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As an avid user of smart pet tech, including a smart feeder and robot litter box, I’ve found these devices to be some of the most liberating tools in my home with a very vocal cat. If his food and litter aren’t perfect, I hear about it. Naturally, having a smart feeder has saved me many early-morning feedings and given me more time to sleep.
So when I recently had the chance to test the new Granary 2 Vision, I saw it as a good opportunity to compare it to my existing PawSync feeder. The biggest draw of the Granary 2 Vision is its built-in camera and AI pet recognition, which can track multiple pets so you know how much each one eats. My cat and I have been using the Granary 2 Vision for a month. Overall, I think it’s generally a good pet feeder, but I’m betting it’s not a fit for everyone.
What the Petlibro Granary 2 Vision offers
At its core, the Granary 2 Vision is similar to my PawSync Smart Pet Feeder. Both brands have a white plastic design with a detachable scale that holds a stainless steel feeding bowl, which is easy to clean and dishwasher-safe. Of the two, the Granary 2 Vision has a larger food hopper, holding 5 liters of dry cat food compared to PawSync’s 3.6 liters. Still, PawSync is better at estimating how much food is left in the hopper because you set the food level after each refill. The Granary 2 Vision can basically only tell you when the food level is low.
The base of the Granary 2 Vision is also a single continuous piece below the scale, dispenser and hopper, making it easier to place on carpet than PawSync. (Petlibro still recommends against placing it on thick carpet for the best performance.) For context, the scale portion of the PawSync is an entirely separate piece that can shift on carpet, so I placed a board underneath it to keep it in my preferred spot.
I like the meal call setting, which plays a short message each time it dispenses food. While I’ve found that my cat usually responds more to the sound of the food hitting the bowl than to my recording, it’s a nice way for your pet to hear your voice when you’re out of the house. You can also mute the meal call at night for a quieter experience.
One major thing I prefer about the Granary 2 Vision is its backup battery: It’s a rechargeable pack rather than the massive D-cells PawSync uses. That said, the Granary 2 Vision’s battery life is only two days, compared to six days with PawSync. Either way, it’s nice to have a backup in case something goes wrong while you’re on vacation.
Where the Petlibro Granary 2 Vision differs most is with its camera, which records clips of your pet eating or shows a live video feed in the Petlibro app. The camera, however, is a major reason this product is about twice as expensive as PawSync — and that’s before you factor in the subscription.
Tracking your pet’s food intake with a built-in camera and AI analysis
If I could describe the Granary 2 Vision’s subscription in one word, it would be “fatigue.” This is because Petlibro offers separate subscriptions for the camera’s cloud storage and the AI service that tracks changes in a pet’s eating habits. On the surface, this is a reasonable approach, because the base-level Granary 2 lacks a camera, making video storage unnecessary. As such, you might only want the Petlibro Care AI tracking, which costs $60 per year for a single pet or $130 per year for multiple pets.
Because you can still see food intake without a subscription, the main benefit is the AI summarizing trends such as how quickly your pet eats, when they eat most often and helping with goals such as weight loss. This service works with Petlibro’s other smart products — you can also track water intake, weight, bathroom habits and overall activity. I think it has the potential to be a useful service if you have the budget for the various devices, but it largely feels redundant compared to a few minutes of manual food intake tracking.
John Carlsen/CNET
Where the fatigue sets in is the separate Video Cloud AI storage plan, which costs between $96 and $160 a year, depending on the number of devices and length of video history. Many of the meal-tracking features are the same, but there’s no cross-compatibility, so the camera’s insights don’t appear in the pet-tracking reports. While I can see some value in both systems, they shouldn’t be separate purchases. Petlibro could easily include the Care subscription in the video storage plan to avoid users paying $156 to $290 yearly for full functionality, which is close to or more expensive than the $190 Granary 2 Vision itself.
In the years I’ve reviewed security cameras, it’s always been tough to swallow a cloud plan with a yearly cost higher than that of the cameras’. Thankfully, Petlibro doesn’t require a subscription to use the Granary 2. You can still do basic food intake tracking (up to a week of feeding data) and view a live video feed for free. Likewise, all of the feeder’s scheduling and core features also work without a monthly plan. Because the plans are optional, I’m not inclined to fault Petlibro too much.
How the Granary 2 Vision held up in my testing
Beyond the paid plans, a few issues and quirks make me rethink the usefulness of the Granary 2 Vision for my situation. My cat is prone to overeating, so making sure he doesn’t have a huge pile of food available at all times helps prevent this. On the surface, the Granary 2 Vision can pause feeding, but it only does so when the bowl is full. This means it will happily dole out multiple servings at a time in Scheduled Feeding mode.
I had a similar issue with the Smart Refill mode, which dispenses food within a daily limit — and only when the bowl’s contents are below a certain weight. In practice, this meant the cat would get a new serving of food while he was still eating the previous one. This isn’t an ideal situation for pets that overeat, which meant a whinier cat and more carpet cleanup for me.
Another issue I encountered during my testing was a Petlibro server outage lasting a couple of days. Had I been out of the house during the outage, my cat would’ve gone unfed. It was only because I could hit the manual feeding button — on the feeder and in the app — that he didn’t constantly tell me he was hungry. I’ve seen a few early customer reviews saying the dispenser can jam, but I didn’t experience that during my month of use.
Things leveled out after Petlibro resolved the outage and the feeder got a new firmware update. Still, the way the smart refill and daily bowl limits work isn’t great for my needs. One final nitpick: The feeder tracks servings in increments of 1/12 cup, which is fine until you see that the only measurement units are grams and ounces. This means I never know how big a serving is supposed to be, and how much is actually left in the bowl. In contrast, my PawSync feeder has a calibration option that dispenses a few servings to gauge how much each weighs with a particular food — this way, it can tell me that each serving is 12 grams.
Should you buy the Petlibro Granary 2 Vision?
I know it sounds like I’m being overly critical of the Petlibro Granary 2 Vision, but it doesn’t align with the way I feed my cat. Other pet owners will likely have a much better experience, and I hope Petlibro will make some adjustments to its software to better serve pet owners like me. The software doesn’t feel as polished as PawSync’s, and the AI features largely feel unnecessary. The optional subscription fees are steeper than I’d want to pay for a smart pet feeder, too.
Still, there are certain aspect that I love: the rechargeable backup battery, the live camera view and the large food hopper. I’m not sure if these can justify the $190 asking price, especially if you don’t want a subscription. Fortunately, the $130 base Granary 2 has a much more competitive price without a camera. Similarly, people with multiple cats are better off with the Granary 2 Vision Duo, which has two feeding bowls and offers stronger AI pet recognition to help manage different food intakes.
Overall, I think the Petlibro Granary 2 Vision is a good smart pet feeder, though the price isn’t generally worth it for people on a budget. However, there’s a lot of appeal in integrating it with other Petlibro smart pet tech to get a big-picture view of your pet’s health. But for folks simply looking to prevent overeating — specifically for cats that eat so much they can’t keep their food down — I think that the $100 PawSync is a better choice.
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