comments:
The litter trap mat is great but there are other litter trap mats that are cheaper elsewhere. The benefit of the Whisker one is it has a curve to fit better around you robot. Is that worth the extra money? up to you. I would say get a litter trap mat of some sort though. You'll thank me later. I doesn't use whisker's bags. they are too expensive. I use these and they work good. Works for both the 4 and 5 - https://a.co/d/02x3NVOf Carbon Filters and Order Trap packs, yes. I haven't found an alternative to the order trap packs. The Carbon filter, I don't switch out for like 6 months. Every 6 months, I take the robot outside, take it apart and give it a good scrub down. I also do not use Whisker's litter. 4 vs 5 - I had 2 of the 4s for a few years and got the 5 Pro a couple months ago. The 5 is 'slightly' smaller, only because they made the little step a couple of inches shorter. 5 Pros - newer tech. I had a sick cat (has since passed) that I needed to track his bathroom habits so it's good it tells me Pee vs Poo. More accurate cat detection since it has cameras, where as the 4 is using weight to 'detect' which cat so if have multiple cats about the same weight, the 4 isn't going to accurately track which cat. More accurate scale. 5 cons - I don't know about the sensors. The waste full sensor, it's WAY too conservative. At like 70%, it's really full and if you let it go to 90% or more, you going to have waste all over the bottom of your robot trying to pull out the basket. I have 2 robots and it's the same issue one both. The litter refill sensor seems off. I has one robot that loves giving 'litter low' message when it looks perfectly fine. I add litter and almost all the litter I just added gets dumped in the waste basket . Newer tech requires a Whisker+ subscription if you want to use all the features (like camera cat detection) 4 Pros - cheaper. Easier to work on. Reliable. Much more 'support' on Whisker's site and Online, if you have any issues. 4 Cons - doesn't have the new tech (if you care about that). My 4s would occasionally drop WiFi for no apparent reason. And they don't try to auto-reconnect. You have to reset (or unplug) the robot and then it will reconnect. It doesn't affect the functionality of the robot (cat can still use it and robot will do it's thing), just you won't be able to see the status of the robot. Picking either 4 or the 5, you won't go wrong. I don't know that I would pick the 5 over the 4 if you don't need all the newer tech though. Like if you only have 1 cat, you can get the 4 w/ Hopper for the price of the 5 w/o hopper. You have 3 cats, so having the extra tech might be worth it for you though.