refilling clean litter, and I feel like the promised AI analytics fall a little flat. It’s kind of fun being able to watch your pet (plus, it’s basically a built-in security camera for whatever room it’s in) and monitor their bathroom habits. But after watching them and seeing the gray images of the stool, it’s sort of like, “OK, I just saw my cat poop, cool. Now what?” This is a fun novelty to have and there is truly no odor, but I wonder if we really need to be watching our cat poop.