Flushing~$499CatGenie
Nothing here gets emptied: the A.I. is plumbed in, and waste leaves through a drain hose after the granules have been washed and dried in place. The price of that is a proprietary habit. The unit will not run without a SaniSolution cartridge, rated for 120 cleaning cycles in manual or timed mode and 240 in cat-activated mode, and only CatGenie's washable granules can go in it.
Approx. price
~$499
maker's store, not a live price
Best for: A home with a spare spot beside a toilet or laundry drain and no wish to handle waste
CatGenie publishes no detection weight, only a minimum age of 6 months. Run it by hand before then. Below the threshold, a kitten may not register at all, and the box could start a cycle with it inside.
Detection: sensor type not published. The maker does not state any anti-pinch protection.
How minimum weights work, and what to do below themNo drawer: waste goes down a drain.
The two lists above are drawn from the maker’s own pages, manuals and prices, not from owner reports. Where owner discussion has been read it appears in its own section below, so the two are never mistaken for each other.
The CatGenie A.I. does something no drawer-based box can: it washes, flushes and dries itself, so there is no waste to handle at all. Owners who have had good runs, including one with two units for three and five years, describe exactly that, along with a support line that answers quickly.
The complaints are about the plumbing and sensors that make it possible. Drain and light-guide errors recur through years of owner posts, often without an obvious cause. Soft stool is a known problem because the scoop breaks it up before the heated dry. Out of warranty, repairs have cost owners a few hundred dollars each, and parts are hard to get without sending the machine in. The chipped cleaning cartridge is a sore point too.
It suits a household with a drain nearby, cats with firm stools, and an owner who treats the warranty period as the machine's expected life. Several owners who left it moved to drawer-based drums or to CatGenie's own Whoosh, and owners of cats prone to digestive upsets are the least likely to be happy with it.
Owners often find litter stuck in the small drain holes in the centre of the bowl, which the machine reads as slow drainage. Cleaning those and the drain path usually helps; some faults persisted even after full cleaning and needed support.
It happens when stool is soft: the scoop breaks it apart and the heated drying cycle bakes what is left in the granules. Owners with cats prone to loose stool find it hard to avoid.
Not officially. Owners describe a chip on the cartridge that counts down with each wash, and the machine refuses to run when it reaches zero.
It varies widely. Some owners report five years with one minor part, while others retired theirs after two to five years of recurring faults and out-of-warranty repair bills of around $200 to $250.
Owners report that it cannot tell cats apart even though the app lets you add a profile and photo for each one.
Flushing
Best for: Two or three cats in a home with a drain nearby, where nobody wants a waste drawer
Rotating drum
Best for: Multi-cat homes that need cats told apart and can live with a 22 lb ceiling
Rotating drum
Best for: Owners who use pine, tofu or crystal and do not want to switch