Bad smell in urine comes from ammonia, nothing to do with mixing. The quality and mechanism of the litter helps to neutralize it. Also I’ll take an automatic machine over manual. The market was junk ten years ago but there’s some good ones out lately, like Petkit, Popur, or Casa Leo.

> the $700 litter robot, etc.. (that thing is not worth it at all btw)

I can confirm this as well. For one, it doesn't even work that well. You're still doing a lot of manual scraping and cleanup too. The thing also just scares the cat. And if you know anything about cats, they're very particular about their litter box, especially about privacy and a sense of "safety". A motor and loud sounds coming from their litter box at various times throughout the day is not generally something they will feel comfortable with and it's possible that they just won't even use it at all.

As an opposing anecdote, one of my cats loves watching it when it activates, and will hang out in the thing for fun (not while it's cleaning, of course). But only 1 of the 3 cats wants anything to do with it.

We didn't pay $700 for it, though. They had a sale a while ago on the previous model, and it was less than half that price.

zero manual scrapping and cleanup here. secret is in using proper clamping litter

Cedar pellets also work a lot better than traditional litter. No fine dust.