Whisker’s $899 Litter-Robot 5 Pro Misses Cat ID and Waste Tracking

Q: Could the always-on camera in this $899 smart litter box be secretly recording your bathroom habits instead of your cat's?

Yes, it could capture people nearby if it is placed badly, but there is no evidence in the review that Whisker’s Litter-Robot 5 Pro was secretly designed to record human bathroom habits. The Verge’s test found that the Pro’s always-connected camera system can accidentally record a person entering a nearby bathroom because the front-facing camera watches the area outside the litter box. That is a real privacy concern, especially in small homes where the unit may be near a bathroom door. The review also said the interior camera view was live-only, which limits what is actually stored of the cat using the box. What the product appears to be built for is cat monitoring: identifying individual cats, tracking visits, weight and possible health changes. The bigger problem in the review was not hidden human surveillance, but that many of those AI features did not work reliably. Cat ID mixed up cats, WasteID was inconsistent, and some health summaries were inaccurate. So the risk is less “secretly spying on your bathroom routine” than “an always-on pet camera may incidentally see more than you want.” Buyers should treat it like any internet-connected camera: check placement carefully, review camera settings in the app, disable or limit camera use if possible, and read Whisker’s privacy policy before putting it near a bathroom. If you do not need the camera and AI tools, reviewers broadly recommend the cheaper Litter-Robot 5 or better-proven Litter-Robot 4 instead.

3 articles · Updated · The Verge · Aug 17

Six months of testing found Whisker’s $899 Litter-Robot 5 Pro handled scooping well but failed at its headline AI features, especially Cat ID facial recognition and WasteID waste classification.
The system repeatedly confused two very different-looking cats, merged their profiles, misassigned visits and weights, and produced no useful health insight despite Whisker’s $8-a-month subscription.
Whisker told the reviewer one unit’s gas sensor was miscalibrated and later said the scale was also off, with a full replacement needed to fix some of the errors.
Several software updates, including a new Patterns summary, arrived months after launch, but the review says owners were paying for features that still lacked reliable waste-type detail.
The review recommends skipping the AI premium for now: the 5 Pro and cheaper models still automate litter cleaning effectively, but the promised health-monitoring intelligence is not yet ready.