I looked into robots but decided to try a low-tech solution first. I got an Arm & Hammer brand sifting litter box for $20. I can clean the entire litter box in about 15 seconds.

I have no need for a robotic litter box anymore.

I have two Litter Robots (3rd gen) and I love them. They aren’t perfect but they are really good. My cat box maintenance is weekly and it takes 5 minutes to do both of them.

Cleaning them is a pain but you don’t have to do it super often.

No proprietary consumables. I’ve used four or five types of clumping litter, no issues. I use standard kitchen garbage bags in the catch pan.

They are expensive but after I bought the first and my cats got used to it I had to buy another. My cats walk on (comparatively) clean litter every time, which is a great benefit. And the time savings is huge.

I'm curious how well these things keep the smell under control. Especially since cats have a better sense of smell than humans. For us it maybe clean but for them?

I tried one years ago and it was a miserable experience.

First, you can't just put it where you want it, it has to be within reach of an electrical outlet.

Second, the noise scared the cats, they hated it.

Third, there wasn't enough time between the cat leaving the box and the motor running, so the scooper would trail through wet clumping litter that hadn't had enough time to clump, clogging the scooper and making it so you had to clean it all the time, completely defeating the purpose.

I use the PetSafe automatic box, but instead of the proprietary trays, I picked up a "Forever Tray" and you can then use any non-clumping crystal litter.

The biggest challenge I've had with it is that it turns into a big mess if your cat ever has soft poos, and one of my cats has IBS, so that happens more often than I'd like.

How old is your cat? How set in their ways are they? My cats have taken to the automatic box without any trouble, but my friend's cat completely lost his mind when she introduced the Litter Robot and he started peeing on laundry, etc. instead. She ended up getting rid of it, and 6 months later, he's still afraid to go in the room where the Litter Robot was.

We have two cats and two of the Pet Zone ones. We've been pretty happy with them but when one breaks if it's anything more than an easy motor repair I'm upgrading to the Litter Robot.

Ehm, I thought we went overboard with the surefeeds we have for the cats (4) as one of the previous set needed special feed and buying 4 of those was cheaper then feeding all cats the same very expensive food. This proved a good investment, as shortly after a 2nd cat needed special feed and now one needs medicine trough the feed. But that's the other end of the process.

Here we have 4 cats and 6 litterboxes which get scooped daily. With the general rule of thumb of 1 box per cat and 1 extra worked well here with the clumping litter we use (wood based). 3 litterboxes are on the groundfloor (hallway), livingroom on the 1st floor, 2 boxes on the 2nd floor (hallway and a separate room accessible via a cat flap) and 1 on the attic. It takes me about 5 min to scoop the 3 on the ground floor, my wife needs a few min more as there are more stairs involved and the cats use those more since we use the same litter in all boxes (they went downstairs for the clay based grit, now they just go to the closest free one when they are in the bedroom).

I'd almost advice to try an extra litterbox 1st and don't place them in the livingroom. (when I saw the picture of those automated boxes they were situated in livingrooms) We humans have our toilet somewhere else as well. (you could try to teach the cat to use the toilet)

However, I'm curious about the automated boxes advised here.