Independent buying guides
For UK owners weighing a camera, a feeder or a tracker against the hours they are out at work. Each guide answers one buying question, uses dated sourced figures, and shows a monthly-cost calculator with its formula.
The decisions that actually change what you end up with.
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Photo: Gareth James · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Standards, warnings and the checks worth doing.
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Photo: Giraldillo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What changes as a child or pet grows.
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Photo: Grand Canyon National Park · CC BY 2.0 · 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.
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Photo: Tdorante10 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Fixing it before you replace it.
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Photo: Tdorante10 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Start with the hours your animal is alone, not the product. What a camera, a feeder and a tracker each answer, and the duty none of them satisfies.
Photo: Giraldillo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
The box price is the smallest of three numbers. Hardware, subscription and electricity costed over three years at the price cap rate of 26.32p per kWh.
Photo: Jules Verne Times Two · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Safety
The five needs in the Animal Welfare Act, the microchipping duty with its 8-week and 20-week deadlines, and how to pick devices that fail safe in a power cut.
Photo: Tdorante10 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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We do not run paid product tests, we do not publish reader reviews, and we do not claim to have handled every product mentioned.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.
This site earns money from advertising and, where disclosed, from affiliate links. That does not change the order of a comparison or the conclusion of a guide.
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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