productjunkie
12 de mayo de 2024
SO Close to Perfection...But the Best So Far!
We are no stranger to auto dog feeders, so this is a review from an auto feeder connoisseur of sorts that will go through all of the pros and cons. The only competition to compare this with is the Portion ProRx (PPRx) feeder that we have had for many years now and have honestly been hoping something better would come along that whole time.This feeder is the answer to those prayers both dispensing and protecting the food between a grazer and a gordo pet...this feeder blows PPRx out of the water when it comes to app, ease of use, noise level and reliability. When I make any comparisons or feedback it will be a direct comparison with the PPRx feeder.I accidentally ordered the former version of this feeder and the 'upgraded' version. As far as I could tell there was no difference in the machine but the RFID tag was smaller on the 'upgraded' version. I ran a test and came to find that the bigger RFID was actually more sensitive and better for dogs.I say that because the smaller tag required the pet to be closer to the sensor mat and though cats may be down closer naturally to that, dogs stand a bit more upright and would have to almost hunch down for it to sense it which is unrealistic unless they are as small as a standard cat.I think it would be smart of the company to offer the two different sizes of tags for this reason...have a larger 'dog' sized tag for a bigger radius and the smaller tag for cats. My dogs are two Italian greyhounds for reference, which are skinny and tall compared to cats...but they eat a small enough amount every day that this bowl works. I would not suggest it for any pet that eats more than a cup a day unless they are veracious eaters and will consume as soon as it dispenses, as the bowl is somewhat shallow and fills quickly.Here is a list of pros and cons. The 'cons' are moreso feedback about what the company could improve in the future, not dealbreakers, as this feeder gets high marks all around so far compared to cumbersome PPRx.Pros:- Quiet as a mouse: The door effortlessly glides open and shut silently which is great for apprehensive pets. Food dispensing rattles a bit on the metal bowl but no more than it would if you poured it by hand.- Software and setup is unmatched: I absolutely LOVED setting these bowls up...SO easy. The PPRx has a notoriously horrible manual entry and no app that I dreaded each time I needed to change anything. Not Petlibro, they have a beautiful phone app that has everything you could ever want on it including setting up a feeding schedule within minutes and perfect measurements for hefty pets you need accuracy with to help lose a few (lookin' at you Zoey). It also shows you a clear history of food dispensed and when your pet stopped by and for how long which is amazing.- RFID tag is light as a feather: PPRx had a GIANT tag that a lot of pets couldn't even lug around, they just recently modified it and their new upgrade is like the older version of the bigger Petlibro tag. Like I mentioned, the older tag is in fact bigger, but it's not much heavier, both small and big are light and airy and neither bothered my small skinny dogs at all. The small tag would be well suited for cats.- Versatile and Highly Customizable: In the app you have many great personal modifications which are super helpful. You can make the bowl open or close faster or slower. This is great for more skittish pets that you don't want the bowl to close hastily while stepping away and create a bad experience for them in doing so. Or if you have a gordo pet, such as myself, you can have it snap close faster than they can move their fat butts to the bowl to try and steal (lookin' at you Zoey).- Airtight seal on food. One thing I have hated about all of the auto dispensers we've had is the lid not providing a silicone seal at the top. Imagine leaving cereal in a tupperware unsealed, it would definitely lose it's flavor and go stale. This feeder has almost a suction seal to it both on the lid of the food storage bin AND in the bowl. It's all very airtight so it will keep kibble fresher longer for picky pets.-Turnstyle feeder vs a belt: Nothing made me more mad about the PPRx feeder than the belt dispensing system. It was finicky and designed to fail resulting in missed feedings and panic by the time you realized it not knowing how long it had been failing for, then having to buy a replacement constantly. Petlibro has a foolproof turnstyle dispenser that is less likely to break or get clogged for any reason, and even if it does it will send an alert to your phone immediately if anything is amiss which is a great peace of mind. It also sends an alert when food is low.- Battery Backup: This has a battery backup for power outages which PPRx does not. If wifi connection is lost it still has the programmed settings and will keep the scheduled feedings on it and running if there are batteries (you have to buy and install).-Price: Absolutely a steal of a deal compared to PPRx. I was able to get 2 Petlibro for less than the price of one PPRx feeder and they are sleek, well built and just as high of quality if not better.Cons/Moreso Improvements I'd love to see to perfect things:- Bigger food storage bin: Unit all around could be a bit bigger to hold more food and have a little bit deeper dish. If they continue to market these for dogs it will be a necessity as they eat a bit more and need the extra storage.- Better RFID tag options: the current tag is 'okay', but I would love to see it not be as hollow and 'plastic' sounding. It clanks around quite a bit when your dog is running at all. Even a silicon cover option to buy additionally would be great to cover, protect and stop the clanking. More variety of colors would be great too, would love to be able to buy different colors and sizes (Large or small) of the tags.- Recognize more than one tag: It would be nice to be able to program the feeder in a variety of ways with different pet's RFID tags.- Add an 'Open Bowl' option: this is the only area PPRx has this feeder beat. If it could offer an 'open bowl' option that keeps the bowl open to authorized RFID tags but then closes to unauthorized RFID tags it would be a huge improvement!- Offer a different color of RFID feeder mat: I'm not a huge fan of the feeding mat being the cream color. It shows every little crumb and hair and would be much more ideal in a grey or even black to hide the mess a bit.Well, if you've made it this far you are a dedicated! There is not much competition for this feeder and what it provides, but against the one competition it has it is the CLEAR winner. Officially approved by this auto feeder connoisseur so far! I will update if any issues arise.Ver másVer menos
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Vikki
24 de mayo de 2025
Best Purchase Ever Made! 10/10
I would give this product a million stars if I could. Truly the best product I’ve ever gotten for our two kitties. This automatic feeder has been an absolute life changer for me. Before, I really was struggling to keep up with our cat’s feeding habits. One of our cats, Colby, is constantly grazing. Usually never eating more than a few bites at a time. So feeding him twice a day just wasn’t cutting it for his nutritional needs. However, our other cat, Kahlan, has some medical issues that have caused her to gain weight. She has to be on a special prescription diet and her food needs to be portioned. You can see my dilemma. Prior to this purchase I was feeding our cats 4 times a day!! And on top of the sheer quantity of times they had to be fed I also had to monitor each feeding to ensure Kahlan wasn’t getting into Colby’s food.Fast forward to March, 2025. My husband and I are going on vacation in 1 month and trying to figure out how in the world we are going to keep the cats on their now well established routines. Of course, we can’t expect someone else to come into our house four times a day AND supervise each meal multiple times over the course of a week. Then I remembered this recommendation from a friend. I had put off purchasing this in the beginning simply for the expense, knowing we would have to get two machines. Let me tell you, it was worth every penny. We have both machines set up so the cats get 1/12 cup of dry food 3 times a day (7am, 3pm, and 10pm) the food automatically dispenses at these times each day and you can use the app to easily change how much food you want dispensed and at what times. I watched the instructional video and had no issues with set-up.That being said, our cats have always been comfortable wearing collars. The collars are an important piece to this process working smoothly because the machine is set up to recognize the collar of the cat it is paired to. This function along with the plastic side guards ensure that the cats cannot get into each other’s food, not for lack of trying!! So if your cats are not used to wearing collars or will not wear them, this product won’t work as intended. The collars are also not made of the most durable material. However, you can easily take the “chip” off their collar and place it on a new collar and it will still work as intended.Another note, if you are getting these before going on vacation like we did, I highly recommend getting the product about a month or so in advance. Colby took to the machine instantly. However, Kahlan would not eat from hers for a while and it took a number of days with us feeding her next to the machine for her to get comfortable with it. If you find your cat having issues with it, I would recommend giving it a week or two to allow them to adjust before returning the product. Though she took longer with warming up, she now happily uses her machine and races to her feeder as soon as she hears the sound of her food dispensing.We had only one glitch when we were on vacation where the food in one of the feeders got stuck and wouldn’t dispense. However, the app notifies you instantly telling you exactly what the problem is. We called a relative to fix the problem and the app will also remove the error code once the problem is properly resolved. We also bought a pet cam to set up next to the feeders so we could monitor the cats as they were eating and check up on them each day.This product truly gave me my life back. I cannot speak more highly of these feeders. If you are doing what I was and hand feeding and supervising your cats multiple times a day, please try this. If it doesn’t work in 3-4 weeks you can always return the product. BUT if it does work, you will get your time back and significantly reduce your stress and frustration over your cats health and weight. These feeders completely eliminate the problem of overeating. Please also note that with the exception of the one technical difficulty, we have not had a single issue with the feeders prior or since. We have continued to use them daily even upon returning from our vacation as a replacement to hand feeding the cats.
LJG765
14 de abril de 2026
Good product that helps with feeding multiple cats!
This gets a 4 star from me because when it works, it really works great. But there are definitely times it needs fixing.I have 2 cats. One is an all day snacker. A bite here and there. The other, scarfs it all down as fast as possible and then went for her brother's food. We bought this for him because he could still snack all day, but she wouldn't be able to access it (though she's tried hard! She figured out how it worked almost instantly and he took a few days...lol!) Anyway, it works great at only letting him get at the food. The food reservoir for the main part, is quite large and holds a ton of dry food. The tray where he eats from holds about 2 cups of food which is more than enough for my cat's needs.Now for the cons: Even though it is designed for cats and cat food, the food is a little lighter weight and doesn't always fully dispense into the food tray, instead gets stuck between the rotors and the opening into the food tray. This ends up sending an error message to my phone to be cleared. It's easy to fix, but you do have to be home to clear the chute. Secondly, the rotors will get jammed by a piece of food getting stuck in them. It's happened 3 times in about 6 months. So not even monthly, but it is annoying because you have to completely remove all the food and fiddle around until it's unjammed. Not sure if this is something that can be prevented as most cat food seems to be the same size. Anything bigger, and I don't think my cat would eat it.Finally, my last con is the quality of the attachment of the key fob to the collar. I used the round metal ring that came with it to attach the fob to his collar. It lasted about a month before the metal snagged the carpet and ripped off the collar, allowing the fob to come unattached. I still haven't found the original fob, but I did find the metal loop still in the carpet. I would definitely not use the ring it came with and replace it with a much sturdier one (I found an old key chain one). You can buy replacement fobs and the syncing it and removing the old one from the app was not difficult.Pros: Everything was easy to put together and figure out, both the machine and the app. The feeder works as described and it's allowed my cat access to his food but no one else. It's also nice when we're out of town, as it's one less thing for my cat sitter to have to do/remember. It holds plenty of food and warns you when the feeder is getting low via your phone.If it didn't jam so often, it'd have been a full 5 stars from me and I still would recommend using it even with those issues!
Deborah Baker
29 de mayo de 2025
Awesome product
Overall review, Awesome!I have 6 fur babies, 2 dogs and 4 cats. 4 are slightly overweight, however food control is always changing. So I had to get 6 of these at a great expense all at once. I was super skeptical they would work as advertised, but they seemed to have good reviews so I gave it a try.I purchased about 2 months ago and waited to write a review to make sure they worked.Day 1 - set up was super simple. I set up all my pets profiles first in the app and then assigned a feeder and tag to each pet completely before moving on to the next one. Had no issues at all. My cats wanted to play with the new dangling toy I just attached to their collars, but after a couple time’s putting their breakaway collars back on, they got use to them. One took 2 days to get use to it, but all are good now. I showed each of them where their food would be located and pet and loved on them in front of it as the got curious about the noise of the door opening. I set them to fast open and stay open for 10 seconds. Very easy to do in the app.Day 2 - Watched as they looked for their food. Animals are smart and they will find food! Had to put them in front of the correct feeder a time or two, but they caught on fast. They were all eating out of the correct feeders by the end of the day. After a couple days, I turned the stay open time down to 2 seconds.Week 2 - everyone goes to their own dish and eats their own food. I had a problem with one baby camping out by the other’s feeder and grabbing food out of the bowl while the one was eating. Sneaky little critter, but solved by putting up side walls and reducing open time.Pro’s - Able to feed less at one time preventing the scarf and barf. Able to ensure each fur baby is eating allowing me to monitor health and weight. Able to schedule exact time and/or multiple times they get fed allowing me not to be woke up cuz they want to be fed. Able to feed specialty food if needed. Use less food, because they don’t eat till all gone. I have about 30% reduction in food usage.Con’s - Food gets caught in the door close area or backs up in the drop shoot. Not a big deal cuz you get an alert when it happens. If you aren’t quick about clearing the door jam, your other babies may get into the feeder and clean it out. My dogs love cat food! If you don’t clear the backup jam it causes the food dispenser to jam. All are super easy to correct. Their freshness filters are only good for 2 week. It is $15 for 6, so for me that is $30 a month. Side walls do not snap on tightly and often get knocked off. No solution to this one, just have to keep putting them back on.
MM
19 de abril de 2026
Perfect feeder and a stress-reliever in the process!
Starting with unboxing, everything was safely packed and not damaged. The packaging ensured this. The plastics are high quality and don’t feel flimsy or breakable. The instructions for putting it together were super easy to follow. Setting it up on my WiFi and using the app to customize feedings, amounts, notifications, and pet info was incredibly easy. You don’t need the paid service if you got this feeder to limit which cat can eat, and/or when, and/or how much. I have found it FANTASTIC over the last three weeks. My kitten has expensive food she needs for her sensitive stomach and my older cats were eating it ALL. It works exactly as I need - only the kitten gets the food now and there’s plenty of it - no empty bowl. You can schedule it to add food at the frequencies and amount that you want. The food stays in the bowl even when you have a crafty, ninja cat trying to get into it, sitting on it, and desperately trying to figure out how to get in to steal the kitten’s food. It doesn’t tip with the cat sitting on top while she contemplates the break in, and is very stable. No food spills or device tipping. The notifications provided via the app are helpful in letting you know when the cat eats. for how long, when food is low, when food is stuck in the dispenser, etc.My kitten hasn’t been microchipped, but I’m hopeful to get her chipped for various reasons and when I do, I can add her chip to the device and then her own microchip will open the food cover. I won’t need her to wear the collar.Speaking of the collar, there are only two things I wish the company would consider - neither would stop me from purchasing another should I need it. The first is that the charm on the collar that makes the food door open is a little large, especially for a kitten. Smaller would be nicer. The second suggestion would be to have a button on the feeder that the owner can press to open the food door if they need to open it for some reason. If there is one I haven’t seen it and you have to use the app to open it and sometimes my phone isn’t with me so that’s really just a minor inconvenience, not a feature that doesn’t work, but it would be nice to have a button to open the food cover.I really have nothing negative to say about it and would highly recommend it to anyone that needs to control which cat can eat where. It’s a little pricey, but for me, the sacrifice has been completely worth it. More people might purchase if the price point was a little lower, but I feel confident in saying it’s a durable, well-made device. It even has battery back-up should you lose power - so your cat can still eat! I have had the feeder for three weeks now and it has worked perfectly and has completely taken away stress that I had over trying to feed my kitten separately.
Bryanna
MAJOR DANGER-PINCH POINT-COULD TURN DEADLY
Petlibro RFID Feeder ReviewPETLIBRO One RFID Automatic Pet Feeder PLAF301THE BAD: MAJOR DANGER-PINCH POINT-COULD TURN DEADLYI have 2 senior cats, a 5 month old kitten, and I foster kittens constantly. I have a constant flow of kittens due to my fostering which their size can range dramatically. My 2 senior cats are on prescription diets for health reasons so I needed to get a feeder for my 5 month old that they could not access. I did my research and this one checked all of my boxes.THE DANGER-One of my current foster kittens is TINY. ¾ of a pound. He wiggled his way in to share food with my 5 month old, which is fine as they both eat the same kitten kibble. When my kitten walked away, the foster kitten continued to eat but the feeder began to close. The foster kittens paw became lodged in between the feeder bowl and the lid, which latched with the paw in it. Since my kitten had walked away, I could not reopen it immediately, the lid release button on the feeder did not work immediately as it was in a locked state and had to pop the lid open with my fingers. I assumed maybe this was a fluke since this kitten is soooo tiny. So for the next few days I monitored the feeder extremely close but it happened again and this time could have been deadly if I had not been right there. That same tiny kitten had the lid close on his neck and latch. His head was in the bowl and the lid actually closed and latched. I was in absolute shock. I again had to pop the lid open with my fingers. I do not want to think about the outcome if I had not seen this happen. He has been examined by a Veterinarian and was thankfully ok.After this incident I did further research regarding the “safety sensors” on the Petlibro RFID Feeder and found that the infrared sensor detects objects in front of the feeder, the bowl lid's closing time is delayed by 2-3 seconds for safety. (The sensors are located at #4 on the photo attached)There are 2 issues I recognize immediately with the sensors safety.1. The sensor itself is located on the upper middle front of the feeder. Which in my situation, probably did not even recognize there was a pet there due to the size of the kitten.2. The sensor only triggers a delay in the lid closing but do not stop it. In my situation, even if the sensor had recognized the kitten, it still would have the pinch and lock point.Additionally, I am disappointed with the issue concerning the lid release button unable to be utilized in this type of emergency if the buttons are locked. To unlock the buttons on the feeder, you need to hold the unlock button down for 5 seconds to unlock all of the other buttons. In a true emergency, 5 seconds can make the difference between life and death.My concern is that without a sensor near the bowl and one that does not allow the lid to close and lock if there is any movement, not just delay it….is there a chance one of my resident kitties can get their paw, tail, or other part closed into this feeder lid? Yes, that possibility is very real.THE GOOD: Not to minimize the events I had occur in any way, but other than those two incidents, I have been pleased with the feeder, and it met my pets needs.Initially I wanted a feeder that recognized microchips as my kitties do not wear collars, but I decided on this one. The RFID tag was easily removed from the collar that it came on and was put onto a breakaway collar. It is a bit bulky on my little kitty’s neck but she does not seem bothered by it at all.The physical setup up was very easy and straightforward for me, which I loved.The app was also very easy to setup and customize everything from the display, to my voice as her custom meal call, to the amount she is fed and when. I love that it logs what time she goes to the feeder to eat and the minutes and seconds that she ate for.Overall, I am pleased that my other 2 seniors can not get to her food and disrupt their medical care but I am extremely disappointed in the major safety flaws.Sadly, I am on the hunt for new feeder as their safety is my biggest concern and priority.

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PETLIBRO RFID Automatic Cat Feeder, Collar Sensor for Personalized Meals, Cats Recognition, Diet Tracking and Anti-Stealing for Multi-Pets Homes and Different Diets, Wi-Fi Programmable Food Dispenser

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Reseñas

SO Close to Perfection...But the Best So Far!

Best Purchase Ever Made! 10/10

Good product that helps with feeding multiple cats!

Awesome product

Perfect feeder and a stress-reliever in the process!

MAJOR DANGER-PINCH POINT-COULD TURN DEADLY