The Litter-Robot has long been the gold standard for automated litter boxes, and the newest model from Whisker aims to take things further with AI-powered cameras, sensors, and facial recognition. But after six months of testing the top-of-the-line Litter-Robot 5 Pro, I can say that the core scooping mechanics are excellent while the AI features are not ready for prime time.

Key facts

• Price: $899 for the Litter-Robot 5 Pro; $599 for the Evo; $699 for the Litter-Robot 4.
• The 5 Pro has a larger drum, LCD screen, and dual cameras, plus an onboard scale and gas sensor.
• Whisker Plus costs $8 per month and is required for AI health insights and video history.
• Cat ID facial recognition repeatedly confused two very different-looking cats.
• WasteID often failed to distinguish between urine and feces.
• The front-facing camera records visits, but the interior camera only offers live view for now.
• Whisker says the system learns over time and has already improved enrollment; some hardware issues required remote fixes.

I tested the 5 Pro alongside the Litter-Robot Evo, both launched late last year. My household includes two cats: Smokey, a large gray and white tabby, and Boone, a smaller sleek tuxedo. They look nothing alike, which made the AI’s confusion even more frustrating.

The basics: still a great pooper-scooper

As an automated litter box, the 5 Pro excels. 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 waste into a sealed bin below. This removes the daily chore of scooping; I only empty the drawer about once a week. The machine is quiet, and the waste drawer contains odors well. The larger globe than the Litter-Robot 4 is a plus for bigger cats, and the LCD screen is far easier to read than the older LED indicators.

There are now four models in the lineup: the Evo, the Litter-Robot 4, the Litter-Robot 5, and the 5 Pro. All use the same basic sifting mechanism. The 5 Pro adds a front-facing camera, an interior camera, an onboard scale, a gas sensor for waste detection, and the company’s Cat ID facial recognition system. The regular Litter-Robot 5 keeps the WasteID tracking but drops the cameras and Cat ID, while the Evo is a smaller, cheaper option for tight spaces.

In terms of pure scooping, the 5 Pro is the best of the group. Its bigger bin, more intuitive controls, and roomier dome make it a better robot than the Litter-Robot 4. The Evo, meanwhile, felt less sturdy, and its waste drawer didn’t always shut cleanly. It also lacks litter-level monitoring, a night light, and compatibility with Whisker’s litter hopper accessory. The Evo is suitable for fewer and smaller cats, which may be fine for some households but is a noticeable step down.

Cat ID: the facial recognition letdown

The 5 Pro’s marquee feature is Cat ID, which uses the front-facing camera to identify which cat is entering the litter box and then logs that visit to the correct profile. Whisker claims it can distinguish up to five cats, but it failed with just two cats that look nothing alike.

After about a week of use, the app walks you through PawPrint setup, the company’s name for facial recognition. It showed me images the camera had captured, and I was supposed to pick the two best for each cat. The images were all fairly poor. Whisker suggests buying a $29 RFID PetTag for cats that look alike, but a $900 machine advertising facial recognition should not require an add-on to tell a gray tabby from a tuxedo.

Whisker says poor lighting and bad initial images can throw the camera off, and when it’s not sure, the system uses other signals, such as the onboard scale, to guess. That is exactly what caused the bizarre weight swap I experienced: the robot mistook my 13.4-pound Smokey for his younger brother and “lost” two pounds overnight. The error persisted, and within a week both cats were registering the same weight. False information can lead to false conclusions, and a robot guessing my cat’s weight is not helpful.

Correcting the mistakes was a lot of work. I had to reset the weights in each cat’s profile, reassign incorrect visits, and fix video logs. Even after all that, the camera still did not consistently recognize either cat. The company says the system is designed to learn and should improve over time, and it has already tweaked the enrollment process to be more selective about which images are used. But a product that requires this much babysitting out of the box is hard to recommend.

WasteID and health tracking: no actionable insights

Whisker’s other AI promise is WasteID, which supposedly recognizes whether the deposit is urine or feces and can even dispatch certain waste faster to reduce odors. It also aims to provide weight measurements for each deposit. In my testing, WasteID repeatedly failed to identify the type of waste, and it often couldn’t provide a weight at all.

Whisker discovered that my unit’s gas sensor, which is meant to sniff out feces, was off and corrected it remotely. When that didn’t improve things, the company determined the onboard scale was also off, which may have contributed to both the WasteID and Cat ID problems. Fixing that would require an entirely new machine.

The $8-per-month Whisker Plus subscription covers the AI health features and video storage. Over my six months with the 5 Pro, it did not deliver a single actionable or useful insight. The newer Patterns feature, which rolled out after launch, at least summarizes each cat’s day, including weight, number of visits, and total time spent in the robot. But it still lacks waste-type details, and the weight data is unreliable. The fact that these improvements arrived months after launch means early adopters were paying for features that did not work.

Cameras and privacy concerns

The cameras are a mixed bag. The front-facing camera catches the cat coming in and records clips, which is useful for checking in remotely. But the interior camera, despite what the marketing implies, only provides a live view; there’s no recording of the actual waste. Whisker says the “poop-view” is coming soon, but that doesn’t help buyers today. If you were hoping to monitor the litter tray in detail, you’ll be disappointed.

I did appreciate the safety features: if the robot detects activity while rotating, it stops and sends an alert. The camera let me check whether a cat was trapped or something was obstructing the globe. However, be careful where you place the robot. It took me a week to realize that the front-facing camera not only captured my cats’ bathroom trips but also anyone using the powder room across the hall. There is a setting to record only when a cat is detected, but cats love to follow people into the bathroom, so that’s not a foolproof privacy guard.

Which Whisker robot should you buy?

If you want a reliable automated litter box and don’t care about AI gimmicks, the Litter-Robot 4 remains a strong choice at $699. It does an excellent job of scooping with no facial recognition or waste identification. The Evo at $599 is tempting for small spaces, but its build quality feels flimsier, and I experienced phantom bonnet detachment errors. Unless space is a genuine constraint, the extra $100 for the Litter-Robot 4 is money well spent.

If you do want WasteID and have large cats or up to five cats, the regular Litter-Robot 5 might be worth a look, but save yourself $100 and skip the Pro. You lose the cameras, but you keep the core scooping and WasteID tracking. Given how poorly the AI features performed in my testing, paying a premium for them seems unjustified.

The Litter-Robot is a fantastic invention, and Whisker has proven it can build excellent hardware. But with the 5 Pro, the company fell into a trap that is all too common in the smart home industry: trusting AI capabilities that work in the lab to behave reliably in the messy, unpredictable real world. Home environments are full of variables — changing light, playful cats, curious toddlers, and random visitors — and AI systems often stumble in ways that can be hard to correct.

It’s possible the 5 Pro will eventually deliver everything Whisker promised at launch. The company is actively updating the software, and the latest Patterns feature shows some progress. But as anyone who follows consumer tech knows, you should never buy a product based on promised future updates. Today, the AI just isn’t ready.

Source: The Verge News