Our verdict: Best overall microchip feeder
The app-connected version of the bowl that defined selective feeding, still the reference point when a diet has to be enforced. It reads a cat's implanted ISO microchip or a registered collar tag and keeps the lidded tray locked to everyone else, so a prescription or weight-loss food reaches the right animal; the Connect hub adds feeding logs that turn 'did she eat?' into a visible record. The real costs are upfront: a premium Australian price, one registered identity per unit so a two-diet household needs two, a footprint larger than a plain bowl, and an app that only works with the hub paired. Where the problem is food-stealing or a medicated diet, it is close to unmatched.
Buy it if
- Multi-cat homes where one cat steals another's food or a prescription diet must be protected
- Weight-management or diabetic cats whose portions and meal timing genuinely need enforcing and logging
- Owners who want feeding logs and medication-timing visibility via the app hub, not just a locked bowl
- Anyone who needs wet or dry food on a sealed, dishwasher-safe tray that only the right cat can open
Skip it if
- You have a single cat with no food-stealing or diet problem — an ordinary timed feeder is far cheaper
- You need several cats on different diets from one unit — this locks one registered identity per bowl
- The premium price and a separate hub for the app features are more than your problem justifies
The problem it exists for — the shared-bowl failure
Ask a single-cat owner why anyone would spend this much on a food bowl and it sounds absurd. Ask an owner of a diabetic cat whose healthy flatmate eats both portions, or a cat on a prescription renal diet whose bully clears the medicated food, and the SureFeed stops being a luxury and becomes the only thing making the diet work. In a shared home an open bowl is a communal bowl, and free-feeding quietly hands calorie control to whichever cat is most pushy.
The SureFeed's whole job is identity at the bowl. The lidded tray stays locked and only swings open for a registered cat, read from its implanted microchip or a supplied collar tag. The opportunistic flatmate learns within days that the bowl does not open for it, and the diet cat finally gets its own food. That enforcement is the product; everything else — the app, the logs — is layered on top of a mechanism that already solves the core problem.
The specific product here is the SureFeed Microchip Pet Feeder Connect, which carried a 4.1-star owner rating across roughly 900 ratings on the Amazon AU listing at the time of checking. It is the microchip-feeding anchor of our microchip cat feeder guide, and this review is about whether enforced, logged feeding is what your household actually needs.
Connect versus the plain feeder — do you need the hub?
The 'Connect' in the name is the app layer, and it is the single most important thing to get your head around before ordering, because it changes both the price and the value. The core selective-feeding lock works on the bowl itself; the smart features — visit logging, open/close events, a record of who ate and when — depend on pairing the feeder with a SureHub-style companion hub that is often sold separately and correctly connected to your Wi-Fi. Buy the Connect expecting app insight and then skip the hub, and you have paid for a feature you cannot use.
So the honest fork is about whether logging earns its keep for you. For a free-roaming single problem cat, the plain lock is the whole solution and the app is overkill. For a medicated or weight-loss diet, the logs move from 'nice' to 'genuinely useful': you can confirm the diabetic cat actually ate its assigned meals across the day, catch a cat that has stopped eating before it becomes a crisis, and hand your vet a real intake record rather than a guess. That monitoring value is precisely what justifies choosing Connect over the cheaper original.
This original-versus-Connect decision is the same one split across the microchip-feeder and selective-entry categories, and it maps neatly onto the free-flowing, chip-controlled homes covered in our pet tech for cats that come and go guide. If the answer to 'will I look at feeding logs?' is no, the plain feeder is the better buy.
Wet and dry food, and the one-identity limit
On the practical feeding side the SureFeed does the things that matter. The removable tray takes both wet and dry food, seals to keep moisture and aroma in, and is dishwasher-safe, which is the honest maintenance reality of any lidded bowl: a sealed tray that a cat eats from needs regular cleaning, and being able to lift the whole tray to the sink removes the friction that makes people abandon fiddly feeders. A mains adapter with a battery-backup option keeps the lock functioning through a brief power blip.
The constraint to respect is one registered identity per unit. Each feeder locks to a set of chips, but physically it is a single bowl — so a household needing cat A on prescription food and cat B on regular, simultaneously, needs two feeders, not one clever one. That is a real multiplication of the cost in exactly the multi-diet homes the product serves best, and it should be budgeted rather than discovered at checkout.
It is also worth being candid about who this is not for. If your household has one cat and no diet problem, a simple timed feeder portions meals for a fraction of the price, and there is no lock to enforce. The SureFeed earns its premium only when the problem is specifically one cat accessing another's food — and the more of those competing-diet cats you have, the more units you need.
Day-to-day: training, noise and ownership
Getting a cat onto the feeder is usually a few days of patience rather than a battle. Most owners prop the lid open or run it unlocked initially so the cat associates the bowl with food, then let the microchip read take over; a hungry, food-motivated cat works out the mechanism fast. A shy cat takes longer, and the honest warning is that the lid motor is not silent — a very noise-sensitive cat can be briefly wary of the whirr and click, and may need an extra week to accept it.
The recurring physical task is hygiene: lift the sealed tray, wash it, dry it, refill. That is no more than any wet-food bowl asks, and the dishwasher-safe tray makes it easy, but a lidded feeder that is left grubby will put a fastidious cat off, so the upkeep matters. Placement wants a stable, defined spot, ideally on a hard floor, because the unit is bulkier than a plain dish and the sensor works best when the cat approaches it consistently.
For the app-owning household, the day-to-day payoff is a low-drama record you rarely have to think about until you want it: an open-visit log you can glance at from work to confirm the right cat ate, or pull up at the vet to show intake over a fortnight. That convenience is the Connect's whole reason to exist, and it is genuinely reassuring for a health-managed cat — provided, again, that the hub is actually connected.
Value, brand trust and who should buy it
This is premium-priced feeding, and the value is entirely about whether you have the specific problem it solves. For an open-bowl household with no diet conflict it is poor value and a plain timed feeder wins. But for a prescription-fed or overweight cat being out-eaten by a flatmate, the SureFeed is close to the only consumer product that reliably enforces the diet, and the money is doing real medical and welfare work — often underwriting a vet-prescribed plan that would otherwise fail. Judged on that job it is one of the better-value health tools in pet tech.
Brand trust supports the premium. SureFeed/SureFlap has the longest, deepest owner-report history in selective feeding, which means the chip-read logic is mature, replacements and tags are obtainable, and the multi-year reliability questions are already answered by a large installed base rather than being your risk to discover. That longevity is part of what a no-name microchip feeder cannot offer at any price.
Set expectations correctly and the SureFeed Connect does exactly what it promises: locks a bowl to one cat's identity, handles wet or dry food on a clean tray, and — with the hub paired — turns feeding into a logged record. Buy it for the food-stealing or diet problem it was built for, decide deliberately whether the app hub is worth adding, and budget one unit per competing diet.
What we like
- Reads the cat's implanted microchip directly — no tag to lose for a chipped cat, and no bypassing the lock
- Genuinely enforces a prescription, medicated or weight-loss diet by keeping the wrong cats out
- The Connect hub logs every visit, useful for medication timing and monitoring intake
- Handles wet and dry food on a removable sealed tray that is genuinely dishwasher-safe
- A long-standing brand with the deepest multi-year owner-report pool in the category
Where it gives ground
- Premium price in AUD, and the app is only useful with the hub correctly paired (hub sold separately)
- One bowl serves one registered identity, so a two-diet household needs two units
- Larger than a plain bowl — you need a defined spot, ideally on a hard floor
- The lid is not silent; a very noise-sensitive cat can take a week to accept it
- Free-feeding fans will find a single-identity, lidded bowl restrictive compared with an open feeder
Specifications to verify
- Identity mechanism
- Reads an implanted ISO microchip or a SureFlap/SureFeed-registered collar tag and unlocks the lid for registered pets onlyManufacturer spec / Amazon AU listing
- Food support
- Handles both wet and dry food on a removable sealed, dishwasher-safe trayManufacturer spec
- App / hub
- Connect hub logs visits and lid open/close events to the app — the hub is required for the smart features and is sold separatelyManufacturer spec — confirm bundling on the listing
- Power
- Mains adapter (included) with a battery-backup option for continued lockingManufacturer spec
- Pets per unit
- One registered identity per unit — a two-diet household needs two feedersManufacturer spec
- Footprint
- Larger than a plain bowl; wants a defined spot on a hard floorManufacturer spec / Amazon AU listing
Where to buy
- View on Amazon Australia
SureFeed Microchip Pet Feeder Connect on Amazon Australia
Confirm whether the companion hub is included or sold separately, plus current colour and collar tags, on the listing
Confirm the exact model, current price and delivery on Amazon AU before buying.
Frequently asked questions
Does the SureFeed need my cat to wear a tag?
Not if your cat is microchipped with a standard ISO implant, which most Australian cats are — the feeder reads the implanted chip directly to unlock the lid. A supplied collar tag is only needed for an unchipped cat or one carrying a chip the reader cannot recognise. You register the approved identities at the unit, so a chipped cat can use a SureFeed with nothing extra to wear and nothing to lose.
What is the difference between this and the plain SureFeed?
This is the Connect model, which adds an app-connected layer on top of the same microchip-locked bowl. The plain feeder still locks to your registered cat; the Connect also logs visits and lid open/close events to an app — useful for confirming a medicated or weight-loss cat actually ate, and for showing your vet an intake record. The catch is that the smart logging needs a companion hub correctly paired to Wi-Fi, often sold separately, so buy the Connect specifically if you will use the logs and are prepared to set up the hub.
Can it hold wet food as well as dry?
Yes — that is one of its strengths. The removable tray handles both wet and dry food and seals to keep moisture and aroma in, and it is dishwasher-safe, which matters because a lidded bowl a cat eats from needs regular cleaning to stay appealing. The trade is upkeep: lift the tray, wash, dry and refill. A mains adapter with a battery-backup option keeps the lock working through short power interruptions.
Can one SureFeed manage two cats on different diets?
Not from a single bowl. Each feeder is one physical bowl that locks to registered identities, but if cat A needs prescription food and cat B needs regular food at the same time, you need two feeders — one per diet. The unit is ideal for protecting one cat's food from another's thievery, but it does not dispense two separate diets from one device, so a multi-diet household should budget for multiple units rather than expecting one clever feeder to cover it.
Will my cat figure out how to use it?
Most cats do within a few days. Owners typically prop the lid open or run it unlocked at first so the cat links the bowl with food, then let the microchip read take over; a food-motivated cat learns fast. The honest caveat is that the lid motor is not silent, so a very noise-sensitive cat may take up to a week to accept the whirr and click. A shy cat needs patience, but because the read is hands-free there is no trick for the cat to be trained to perform.
Is the SureFeed Connect worth the price?
If your problem is one cat eating another's food, or an enforced prescription, medicated or weight-loss diet, it is worth it — it is the market-defining selective feeder and one of the few consumer products that reliably makes a shared-home diet work, so the cost is doing real welfare and medical work. It is poor value for a single cat with no diet conflict, where a simple timed feeder portions meals far cheaper, and the app hub only earns its keep if you will genuinely look at feeding logs.