The Future of Wet Cat Food Dispensers Is Here. My Review of Neakasa Riko

Excellent for hydrating expensive freeze-dried pet food and decent for other dry food types.John Carlsen/CNET

After a health scare a couple of years ago, my cat spent a while on a wet food diet before I finally got him back to dry food with a smart pet feeder. During that time, I learned how tricky wet cat food can be: You need to serve it fresh, and it can’t sit out too long. Leaving the house meant planning my day around the next meal, spending more than on dry kibble and keeping a steady supply of wet food on hand — canned or otherwise.

Although wet cat food was inconvenient, it was the price of keeping my cat healthy and happy at the time. I looked into automatic wet food dispensers, but most required freezer packs to keep the food chilled, and the few refrigerated models held only enough for a day or so.

So you can imagine my excitement when I learned about the Neakasa Riko, a smart cat feeder that rehydrates food meal by meal. It stores freeze-dried food and water separately — and it’s also somewhat compatible with other dry food. When it’s time to dispense food, it grinds and soaks the food before serving your cat. I spent a month with the Neakasa Riko to see how it might help cat owners. Here’s what I learned.

How the Neakasa Riko makes wet food easier

The feeder works best on a hard floor, like the tile one in my kitchen.John Carlsen/CNET

At first glance, you see right away that the Neakasa Riko is not your typical smart cat feeder. The most obvious tells are the 80-ounce water tank on the right-hand side and the retractable feeding bowl below the food hopper. Because it sits directly below a grinder and water jets on the underside of the dry food storage, the retractable bowl lets food sit long enough to rehydrate before a cat digs in. (I doubt many cats will wait for the food to rehydrate.)

While the Riko specifically targets freeze-dried food, Neakasa notes it may also work for air-dried and baked cat food — but it doesn’t recommend using it with extruded kibble. In addition to freeze-dried food, I tried the Riko with my cat’s regular food: Supreme Source. This brand says you can soften food with water as needed, but I noticed the Neakasa Riko doesn’t grind it at all. Early results are promising — mostly because my cat doesn’t seem to care about the texture — but I’m not ready to let the Riko take over the entire feeding process just yet.

Using a mix of freeze-dried food and kibble with the Neakasa Riko might be a great fit for most cats. A few cat food brands already offer such mixes. You’ll still need to figure out the best water-to-food ratio for your cat, but it’s worth considering. Although it can dispense water separately from food, I don’t think it’s a good use of the unit other than possibly having a secondary water source for your cat after mealtime until the next feeding.

The device I tested seems to be an early production model, as it lacks the cleaning brush included in other Riko kits.John Carlsen/CNET

I like that the storage tanks are easy to remove for refilling and cleaning. Helpfully, the unit won’t run without the food hopper’s lid in place, because it’s low enough that most cats could eat food from the hopper rather than the bowl. It even chimes to remind you to put the lid back. As with other smart feeders I’ve used, the Riko has a compartment for desiccant packs to help keep food fresh.

This smart pet feeder comes with two dishwasher-safe stainless steel bowl inserts, making it easier to clean than other smart feeders I’ve used. Interestingly, you calibrate the food dispenser scale with the bowl removed, so you can swap the bowl quickly without recalibrating or zeroing out the scale. It’s a practical solution that keeps your pet’s bowl clean.

My starter kit also included wet wipes to clean the inside of the unit, spare desiccant packs and a limescale cleaner to remove hard water deposits from the water tank. Lastly, there’s an optional rechargeable battery pack, which I didn’t test, but it comes in the Riko Everyday Set. Neakasa claims the battery can provide up to seven days of backup power.

The Neakasa app is good

The Neakasa Riko’s built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections make it easy to set up and control using the Neakasa app.John Carlsen/CNET

During my time with the app, I found it fairly intuitive and liked that the Riko’s main tab included useful information, such as daily feeding history, quick access to manual and scheduled feeding controls and estimated food and water levels. While the settings menu has quite a few features — such as feeding controls, reminders, calibration, a child lock and deep cleaning — I like that Neakasa organizes them based on what you’re most likely to use.

I’m generally ambivalent about smart feeders making sounds or having displays, as pets generally don’t need these features to know when food hits the bowl. However, the Riko’s mealtime chime is a helpful reminder for pets that might’ve forgotten the food after it started to rehydrate.

Although Neakasa markets the Riko to cat owners, it also works for small dogs.John Carlsen/CNET

Similarly, the Riko’s small display shows the feeder’s status. When idle, you can also set the display to show a clock, simple icon or custom text. However, the custom text always scrolls, even when it’s short enough to display all at once. I found this movement distracting, so I opted for a simple heart icon instead. Likewise, you can turn the display off entirely or set it to a Do Not Disturb schedule for nighttime — the same goes for the sound settings.

The Neakasa Riko doesn’t integrate with smart home systems. This is understandable, as the main appeal is scheduling feeding times and monitoring pet food intake. While I’m sure that aggregating this information in a platform such as Home Assistant may benefit some power users, other smart home compatibility features — like automating lighting, smart locks and energy tracking — don’t seem important. For example, the only automations I would want with a smart feeder are lights changing color to indicate an error or low food level.

Putting the Neakasa Riko to the test

By slowly ramping up over the first few days through trial and error, you can eventually find an equilibrium for how large each meal should be to avoid leftovers.John Carlsen/CNET

Switching a cat to a new type of food is usually a long process, as most brands recommend slowly phasing in the new food over many days until they transition completely. Because my cat’s diet is already stable, I didn’t want to subject him to a completely new food paradigm — not to mention the high cost of freeze-dried chicken. As a result, my testing with the Neakasa Riko mostly involved replacing daily treats. This way, I can enrich his existing diet with rehydrated chicken while getting a feel for how the Riko operates.

It took a few feedings to dial in the best water-to-freeze-dried-chicken ratio. I started with equal amounts of food and water, which apparently wasn’t appetizing to my cat, who took most of a day to eat a serving. My concern with this is that I don’t want food sitting out and spoiling. Fortunately, the solution was simply adding more water to each serving. In my case, I found a 1:4 food-to-water ratio was the sweet spot — the cat usually ate everything within a few minutes.

As much as I like that the Neakasa Riko retracts the bowl when too much food remains uneaten, the safety retraction threshold must be 10 grams or higher — you can choose a value between 10 and 60 grams — so it won’t work if you’re feeding only small amounts of food. If you’re dispensing a lot of food, it’s worth testing how much your cat will eat and how quickly.

While I didn’t need the feature, the Riko can add a little extra moisture to food that sits out longer than an hour, helping keep it moist.John Carlsen/CNET

I don’t recommend leaving your cat home alone with the feeder for multiple meals until you’re sure it can meet your cat’s needs. This way, you can avoid coming home to a hungry kitty because the Neakasa Riko’s food safety feature has kicked in. (You can disable the setting, but leaving wet food out to spoil isn’t worth the risk.)

One quirk I noticed about the Riko is the way it handles scheduling. Notably, each feeding was an hour after my schedule. I’m not sure why — there’s no Daylight Saving Time setting, and my time zone was correct. The fix was easy: I moved the schedule up an hour. While you can adjust the rehydration time for manual feedings, the scheduled ones seem to take about 20 minutes. I like that this provides plenty of time for water to soak in.

Once the bowl is empty, it stays out until the next food or water distribution. At first, I found this behavior perplexing because I assumed the bowl would retract when empty to keep it out of the way. However, I think this is a good feature for two reasons. First, it gives your pet a chance to lick the bowl clean or get the last tiny morsels. Second, it keeps the bowl easily accessible for when you want to swap it for a clean one, something I do whenever I ran the dishwasher.

Is the Neakasa Riko worth it?

Keep in mind that freeze-dried food isn’t just meat—it also includes essential nutrients to form a complete meal. Freeze-dried treats are cheaper, but may not be as nutritious.John Carlsen/CNET

The real benefits come from the convenience and improvements to your cat’s quality of life. For $240, the Neakasa Riko fills a useful niche, especially if you want to diversify your cat’s diet with nutritious freeze-dried food or softened kibble. Outside of a few scenarios, my gut says it isn’t a complete replacement for wet food.

To support my intuition, I compared the prices of canned cat food and freeze-dried cat food. The average price per daily serving of freeze-dried cat food — based on a 10-pound adult cat — from brands such as Weruva, Instinct and Stella & Chewy’s is roughly $5.18. That’s nearly five times as much as the $1.05 from budget canned brands such as Friskies and Meow Mix. It’s also $0.90 more than premium canned brands such as Sheba and Fancy Feast, which average $4.28 per serving. While Instinct is more competitive than the premium brands, at $3.67 per serving, you’re still paying $110 a month to feed it exclusively to your cat.

Smart pet tech rarely saves money, so expect potentially expensive freeze-dried meals or moistened kibble.John Carlsen/CNET

Even premium dry kibble brands are much cheaper per serving. For example, my cat’s food costs about $30 per 11-pound bag and lasts nearly two months at $0.48 per serving. It’s cheaper than most budget canned food, but still pricier than Walmart’s Special Kitty canned food brand ($0.23 per serving) — budget kibble brands offer even more savings. (The cheapest kibble may include added filler that isn’t nutritious — ask your vet for good options that won’t break the bank.)

When you factor in the cost of traditional canned wet food, competing feeders come out ahead on meal costs. The $170 Petlibro PLAF109 uses a simple refrigeration system to keep three meals fresh — Petlibro doesn’t guarantee freshness beyond three days, but this is an excellent compromise for sticking with canned food. If you want up to six meals, the $262 PetSafe FreshFeed can keep them fresh for up to six days. While you can find cheaper smart wet food dispenser designs from generic brands, none seemed particularly noteworthy in my research.

Should you buy the Neakasa Riko?

The Neakasa Riko can supplement an existing feeding regimen without breaking your budget in one of four ways: limited daily feedings, vacation feedings, health monitoring and dispensing normal dry kibble.David Watsky/CNET

Setting aside meal costs, the Neakasa Riko is easily the most convenient smart feeder for wet cat food. It holds up to 10 days of meals and uses less energy than refrigeration. Plus, you don’t have to fill individual meal compartments. At $240, it sits comfortably between Petlibro and PetSafe. The Neakasa Riko’s biggest advantage is that it can dispense most kinds of dry pet food, plus freeze-dried food. You can likely get great results with standard dry food, but you may need to settle for moist (or soggy) morsels rather than the soft texture of canned cat food.

It also bridges the gap with standard dry food feeders, keeping Riko as an option for wet or dry food as your pet’s needs change. I think Riko is a better long-term value than the $190 PetLibro Granary Vision 2 I tested recently, mostly because it doesn’t require an expensive subscription. Even without PetLibro’s subscriptions, Riko’s added wet food capability more than justifies the initial price difference. However, on the dry food front, I’m inclined to stick with the $100 PawSync as my preferred smart pet feeder.

There’s certainly a case for choosing the Neakasa Riko, especially if you want an excellent way to manage wet food. Still, using it exclusively with freeze-dried food will strain all but the most robust pet food budgets.

John Carlsen has more than a decade of experience testing and reviewing home tech products, with a major focus on smart home security. He earned his BS in journalism from Utah Valley University. In addition to his CNET contributions, John has written for Android Police, TWICE, Home Theater Review, SafeWise, ASecureLife and Top Ten Reviews. See full bio