Independent buying guides
For Canadian owners weighing a feeder, tracker or camera against the fees that can come with it. Each guide answers one question, cites its figures with check dates, and shows the formula in every monthly-cost calculator.
Each guide answers one buying question and shows the figures behind the answer.
How to choose
Each device answers one question and no device answers two. Match the problem you actually have to the hardware, before the monthly fee decides for you.
Photo: Giraldillo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Budget and prices
Hardware spread over its life, cellular and cloud plans, filters and batteries, plus GST/HST at the till. The yearly cost of a connected pet household.
Photo: CezarADA · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Safety
The four failure modes that matter in a connected pet household, and the tests that catch each one before the device is relied on.
Photo: Grand Canyon National Park · CC BY 2.0 · 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
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: CezarADA · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What changes as a child or pet grows.
0
Photo: Jules Verne Times Two · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What the total comes to once everything is counted.
1
Photo: Gareth James · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Order, frequency and how long a bottle lasts.
0
Photo: Giraldillo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Fixing it before you replace it.
0
Photo: Grand Canyon National Park · CC BY 2.0 · 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.
Some links on this site can earn us a commission. That does not change which product a guide recommends, and it adds nothing to your price. Advertising is not enabled on this site yet. When it is, ads will be labelled and kept visually separate from the guides.