I'm not the person you're asking but we use the same brand, the Litter Robot 3 (without wifi) and think it's great. Both our cats took to it very quickly.
It does require a small amount of maintenance to keep it running smoothly. Separating and cleaning the main pieces every 2-3 months is all I do (nothing that requires tools to disassemble, but a good 15 minutes of cleaning+vacuuming)
Our cats were always very stinky with traditional litter boxes (even on different diets) and the litter robot did cut that down significantly... but what made a huge difference was using a litter that was a combination of clay, activated carbon and silica granules (we use Biokat's Diamond Care Classic - it is expensive, previously I manually mixed in carbon+silica into cheaper clay litter with moderate success).
We only have one cat now, and only need to replace the bag once every 10 days, but even so I can't detect any cat smell in the house (and am quite sensitive to it) nor can any of my friends/family -- but they all have cats so there may well still be some base level of smell that all our noses are innured to.
To a sibling commentor's warning, neither of our cats are worried about it cycling (in fact, our sphynx races over to watch it cycle any time she hears the motor start up). It has a weight sensor as well as a pinch sensor to prevent the cat being injured in case they jump in while it's running -- so far nobody's tried to, but good to know it's there.
I found it quite good for our older cat, too: one of our cats had a bit of arthritis in later life and needed the set of steps to comfortably get up and into the litter box which does increase the already pretty significant footprint of the device. It also has an automatic low light that comes on when it gets dark that helped her get around when her eyesight was failing.
A sibling comment noted that it's pretty expensive and may not be worth the cost - I think that's probably true, although I've no regrets (and even bought a second one) because of the amount of scooping it's saved me.
Our cats were always very stinky with traditional litter boxes
As a compromise solution I've had pretty good luck placing air filters next to the litter box. The commonly recommended ones (Coway, Winix) are $100-$150 on sale and have both particulate filters and charcoal odor filters. Filter costs are ~$25/year and electricity cost is ~$5-10 per month.
That's probably more expensive over a large enough number of years relative to a robo litter box, but you're also removing other indoor allergy causes as well, so it's doing other work which may be beneficial.
Also the fan noise from the filters is very gentle; actually a plus for many.
It does require a small amount of maintenance to keep it running smoothly. Separating and cleaning the main pieces every 2-3 months is all I do (nothing that requires tools to disassemble, but a good 15 minutes of cleaning+vacuuming)
Our cats were always very stinky with traditional litter boxes (even on different diets) and the litter robot did cut that down significantly... but what made a huge difference was using a litter that was a combination of clay, activated carbon and silica granules (we use Biokat's Diamond Care Classic - it is expensive, previously I manually mixed in carbon+silica into cheaper clay litter with moderate success).
We only have one cat now, and only need to replace the bag once every 10 days, but even so I can't detect any cat smell in the house (and am quite sensitive to it) nor can any of my friends/family -- but they all have cats so there may well still be some base level of smell that all our noses are innured to.
To a sibling commentor's warning, neither of our cats are worried about it cycling (in fact, our sphynx races over to watch it cycle any time she hears the motor start up). It has a weight sensor as well as a pinch sensor to prevent the cat being injured in case they jump in while it's running -- so far nobody's tried to, but good to know it's there.
I found it quite good for our older cat, too: one of our cats had a bit of arthritis in later life and needed the set of steps to comfortably get up and into the litter box which does increase the already pretty significant footprint of the device. It also has an automatic low light that comes on when it gets dark that helped her get around when her eyesight was failing.
A sibling comment noted that it's pretty expensive and may not be worth the cost - I think that's probably true, although I've no regrets (and even bought a second one) because of the amount of scooping it's saved me.
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