I’ve tested a lot of automatic litter boxes over the years, including several generations of Litter-Robot. I tried both the Litter-Robot 4 and Litter-Robot EVO within the last few years, and we even had one of the original Litter-Robots way back when they first came out. I’m talking so long ago that I don’t even remember it having a model number.
So, I’m pretty familiar with what Litter-Robot does well, along with the little things that can make one generation better than another. And the Litter-Robot 5 is, by far, my favorite Litter-Robot model yet.
Yes, it does the basic thing you’re paying an automatic litter box to do: it scoops itself. Waste gets separated from the clean litter and deposited into a sealed drawer, which means I spend considerably less time scooping and smelling what six cats leave behind. But just about every decent automatic litter box can make that claim.
What makes the Litter-Robot 5 stand out for me are all the things happening around that basic cleaning cycle, especially its incredibly informative display, WasteID, roomy interior and the amount of useful information I can get from the Whisker app.
And, thanks largely to one kitten who considers interrupting cleaning cycles his personal calling in life, I can also say its safety features have been tested rather extensively.
Meet the next generation of smart litter boxes. The Litter-Robot 5 features a sleek LCD display, redesigned waste drawer for fewer empties, customizable lights, and better odor control than ever. Multi-cat ready and app-connected, it’s the perfect balance of convenience, performance, and modern design for any cat household.
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Litter-Robot 5 Top Features
The Litter-Robot 5 is designed for households with up to five cats weighing between 3 and 30 pounds. Whisker also increased the interior space compared to the Litter-Robot 4 and redesigned the waste drawer to hold and distribute waste more efficiently.
Some of its standout features include:
- Automatic sifting and cleaning after your cat uses the box
- WasteID technology that distinguishes between urine and feces
- SmartScale weight tracking
- Full-color LCD display with real-time information and alerts
- Whisker app with individual pet profiles, weight and litter box activity tracking
- OmniSense optical and weight sensors for cat detection and safe operation
- Sealed waste drawer with carbon filtration for odor control
- Roomier interior than the Litter-Robot 4
- Designed for cats from 3 to 30 pounds
- Suitable for multi-cat households
- Step for easier entry and exit
- QuietSift technology for quieter cleaning cycles
- Customizable cycle timing
- Optional LitterHopper and other accessories
Litter-Robot 5 Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
My Real-World Experience With the Litter-Robot 5
I have six cats ranging from kittens to an 11-year-old senior, so my house is basically an automatic litter box stress test.
The Litter-Robot 5 is technically designed for households with up to five cats, although the Whisker app lets me maintain profiles for all six of mine. More importantly, all six use it. Sometimes simultaneously, apparently. We’ll get to that.
The LCD display may be my favorite upgrade
One of the first things I noticed about the LR5 was just how much I like the full-color LCD display.
Previous Litter-Robot models gave you status information through buttons, lights and the app. The LR5 actually tells you what is happening on the machine itself, including displaying your cat’s weight after a visit. That was particularly useful while I was getting everyone set up in the app.
With six cats, I basically had to play litter box detective for a while and watch who went in, then check the weight when they came out so I could make sure everyone was assigned correctly.
The first three made this fairly easy for me. Touka, Nori and Lily practically lined up to try the new box. Touka and Nori were the trickiest because they’re close in weight. Leia was easy because she’s currently my only cat in the 8-pound range.
Luke was also extremely easy to identify. Luke is…huge. Let’s just leave it at huge. In his defense, he is naturally a very large cat. He may also be a little bit chonky. Both things can be true. Lily, his litter-mate sister (all of my cats except for Zoe are at least half biological siblings) is another one of my bigger cats, so she was fairly easy to identify, too.
Weight tracking is more than just interesting data
Zoe was the cat I most wanted to get set up correctly because she’s 11 and had lost some weight when cat flu went through our house. I want to make sure she’s back on track. She seems like she is, but I still want to be extra sure.
Because the LR5 records weight automatically when a cat uses it, I can keep an eye on Zoe’s weight without having to regularly put her on a separate scale. SmartScale uses the cats’ profiles and recorded weights to estimate which cat is using the box, although Whisker notes that it needs time to learn each cat’s patterns.
In a household like mine, where some cats have very similar weights, it isn’t infallible. Occasionally, it assigns a visit to the wrong cat. When that happens, I can simply reassign the weight reading to the correct profile. For my purposes, that’s plenty accurate enough.
If you have cats that are nearly identical in weight and need to know exactly who is using the litter box every time, you may want to look at the Litter-Robot 5 Pro instead. It has the same dimensions and basic LR5 features but adds dual cameras and visual cat identification for more precise individual tracking.
Check out Jamey’s Litter-Robot 5 Pro review for a closer look at those features and how they helped her after Milo got sick.
WasteID tells me more about bathroom habits than I ever expected to know
WasteID is one of the big new features on the Litter-Robot 5, and it’s pretty darn cool.
The system distinguishes between urine and feces rather than simply recording that a cat visited the box. It also changes its cleaning behavior based on what your cat did. After urine, it gives clumping litter time to form a solid clump before cycling. After solid waste, it can cycle sooner to get the source of the odor into the sealed drawer.
The app then gives you a much more detailed picture of what’s happening in the litter box. For me right now, some of this is mostly novelty. I never thought I’d be remotely interested in knowing how much Nori’s little poops weigh, yet here we are.
Where I think WasteID becomes genuinely valuable is when you’re monitoring a cat for urinary, kidney or gastrointestinal problems, or anytime your vet wants you to keep a closer eye on bathroom habits.
In the medical world, you’ll sometimes hear people talk about tracking “I&Os,” meaning intake and output. Basically, you’re paying attention to what’s going into the body and what’s coming back out.
The LR5 obviously can’t tell you how much your cat drank, but the litter box side of that equation can give you useful information about bathroom habits. You can also see visits where a cat enters the box without actually producing waste.
That’s something I’d want to know if, for example, one of my cats suddenly started making repeated trips to the litter box without urinating. Frequent unproductive trips or straining can be signs that something is wrong and warrant prompt veterinary attention.
Of course, context matters. Nori visits the litter box approximately 700 times a day and often does absolutely nothing except dig around. Which brings us to the LR5’s safety features.
Nori has thoroughly tested the safety system
If you look at screenshots from my Whisker app and wonder why there are approximately 50 “Cycle Interrupted” notifications, I can explain those in one word. Nori.
The Litter-Robot 5 uses a combination of optical and weight sensors to detect cats in and around the globe. If a cat is detected during a cleaning cycle, the machine stops.
This baby WILL NOT SPIN while YOUR babies are in it. Nori has thoroughly tested this feature. Thoroughly.
The only time the poor LR5 seems capable of completing an entire cleaning cycle without interruption is when Nori is zonked out somewhere. Even then, there’s a decent chance Lily, Luke, Leia or Touka will wander over to see what it’s doing. (Not Zoe, though. She’s 11. She’s too mature for this nonsense.)
For crying out loud, it’s doing exactly the same thing it was doing the last 5,000 times you interrupted it! The especially ridiculous part is that these cats are not new to automatic litter boxes. We have multiple models in our house. They know what automatic litter boxes do. Apparently, the rotating litter globe remains must-see TV.
From a review standpoint, however, their complete inability to mind their own business has been useful. The safety system in my house has been tested over and over and over again, and it works exactly the way I want it to.
It’s genuinely roomy, even for my biggest cats
Another major improvement is the amount of room inside the globe. Whisker says the LR5 has a slightly larger interior than the LR4, and I noticed the difference.
Luke weighs around 16 pounds and, as mentioned, he’s a big cat. Not just heavy, but tall and long. He fits comfortably inside the LR5 and has enough room to turn around and position himself without looking cramped.
Apparently, there’s also enough room for two cats. Ask me how I know. Guess which two cats? Here’s a hint: they’re the newest members of the family. There’s bonded, and then there’s Touka and Nori.
I’ve also learned that the LR5 can accommodate one kitten and one adult cat at the same time. Again, ask me how I know that. Ask me how the adult cat felt about it. Then ask me if Nori took the hint that he was violating all rules of personal space. He did not.
Obviously, “two cats can use it simultaneously” isn’t an official feature and isn’t something I’m recommending. But the fact that they’ve managed it does illustrate just how spacious the interior is.
The step and entrance work well for different-sized cats
I also really like the step attached to the waste tray on the front of the LR5. It’s a small design detail, but with cats of very different sizes and ages, these things matter to me. The step gives them an easy place to climb up before entering instead of requiring one big jump.
Despite having such a roomy globe, the entrance doesn’t feel ridiculously high off the ground, either. All six of my cats figured out how to get in and out immediately, from the kittens to Zoe.
And yes, it does the basic litter box stuff very well
With all the attention on WasteID, SmartScale and the app, it’s easy to forget that none of those features matter if the thing doesn’t clean the litter box properly. It does.
The LR5 automatically separates clumps and solid waste from clean litter and deposits them into the waste drawer underneath. The sealed drawer and carbon filter do a very good job containing everyday litter box odors, and Whisker redesigned the drawer and waste distribution system so waste spreads out more efficiently inside it.
With six cats, I’m obviously not getting anything close to Whisker’s “up to 10 days” estimate for a single-cat household. My cats could probably fill a small dumpster in 10 days. That’s only a slight exaggeration. Roughly half of our weekly garbage is cat litter. Hey, all of that ammonia keeps the bears away. They rarely touch our garbage, even when they’re in full-on party mode with everyone else’s.
Anyway… I’m emptying one contained waste drawer rather than repeatedly scooping a traditional litter box, and that’s the whole reason I use automatic boxes in the first place.
One tiny app feature that absolutely got me
There was one part of setting up the Whisker app that I wasn’t prepared for at all. Alex’s profile was still there. We lost Alex recently, and when I saw his name among all of my other cats, I knew I needed to remove his profile. Except I really didn’t want to.
There’s something strangely final about deleting a pet’s profile after they’re gone. Logically, I know removing his name from an app doesn’t erase the years he spent with us. Emotionally, though, it felt like I was deleting one more little piece of evidence that he’d been here.
When I went to remove him, Whisker gave me another option: turn his profile into a memorial profile instead. I cried. It’s such a tiny feature in the grand scheme of everything the LR5 does, but it was also an incredibly thoughtful one.
I wasn’t expecting it, and I love that someone at Whisker thought about what it feels like when a pet disappears from a smart-home app but not, obviously, from your life. Alex gets to stay.
The box it came in was also a huge hit
One last feature that Whisker probably won’t mention on the spec sheet: the Litter-Robot 5 comes in an excellent box.
Before I even got the LR5 set up, the box itself became prime household real estate. Luke sprawled across the top of it in absolute bliss, while the others took turns climbing inside, hiding in it and generally treating it like I’d bought them a giant new cat fort.
And this wasn’t a 20-minute “ooh, a box!” situation. They played with the thing for a good week. Eventually, we had to be the mean humans and move it into the garage because, unlike the cats, we apparently care about having usable floor space.
So technically, the Litter-Robot 5 provided two forms of feline enrichment: a very fancy automatic litter box and one extremely large cardboard box.
I’m not factoring that into my final verdict, obviously. But the cats might.
Is the Litter-Robot 5 Worth It?
At $799 MSRP, the Litter-Robot 5 isn’t cheap. That’s the biggest drawback, and there’s really no clever way around it. This is a premium litter box with a premium price tag.
But I’ve tested enough automatic litter boxes to know that I don’t judge them based solely on whether they can rotate a globe and dump clumps into a drawer anymore. For me, the LR5 gets the details right.
I love being able to glance at the display and immediately see useful information without pulling out my phone. I like having six cat profiles in the Whisker app even though the machine itself is designed for households with up to five. I like being able to track Zoe’s weight, see who’s using the box and get more meaningful bathroom data through WasteID.
I appreciate the roomy interior because I have some pretty substantial cats. The step works well for everyone from kittens to my senior girl. And thanks to Nori and the rest of my extraordinarily nosy household, I have far more confidence in the safety sensors than I ever could have gotten from deliberately testing them myself.
Most importantly, it reliably does the job I bought an automatic litter box to do. It scoops the litter so I don’t have to.
I’ve used the Litter-Robot 4, the EVO and one of Whisker’s ancient ancestors from way back in the early Litter-Robot days. The Litter-Robot 5 is my favorite one yet. Nori’s pretty fond of it, too. Mostly when it’s trying to clean.
Meet the next generation of smart litter boxes. The Litter-Robot 5 features a sleek LCD display, redesigned waste drawer for fewer empties, customizable lights, and better odor control than ever. Multi-cat ready and app-connected, it’s the perfect balance of convenience, performance, and modern design for any cat household.
⭐ BEST PRICE ON THE WEB⭐
SAVE UP TO $150!
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