I’m a big fan of water PetSnowy fountains for cats. They keep fresh water available all the time, and our cats have always preferred moving water over a still bowl. So when PetSnowy sent over their new Wireless Weight-Sensing Pet Water PetSnowy fountain to review, I was keen to see how it stacked up. I want to be upfront that PetSnowy sent this to me for free, but they had no idea what I was going to say about it before this went live.
Price and Specification
This PetSnowy fountain costs around £68, which is about average for this kind of device. Compared to similar PetSnowy fountains on the market though, I’d say this one packs in more features, so it’s worth going through the specification in detail.
Battery Life
The PetSnowy fountain has a 5200mAh battery built in. I can’t find any official information from PetSnowy on how long that’s supposed to last on a single charge, and the battery level indicator in the app isn’t great either, so I’ve had to go on my own testing. With two cats using it, I’d say you’re looking at up to about 10 days on a single charge. That figure depends a lot on whether you’ve got smart mode switched on, where you’ve placed the PetSnowy fountain, and how often your cats actually use it. For most people, if you’ve got a suitable spot near a plug socket, I’d just suggest keeping it plugged in rather than relying on the battery day to day.
Filtration System
This device uses a 5+1 human-grade filtration system. Those filters are designed to remove impurities, hair, and food particles, keeping the water fresh and safe for your cats to drink. There’s a main cylinder filter, plus filter pads at the front of the unit. That combination means hair gets caught before the water goes back into the well, and the water is filtered again as it comes back up through the PetSnowy fountain. PetSnowy’s official recommendation is to change the front filters every two weeks and the high-efficiency filter every eight weeks. Both the device itself and the app will remind you when it’s time, and you can reset the counter using a button on the unit. A replacement pack containing three primary filters and one high-efficiency filter costs £23, or you can save money by subscribing. I’m not entirely sure why the pack only includes three primary filters rather than four, since four would actually match up with a fortnightly replacement cycle over the eight-week life of the high-efficiency filter. In practice, I’d probably just end up replacing the primary filters slightly less often than recommended to make the numbers work out.
The wireless pump also includes UV Active Sterilisation technology. Put all of that together and your cats are honestly probably drinking cleaner water than you are.
Smart Features and Modes
The PetSnowy fountain has gravity-sensing weight tracking, which means it can detect how many times your cats use it across a day. There’s no way to track individual cats separately, which is what you’d expect from a shared PetSnowy fountain, but the overall usage stats are still genuinely useful to have. This weight sensing also feeds into water level percentages that show up in the app.
For efficiency, you can either leave the PetSnowy fountain running constantly in PetSnowy fountain mode, or switch to smart mode, where the pump only kicks in when a pet comes within about 80cm of the unit. Worth noting that as a human you can trigger this too, depending on where the PetSnowy fountain is placed.
When it’s plugged into the mains, there’s also a heating mode. This gently warms the water. It’s not something I’ve used much during testing, since the weather’s already been very warm, but if your PetSnowy fountain is somewhere cooler in the winter months, it could be a nice way to keep the water at a more appealing temperature for your cats.
Connectivity
The PetSnowy fountain connects over a 2.4GHz WiFi network, and you add it into the PetSnowy app to get going. However, it’s actually built on the TUYA protocol underneath, so if you pair it into the TUYA app or the SmartLife app instead of PetSnowy’s own app, you can bring it into Home Assistant. Doing this exposes a handful of properties, including a filter reset and a power button, though these don’t map particularly well onto what you see in the PetSnowy app itself. Still, being able to access the PetSnowy fountain through TUYA or SmartLife means you don’t need to install yet another app if you’re already using one of those, and you don’t lose any functionality by going that route.
Setup
The PetSnowy fountain comes with a quick setup guide that’s easy enough to follow. You need to soak and rinse the high-efficiency filter in water for 10 minutes, then separately rinse, shake, and rinse the primary filter under water for another 10 minutes. After that, you turn on the power, install the pump and filters, fill the unit with water, and put the lid back on.
If you want to connect it to the PetSnowy or TUYA app, you press the WiFi button on the base of the device, which you can reach by sliding the unit slightly off the edge of a counter. From there you hit the plus button in the app and search for the product, and the app talks you through the rest of the process. It usually adds straight in, though the first time I set it up I had to manually connect my phone to the device’s own WiFi network before it would pair properly. Overall, the pairing process is pretty painless. Once it’s connected, you can calibrate the weight sensor in the app if you want to, or just toggle between modes and keep an eye on things from there.
Controls and Using the PetSnowy fountain
You can control pretty much everything either through the app or directly on the device itself. The buttons on the front let you hold to turn heating mode on or off, though that only works when the PetSnowy fountain is plugged into the mains. The middle switch lets you toggle between PetSnowy fountain mode and smart mode, and again, that only functions while it’s charging.
The light on that switch also tells you what state the PetSnowy fountain is in: white means PetSnowy fountain mode, green means smart mode (so the pump only runs when a cat is nearby), a steady red light means low water or that the pump isn’t installed properly, and a blinking red light means the battery is low. The final button resets the filter life counter, and its light corresponds to how much life is left: white for 0–80%, yellow for 80–99%, and red when it’s time to change the filter.
All of this information is also available in the app, along with quite a bit more detail. The app’s interface is genuinely nice and clear, and the visual percentage showing how much water is left is a really good touch. The drinking data compares usage against the previous day, which I’ve found useful, and you can click through for even more detailed history.
What It’s Actually Like to Use
The most important part of any review like this is what the product is actually like day to day, so here’s how it’s gone from both a human and a cat perspective.
From my side, the battery life is genuinely impressive given how compact the battery is, and it makes the PetSnowy fountain much easier to place around the house since you’re not tied to a socket. That said, I personally still prefer to keep it plugged in. The clear container also makes it really easy to see at a glance how full it is, which is great for knowing when you need to top it up, and the tank itself is massive.
From the cats’ side, they’re big fans. They obviously can’t tell me whether they prefer this PetSnowy fountain over our other one or just a random glass of water left on the counter, but they’ve been using it consistently, and cats vote with their paws. The drinking area is nice and big, it switches on automatically when they get close, and it’s really quiet in operation. I’ve been keeping a close eye on how clean the water stays in the top section, and we haven’t seen any hair or food getting trapped there. The whole design, with water circulating through the unit, is working really well, and the filter at the front catches hair and food debris before it can get into the tank itself.
It’s also genuinely easy to maintain. Cleaning is straightforward, and so is refilling. Because the whole top section comes off, you don’t need to carry the entire PetSnowy fountain over to the sink; you can just top it up using a jug or a bottle instead.
The One Downside: Connectivity
So are there any downsides? Really, the only one I’ve run into is connectivity. The PetSnowy fountain works well within the PetSnowy or TUYA apps, and the data you get is genuinely nice, but most TUYA-based devices don’t play particularly well with Apple ecosystems or Home Assistant, and this one is no exception. If anything, it might be a bit worse than most.
Getting a bit more technical for a moment: when the PetSnowy fountain isn’t already connected to the internet, scanning your network for TUYA devices from a terminal doesn’t show it having an IP address, even though the app says it’s online and the router confirms it has been assigned one. That makes it tricky to bring into Home Assistant for local control. It also isn’t registered as a standard device type on the TUYA Cloud API. That matters because while most PetSnowy products can be brought into Home Assistant using Hypercubian’s HA PetSnowy integration, this particular device isn’t supported by it, and it can’t be used with LocalTuya either.
However, after some digging through the TUYA API, and with some help from Claude Code since I was short on time, I managed to get this device working in Home Assistant anyway. That means I can view its data and toggle its settings from there, and I’ve created a fork of the HA PetSnowy integration to support it, which you can find here. It does require internet access to work, and there’s a small delay between sending a command and it actually happening, but it fully solves what was otherwise my only real complaint about this PetSnowy fountain.
Verdict
Which leads nicely into my overall verdict, because honestly, if Home Assistant connectivity is my only bugbear with a product, that’s a pretty strong sign it’s a good one. Compared to my existing PetKit water fountain, I’d say this PetSnowy fountain comes out ahead: it has a larger tank, it’s easier to clean, and it’s easier to refill. It also comes with a two-year warranty, which matters to me since my original PetKit fountain died after just a year of use. Given the weight tracking and usage features built into this one, I don’t think it’s bad value at all.
