How this VOLUAS automatic cat feeder review was made: I haven’t used this product, and I don’t have a cat. I read about eighty of the written customer reviews Amazon surfaces on this listing — roughly forty from the low end and forty from the high end — and summarised the patterns in my own words, the same way as every review on this site. That’s a sample rather than a full reading, and most ratings carry no written review at all. Star percentages are Amazon’s published figures. Nothing here is sponsored. The Amazon links on this page are affiliate links: as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
This is the best-rated product I’ve written about on this site: 4.4 stars across 12,448 ratings, with 9% at one or two. It has no app, no Wi-Fi, no camera. It has a clock, a dial for portions, a button that records ten seconds of your voice, and a slot for three D batteries.
That’s the whole appeal, and reading the reviews, it is also where most of the complaints live. The five-star owners bought a timer and got a timer. The low-star owners ran into the places where a timer stops being enough — a portion setting that isn’t a measurement, a clock that has to be set before anything else, and a missed meal that nothing tells you about. This VOLUAS automatic cat feeder review is about that boundary.
What you’re buying
A 4-litre hopper on top, a motor and a rotating wheel in the base, a removable stainless bowl in front. You set a clock, then up to four meals a day, each at anything from 0 to 40 “portions”. The listing says a portion is about 6 to 7 grams, roughly a tablespoon. It runs off a 5-volt USB adapter, and there’s a battery compartment for three D cells so it keeps going through a power cut. A 6-litre version is on the same listing; a two-bowl model is sold separately.
Amazon marks it as its Choice in the category, and the listing shows several thousand bought in the past month. The return window is thirty days, and owners in the reviews refer to a one-year warranty.
VOLUAS automatic cat feeder review, part one: the portion dial
The single most common thread across both ends of the reviews is the portion setting, and it is worth understanding before you buy.
The listing says 6 to 7 grams per portion. A four-star owner weighed theirs: three portions came to 19 grams, which matches. Another owner found a setting of two gave almost exactly two tablespoons, which also matches. A five-star owner who was buying three more units for other cats gives the advice that follows from this: don’t trust the feeding guide in the manual, because kibbles differ in size and density — run the feeder manually into a cup and weigh what comes out.
Now the low-star side. Four owners report the opposite of variation: the same small amount no matter what the dial says. One says about a tablespoon at any setting. Another says the wheel turns the same amount whether set to 4 or 40, even with the hopper empty. A third describes five to ten pieces of kibble when a quarter cup was needed. And one owner had the reverse problem — it kept spitting out far more than programmed.
I cannot tell from the reviews whether those four had faulty units or a kibble the wheel couldn’t move. What I can tell you is that it is the first thing to test, it takes two minutes with a cup and a kitchen scale, and the thirty-day window is long enough to find out.
Kibble size matters. A five-star owner reports 7-to-9-millimetre pieces going through fine. A four-star owner uses it for an elderly dog on puppy-size kibble. A two-star owner says it simply isn’t built for medium or large dog kibble despite the listing mentioning dogs, and a one-star owner reports it jamming with three different sizes, all within the stated range. The listing’s anti-clog claim is a claim; the reviews say it holds for small kibble and gets shakier as pieces get bigger.
Military time, and a speaker on the bottom
The second cluster of complaints is about setting it up, and most of them come down to two things the instructions don’t say clearly.
The clock is 24-hour, and you have to set it before the schedule. Several owners across the rating range say this: one three-star calls the instructions very vague, another says it took three attempts, a four-star says it’s important to set the time of day first, and a five-star simply notes “FYI it’s on military time”. None of that is a defect, but it is the kind of thing that turns a first evening into a returned box.
The voice recording is quiet. The listing sells a ten-second meal call in your own voice. A four-star owner who worked out why it sounds muffled found the speaker on the underside of the unit. Two others say the volume is too low with no way to raise it, and one describes the playback as crackly. One owner says the recording unsettled their cats and they stopped using it. In fairness, the same four-star owner reports their cat responding to the whirr of the motor instead, which is what most cats seem to learn.
One owner also calls it bulky. The listing gives dimensions; check them against the corner you have in mind.
The meal that doesn’t come: the part of this VOLUAS automatic cat feeder review that matters most
This is the complaint that matters most for a machine you’re going to leave a cat with, and it comes in two forms.
The unit dies. The reported timelines run from a single day, to under a month, to two months, to “a few months” with a blank screen, to a motor binding at around a year, to fifteen months, to eighteen months. One owner is careful to note that theirs failed right after the twelve-month warranty ran out. On the long end, an owner at two and three-quarter years reports the mains power side giving up while the battery side still works, and shrugs that nothing lasts forever. Another had a display turn to gibberish at eighteen months and got a week out of each new USB cable.
The unit skips. This one is worse, because you do not get a dead screen to warn you. A one-star owner set up a camera and found the feeder had failed to dispense about five times in four months, after they’d already switched to smaller kibble to rule that out. Another reports the machine stopping every so often since June, needing to be unplugged and replugged ten times to revive. A three-star owner says theirs lost track of time after the first year, running an hour late and needing resetting every couple of days. A fourth says the clock resets itself.
The most sobering review is from an owner who bought three of these a little over a year ago. One cat started behaving frantically around dinner. A camera showed that the feeder had been serving dinner but silently skipping breakfast and lunch for an unknown stretch. Because the meal they were home for came out on time, nothing looked wrong.
Here’s the thing to take from that: this feeder has no way to tell you it missed a meal. That is the trade you make for no app. Several of the happy owners solve it the same way the unhappy ones discovered the problem — a cheap camera pointed at the bowl. If you’ll be away for more than a night, that is not paranoia; it is the missing feature.
Raccoons, barn cats, and cats that open it
Something I didn’t expect: the two most-voted reviews on the listing are about using this feeder outdoors, and both are about raccoons.
The most-voted five-star review, over a hundred helpful votes, is from someone feeding a tamed feral cat on a covered porch. They put the feeder inside an old bird cage, cut a slot for the kibble to drop through, bolted the cage to plywood and weighed it with bricks. Ten months later they updated it: still working, nothing has got in. Another owner ran theirs for two years on a stray, through raccoons that dragged it into the woods, defeated a kettlebell and paving slabs stacked on top, and eventually worked out they could reach up inside and spin the dispensing wheel. It still works; they bring it in at night. A third runs it on batteries for a barn cat, thirty-plus days per set on two meals a day, and reports raccoons knocking it off its bungee cords without managing to open the hopper.
Then the indoor side, where the same question — can an animal get in — goes the other way. Three low-star owners report their own cats defeating it: one whose cats knocked it over three times and ate everything while they were away, one whose cat lifts the lid off, and one, resigned, whose orange cat has broken in several times. The listing shows a lock clasp on the lid. The raccoon reviews suggest it holds; the cat reviews suggest it doesn’t always. I can’t reconcile those from here, except to note that a fifteen-pound raccoon and a determined house cat apply force in different places.
If your cat is the kind that opens cupboards, test the lid before you rely on it. And one owner’s line is worth keeping: they’re on their third unit because raccoons stole the first two, and they keep buying the same model because it works.
What owners buy it for
Set the failures aside and the five-star reviews are unusually consistent about the reward.
Sleep. This comes up more than anything. A cat that meowed and scratched the mattress before dawn now gets a 4 a.m. feeding and the owner doesn’t. Another says the feeder saved them from hating their cat. A third, whose cat used to wake them for breakfast, says no more early rising. One owner reports the cat has lost weight on scheduled small meals.
Power cuts. A five-star owner with over a hundred votes describes leaving on a trip, the power going out for eight hours, and the feeder running through it on its batteries. Another says it worked flawlessly through outages. The listing sells dual power as a feature; the reviews say it works.
Repeat purchases. More than in any listing I’ve covered, owners describe buying this again: a second one eight months later for a stray, a second after adopting a kitten with the first still going after years, one for a parent after eighteen months, a second for another cat, three more for other cats. A six-litre owner with four cats and a small dog fills it every two to three weeks.
Simplicity. One owner says there’s nothing fancy about it and that’s what makes it convenient. Another likes that it works in a garage with no Wi-Fi. The absence of an app is a feature to these people, not an omission.
VOLUAS automatic cat feeder review: who it suits
4.4 stars, 74% five-star, 9% at one or two, on 12,448 ratings. The numbers are as good as this category gets, and the low-star reviews are mostly about the edges of a simple design rather than a bad one.
Get it if you want a feeder that doesn’t need Wi-Fi, you’ll spend ten minutes on day one weighing a manual dispense and setting the 24-hour clock, and you’ll either be home most days or put a camera on the bowl for longer trips. It’s the feeder for a cat that wakes you up.
Skip it if you need remote alerts — there are none — or your pet eats large kibble, or your cat opens things. A two-bowl model exists if you have two cats; one owner with two single units reports them firing fifteen seconds apart.
In the first week: weigh a portion, set the clock before the schedule, test the lid, and run it long enough to see a few meals arrive on time. Those four cover most of the low-star reviews I read.
Current listing and price. If you’d rather have an app and alerts, that’s a different machine and a different set of complaints, and I’ll cover one in this series shortly. For the rest of what I’ve read in this category, see the pet reviews — the interactive toy comparison is the closest in spirit: another set of products where the reviews sort the animals more than the machines.
The reviews behind this
Rating, month and helpful-vote count, so you can find them on the listing yourself. No names and no quoted text — these are summaries in my own words.
| Rating | Posted | Votes | What it reports |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 star | Aug 2022 | 104 | Ran through an eight-hour power cut on batteries; one unit indoors, one outdoors |
| 5 star | Dec 2024 | 101 | Feral cat on a porch; feeder inside a bird cage against raccoons; still working a year on |
| 5 star | Aug 2026 | 5 | Two years outdoors; raccoons learned to reach in and spin the wheel; still works |
| 5 star | Aug 2026 | 5 | 7–9 mm kibble fine; first portion may not drop when new; elevated on a box |
| 5 star | Aug 2026 | 5 | Second unit after adopting a kitten; first has lasted years |
| 5 star | Sep 2026 | 4 | Dog fed twice a day on schedule; nothing to remember |
| 4 star | Aug 2026 | 2 | Setting 2 gave about two tablespoons; speaker is on the bottom and muffled |
| 4 star | Aug 2026 | 2 | Set the time of day before the schedule |
| 5 star | Jul 2026 | 2 | Barn cat on batteries; 30+ days per set; raccoons knocked it over but could not open it |
| 4 star | Aug 2026 | 0 | Three portions weighed 19 g |
| 5 star | Aug 2026 | 1 | Buying three more; ignore the manual’s feeding guide, kibble sizes differ |
| 5 star | Aug 2026 | 0 | Cat that woke the owner before dawn now gets a 4 a.m. meal |
| 5 star | Aug 2026 | 0 | Third unit; raccoons took the other two |
| 5 star | Sep 2026 | 0 | Four cats and a dog on the 6 L; refill every two to three weeks |
| 4 star | Aug 2026 | 0 | Elderly dog on puppy-size kibble; portion programming tricky |
| 1 star | Sep 2026 | 1 | Failed to dispense about five times in four months; seen on camera; smaller kibble did not help |
| 1 star | Jul 2026 | 1 | Three units over a year; one silently skipped breakfast and lunch while serving dinner |
| 1 star | Sep 2026 | 0 | Same amount dispensed at every setting |
| 1 star | Jul 2026 | 0 | Wheel turns the same amount whether set to 4 or 40, even empty |
| 1 star | Jul 2026 | 0 | Five to ten pieces when a quarter cup was needed |
| 1 star | Jun 2026 | 1 | Kept dispensing far more than programmed |
| 1 star | Jul 2026 | 0 | Jams with three kibble sizes, all within spec |
| 2 star | Aug 2026 | 0 | Not for medium or large dog kibble |
| 1 star | Sep 2026 | 1 | Cats knocked it over three times and ate everything |
| 2 star | Aug 2026 | 2 | Cat removes the lid |
| 2 star | Jul 2026 | 2 | Orange cat has broken in several times |
| 2 star | Aug 2026 | 0 | Stops every so often since June; ten replugs to revive |
| 3 star | Jun 2026 | 0 | Lost track of time after a year; runs an hour late |
| 1 star | Sep 2026 | 1 | Motor binding inside the base at about a year; otherwise five stars |
| 2 star | Aug 2026 | 1 | Eighteen months, failed just past the one-year warranty |
| 3 star | Jul 2026 | 1 | Two and three-quarter years; mains side dead, batteries still work |
| 1 star | Jun 2026 | 3 | Stopped dispensing after one day |
| 3 star | Sep 2026 | 0 | Vague instructions; only four meals; recording too quiet; bulky |
| 3 star | Jun 2026 | 3 | Works fine; wants clearer instructions about 24-hour time and portion size |
| 2 star | Jul 2026 | 0 | Two units for two cats fire about fifteen seconds apart |
Common questions
How much is one portion?
The listing says 6 to 7 grams. Owners who weighed theirs got numbers that agree, and owners who didn’t got surprises in both directions. Weigh a manual dispense of your own kibble on day one and do the arithmetic from there.
Does it work in a power cut?
With three D batteries fitted, yes, according to owners who lived through outages. On batteries alone, one barn-cat owner gets over a month per set at two meals a day.
Will it tell me if it misses a meal?
No. There’s no app and no alert. Owners who discovered missed meals did so with a camera or a hungry cat. For trips longer than a night, a camera on the bowl is the honest answer.
Can a cat break into it?
Three owners say theirs did. Two raccoon owners say the lid held. Test it with your own cat before you leave for the weekend.
Star percentages are Amazon’s published figures at the time of writing and will drift as new ratings arrive. Patterns above are summarised in my own words from a sample of the written reviews Amazon surfaces on this listing, which is smaller than the listing’s full review count and much smaller than its total ratings. Product images are from the manufacturer’s listing. Specifications, pricing and availability change; check the listing for current details.