The Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder was launched alongside the Xiaomi Smart Pet Fountain we’ve reviewed together. These two would work very well together side by side to compliment your furkids’ meal times throughout the day. Since it is a smart pet food feeder, it is extremely useful for days when you need to be away from the house for a longer period than normal. But before we go further in detail, here’s what the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder offers in terms of features.
Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder – Features
- 24-hour automatic pet feeding
- Waterproof, retains freshness
- Smooth dispensation
- Smart scene link-up
- Xiaomi Home app connectivity
- Remote, precise feeding
Setting Up
As compared to the Xiaomi Smart Pet Fountain, the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder is a little more complicated to set it up as it has more steps. It’s not as direct and straightforward. So first you’ll need to unwrap everything and lay them down in front of you. Attach the metal bowl to the bowl base, and put it together with the feeder’s main body. They will attach magnetically, which is really smart.
Next, opening up the top lid was tricky for us, but you actually just need to press the safety clip on the back, and pull the lid up and out. Inside, you will find the carbon desiccant filter, as well as the power cable. Attach the power cable to the bottom rear of the feeder, and there’s actually a small pocket area for you to store any excess cables that you don’t need. This is really useful if your pets are fond of biting/chewing cables.
Power up the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder, and you’re ready to pair it to the Xiaomi Home app. Follow the on-screen instructions and you’ll have it all connected in under two minutes. It really is that fast!
App Connectivity
Pairing it with the Xiaomi Home app is how you can truly make full use of the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder’s potential. Immediately on the homepage you will see how many portion has been dispensed today, the feeding schedules you have set up (manual and automatic).
Apart from that, you can also register each pet you have. Not just their names and breed, but also their neutered status, birthday, weight, and type of food they eat, complete with crude protein, fat, fiber and moisture details!
In the settings page, you can also turn on a “child lock” feature so that the manual dispense button won’t activate so easily when pressed. It will also tell you how to clean the food compartment, remaining days of the desiccant cartridge, set up automation schedules, and perform firmware updates.
Design
When it comes to design, the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder is definitely one of the most sleek and minimalist pet feeder I’ve seen. Evidently, it doesn’t have a built-in camera unfortunately, so the front of the feeder down to the food-grade 304 stainless steel bowl looks ultra clean. The front has a small indicator light, which lets you know if the feeder is connected to WiFi. You can also turn this light off in the settings section of the Xiaomi Home app.
The entire Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder is draped in white, while the stainless steel bowl can be removed for even easier cleaning. The feeding bowl base has a magnetic style attachment to the feeder, so Xiaomi has definitely put extra thought in designing the feeder.
In the event of a power outage, the feeder even has a built-in emergency power supply to ensure regular dispending. Now that is pretty sweet!
User Experience
I’ve been using the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder for a good month and a half now, and it’s taken me a while to get used to it. The feeder itself is amazing, not taking into consideration the fact that it doesn’t have a built-in camera (Xiaomi, for v2, please put that in.), it’s more of how you set it up and how your furkids’ eating behaviors are.
The Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder has a top lid that is secure, complete with the desiccant cartridge to keep the pet food inside dry. While the manual and app says that only circular food granules (maximum kibble diameter is 5 to 12mm) are supported, our triangular Royal Canin kibbles worked fine being dispensed out of the feeder. Although, it did get stuck a few times, but an easy poke solves the issue.
I usually feed my three cats twice a day, each about one scoop (120g). The feeder considers one portion as 5g, and each dispense is only at a maximum of 30 portions (approx. 150g). Of course, you can reduce and control how much each dispensed portion is. What I noticed is that when the feeder is about to dispense the next portion, it detects the weight that there’s still food in the food bowl, it will skip that turn, and wait till the next feeding schedule.
On your part, you will need to find out how much portion you usually feed your furkids, and when do you usually feed them. You can replicate that routine with the Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder, then it’s all breezy from there. You would also need to consider if you have multiple furkids, how you will need to set up the feeding schedule and portion as they will be sharing one food bowl.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi Smart Pet Food Feeder is great in many ways, but lacks the extra touch which is a built-in camera, microphone and speaker array. By adding these trio, it would open up a whole lot more potential for pet owners to visually see their pets digging into their meal, and to communicate with them so they would feel at ease.
Xiaomi’s asking price for the Smart Pet Food Feeder might be a little on the pricey side compared to models that have cameras, but it’s definitely a life saver when you have the security and reliability of the Xiaomi Home app’s ecosystem while being away from home.
