The Best Automatic Litter Box of 2026: Petkit and Litter-Robot
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- Purobot Max Pro 2 earned WIRED's top pick for its compact design and built-in monitoring camera, edging out the Litter-Robot 4, which the reviewer praised for its LitterHopper auto-refill attachment.
- Litter-Robot 5 ($799) adds easier assembly, an LCD screen, and a Whisker+ subscription WasteID feature that distinguishes feces from urine, though the reviewer reports it only worked intermittently during the first four months of testing.
- Petcove PurrTek ($360) impressed with easy setup and outside physical buttons for manual control, but suffered from poor English translations and an app interface that made settings nearly impossible to configure.
- Els Pet Orbitie ($300) offers a 12-by-12-inch opening and a 65-liter rotating sifting orb on a budget, but the reviewer's first unit sent phantom alerts claiming 36 cleanings per day before the replacement worked as intended.
- Casa Leo Leo's Loo Too ($650), a former top pick, was demoted because its small entry hole makes refilling litter tricky and its barrel feels cramped for larger cats.
- Petlibro Luma Smart Litter Box ($600) was NOT recommended — WIRED refuses to endorse any model whose entrance closes during cleaning, and the Luma's spinning globe could trap a cat if sensors malfunctioned.
- FurryTail Automatic Litter Box Pro ($280) earned easy-setup praise and quick cat adoption, but its app sensed ghost cats and frequently refused manual cleanings, earning an 'until the kinks are ironed out' verdict.
Why it matters: Automatic litter boxes run $280 to $799, and WIRED's outright refusal to recommend the $600 Petlibro Luma over a mid-clean trapping hazard gives shoppers a rare safety flag — while the reviewer's firsthand accounts of ghost-cat sensors, phantom alerts, and unresponsive apps reveal how often these 'smart' features don't work.
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