PETKIT MAX and MAX2: ten-cat comparison notes for PURA MAX and PuraMax 2 buyers

The June eighteenth shopping festival is just around the corner, and lots of people are asking how to choose an automatic litter box. So today, in one video, I’ll sum up the automatic litter boxes our 10-cat household uses— one, two, three, four, five, six of them. Look, our little Mimi is watching TV again. Before talking about automatic litter boxes, I want to make one principle clear: there’s no perfect automatic litter box—only one that suits your cat. I’m personally a pretty loyal automatic-litter-box user.

My first one was a Youpei, and it’s been four years now. In all that time, not one of my cats has ever been trapped or pinched by it. Maybe my cats are just pretty smart, and they’re all adults. But if you have a kitten under three months old, absolutely do not use an automatic litter box. Okay, let me go through the pros and cons of the different boxes one by one. These two are the PETKIT MAX, first generation and second generation.

The main improvement in the second-generation MAX is the drum. It has a recessed edge inside the drum, so urine doesn’t leak when a cat pees against the side. With the older design, the protective liner can be pried off directly from the side, so after extended use, a gap can develop here, and urine can leak through it. PETKIT’s redesigned drum is something the other brands don’t have. But of course, it has drawbacks too. This automatic litter box has a spiral structure, almost like a conch shell inside, so it’s a little harder to clean. And the waste tray— isn’t particularly large, and it has a flat bottom.

If you leave it too long, the poop piles up into a pyramid, so you have to take it out and give it a lift. For one cat, I estimate you can leave the waste tray for about five days without touching it. If your cat is on the smaller side, I still highly recommend PETKIT. And then there’s this huge one—the Homan. I highly recommend it for multi-cat households. For one thing, its drum is especially large. Here, compare them.

Our cats weighing over five kilograms can move around freely inside it, and it also has a litter hopper. When it detects that the litter level is low, it adds litter automatically. I think that’s a really helpful feature for people who travel frequently for work. Its waste tray is also quite large. With our 10 cats, we can go about three to five days without emptying it. The drawback is that the entrance is fairly high, and it tracks out quite a lot of litter.

I paired it with a litter-trapping mat from another brand, but because of the joint here, litter still leaks out between the two pieces during regular use. I don’t know how it would be with the original mat. Let me know if you’ve tried it. This is the Mochan M1 Pro. Oh, I have a lot to complain about with this thing. Let me start with its advantages. It’s a very open-style automatic litter box, so whether you have a Maine Coon or even a fifteen-kilogram cat, it will work perfectly fine.

I’ve kept it because it’s the only automatic litter box that fits under my sink. Okay, now for the drawbacks. First, the scoop— rusts very easily. The company recently said it had launched a stainless-steel scoop version, but I haven’t bought it yet. If you’ve used one, let me know how it is. Also, this box works by pushing the scoop forward, then bringing it back, to drop the litter into the waste bag. After I’d used the machine for about a year, its lid started flying off all the time.

Personally, I don’t think its quality control is that great. But its biggest advantage is that it costs just over 600 yuan. If your cat is extremely large, I recommend this one. This one is Nuo Xue. I personally really like its litter-trapping channel. So even without a litter-trapping mat, very little litter gets out. Every time a cat exits the drum, it walks straight across this—what do you call it?—the pressure plate, which catches the litter. There’s also a compartment here for a deodorizing tablet.

We haven’t replaced it much after using it for a long time, but it still doesn’t seem to smell much. Its only real drawback is that getting in and out of the drum is a bit awkward. The cat has to walk through a corridor, and since we have other open-style boxes, our cats use this one less often. If your cat is particularly fat, I think getting into this drum would still be difficult. I would not recommend it for cats over seven and a half kilograms.

And finally, there’s this Xiaomi automatic litter box. I wasn’t sure whether to include it, because I searched all the official channels— not the ordinary Taobao third-party stores, but the official channels, including their Tmall shop, and even the Xiaomi Mall—and none of them sell this product anymore. But it is still pretty good to use, because it has the classic automatic-litter-box design: the drum on top and the waste tray underneath. The waste tray is also fairly large. Our cats can use it for three to five days without us cleaning it.

Overall, though, the drum is a bit small, and it’s somewhat difficult to clean, because the entrance is much smaller, leaving much less room to reach in and clean it. The small drum also creates another problem: it can leak urine, because there’s a gap between the drum and the body of the machine. Look, there’s litter here too. One of our cats has peed here before, and do you see the yellowish stuff? That all seeped down from there.

Since it is no longer sold through official channels, I cannot confirm what after-sales support is available. So I wouldn’t recommend buying it anymore. A lot of people have also asked whether these automatic litter boxes are noisy. I measured the decibel level of each one while it was running.

[Text: Nuoxue · Homerun · PETKIT MAX 1 · Xiaomi · Mochan · PETKIT MAX 2]

I think they’re all about the same. If you’re especially afraid of being woken up at night, set it to sleep mode, because all of these can be controlled through a phone app. Just set it not to clean while you’re sleeping. One last thing I want to remind everyone: any automatic litter box can end up with bugs or maggots. There’s no product that lets you forget about it forever. Here in Guangdong, if I go more than 10 days without emptying it, the waste bag will definitely grow maggots.

It has genuinely happened in our home. The only solution is to thoroughly clean the machine and spray it with insecticide. Move over, move over. The best thing about an automatic litter box is that you can leave it for three to five days without cleaning it. For a multi-cat household like ours, that’s a huge temptation. To wrap up, let me quickly summarize which box suits which household. The Mochan M1 Pro is for super-large, overweight cats. I think the PETKIT MAX is for single-cat households with smaller cats.

The Homan is for multi-cat households, while the Nuo Xue, I think, works for cats under seven and a half kilograms and owners who do not want to clean often. I do not recommend this Xiaomi one. Okay, that’s it. Bye-bye.