Lots of members on the Feline Diabetes Message Board (FDMB) have asked recently about the Petlibro Polar Smart Wet Food Feeder. Since I’ve been using two of them for about a year, I wanted to share my honest experience for anyone considering these feeders.
This is an independent review. Petlibro has not paid me for this post. I am not a veterinarian or medical professional, just a caregiver to a diabetic cat and administrator of Felinediabetes.com. We do have an affiliate link with Petlibro that helps support the FDMB, but this review is written with the goal of helping our community.
Figure 1: Petlibro Polar Smart Wet Food Feeder.
The Problem This Feeder Solves
Cats with diabetes often do best with multiple small meals spread throughout the day. Even if you’re home, feeding every hour can become overwhelming. The Polar feeder solves this by automating feedings, keeping food cool, and taking one more task off your plate.
The unit has three compartments for wet food and a built-in cooling system. Before each scheduled meal, the feeder rotates and temporarily pauses cooling so food is served closer to room temperature. Unlike other wet food feeders that rely on ice packs and manual dials, the Polar connects to your phone app for scheduling.
Pros:
- Built-in cooling system (no ice packs required).
- Phone app (via WiFi) for flexible scheduling.
- Stainless steel tray option (better for hygiene).
- Audible bell for meal time.
- Responsive customer service and technical support.
- 24 month warranty from Petlibro.
- Discount code commonly offered on Petlibro’s website.
Cons:
- Small food opening: roughly 6″ long x 3.5″ wide, which may cause whisker fatigue for some cats.
- Occasional mis-rotation: about 1 in 100 feeds in my experience, usually caused by food residue under the trays or water pooling on the sensors.
- App scheduling is a little clunky: you must create separate schedules (e.g. morning vs evening) and switch between them when refilling the feeder.
- For example, you set your schedule for today at 7AM, 8AM, and 9AM. That will work great. But you then have to create another schedule for the evening cycle, and manually change that in the app. This is fine once you have the schedules created, and then just remember when you go to refill the feeder that you have to switch the schedules in the phone app.
- Power plugs run warm: noticeable but hasn’t been an issue for us.
- No solution for a multi-cat household: no RFID capabilities.
- Petlibro support is email only.
- Price: $149.99 (stainless steel tray) or $129.99 (plastic tray) as of 9/26/2025.
Best Practices & Tips:
- Clean under the tray every couple of days – water tends to pool and may contribute to rotation errors.
- Enable the “Smart” device sound setting so the bell keeps dinging until your cat shows up to eat.
Figure 2: Device Sound setting in the Petlibro app.
- Buy yourself an inexpensive WiFi camera to watch the rotations.
- We use the Blink series from Amazon. I do believe it requires a subscription and a wireless hub, but we have other cameras (over the litter box for example) and this made sense for us. I’m sure there are simple cameras out there that do not require a subscription.
Figure 3: Amazon Blink camera.
- Once a week completely turn off the feeder and let things dry for cleaning.
- Wash the trays with a little bit of soap and water every time they are refilled.
The Phone App:
This is the home screen for the feeder once you’ve got it connected and a feed schedule set. You can see the schedule and what feeds have been completed and what is scheduled next. You can also manually open the feeder and ding the bell.
Figure 4: Feeder home screen.
The app gives you some statistics and feedback about when your cat came to eat. This isn’t really a feature we use because of the separate motion detection camera.
Figure 5: Feed logs.
Here is the “Manage Schedules” screen where you can create new schedules and enable what feed schedule is active. Once they are created, you just need to hit the rocker switch to switch between them. The dates automatically update to the next day.
Figure 6: Managing and creating schedules screen.
Here’s the screen where you create schedules. You would do this for each of the three positions of the feeder. Or less if you only need one or two feeds. Note that if you were going to feed at 7AM and then 8AM, you can only set the duration of the 7AM feed to 29 minutes max, because of the built-in 30 minute “warming” process. It takes 30 minutes to bring the food back closer to room temperature. So personally I wouldn’t advise feeding any shorter than one hour apart like this or you risk your cat not having enough time to get there to eat.
Figure 7: Creating a schedule.
My Personal Setup:
We use two feeders side by side to cover our full schedule:
- Left feeder: 8AM, 9AM.
- Right feeder: 10AM, 11AM, and 4PM.
*Main meal is fed at 7AM manually.
We repeat the same cycle in the evening by switching schedules in the app for each feeder. This setup works for us, but your cat’s specific feed schedule may differ.
Figure 8: My personal Petlibro setup.
Final Thoughts:
The Petlibro Polar Smart Wet Food Feeder isn’t perfect, but it’s one of the best automated wet food solutions available (in my opinion) – especially for caregivers of diabetic cats. The ability to spread meals evenly, keep food fresh, and monitor feedings remotely is huge. I remember when we started on this feline diabetes journey, I never left the house. This feeder has helped me gain a little more flexibility in that regard. Feline diabetes is complex and has a lot of intricacies, so being able to remove a variable with consistent feeding times is something I found to be valuable.
If you can accept the scheduling quirks, occasional mis-rotation, and price, it’s well worth considering.
Here is our Petlibro affiliate link, we earn 8% on all purchases made through this link. We also get a commission from Amazon. If you do consider a camera, or even a different auto-feeder, use our Amazon affiliate link.
I know we have some folks on the FDMB that use this feeder, I’d be curious to hear your experiences! Start a conversation and share your thoughts on the forum!
