Independent buying guides
For Australian owners weighing an automatic feeder, a tracker or a pet camera. Each guide answers one buying question, gives sourced figures with their check dates, and works the running cost through a formula you can see.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
A feeder, a camera, a tracker and a fountain solve four different problems. Work out which task you want removed before spending $160 on the wrong one.
Photo: Giraldillo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Four devices at $655 of hardware come to $903 in year one once subscriptions and filters are counted, and $1,895 across five years.
Photo: Gareth James · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Safety
Button batteries, cords, jamming hoppers and lost power. Six checks to run on a smart pet device before it is left alone with an animal.
Photo: CezarADA · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
1
Photo: Tdorante10 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Standards, warnings and the checks worth doing.
1
Photo: Tdorante10 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What changes as a child or pet grows.
0
Photo: Tdorante10 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
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Photo: Tdorante10 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Order, frequency and how long a bottle lasts.
0
Photo: CezarADA · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Fixing it before you replace it.
0
Photo: Jules Verne Times Two · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each calculator shows its formula, units and assumptions. Nothing is estimated for you in secret.
Spreads purchase price, consumables and repairs over the years you expect to keep it.
cost per year = (purchase price - expected resale value + consumables per year x years + expected repairs) / years
Replacement intervals turned into a yearly cost for filters, pads, pods and brush heads.
replacements per year = 365 / interval in days; yearly cost = replacements per year x unit price x units per change
What a cross-border order really costs once shipping, duty and tax are added.
landed cost = (item price + shipping) + duty + tax, where duty = item price x duty rate, and tax = (item price + shipping + duty) x tax rate
Every figure in a guide is taken from a named source, with the date it was checked. Where a number is an assumption or an example, it says so in the same sentence.
We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned. Where a claim needs a lab or a long-term test we do not have, the guide says that plainly.
Photographs are free-licence images from Wikimedia Commons or Openverse, credited to the photographer with the licence named. Charts are drawn from the figures printed in the same guide.
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