I am going to compare this fountain to the Drinkwell Original Fountain in this review. I had the Drinkwell for about 2 years, and now I've had the Dogit for a little over a year, so I feel like I'm pretty well equipped to review both. I used both of these for my 3 cats, and more recently for my dog. The overall design of the two fountains is quite different - with the Drinkwell having a stream of water that falls via gravity onto a ramp that collects the water back in a pool, and the Dogit bubbling water up from the middle of an "island" that then cascades the water across the island and back into the enclosed reservoir. Let's start with setup. Both fountains are very simple to set up, taking maybe a minute or two at most. The Dogit has a little more clearance on some of the mating parts, so you don't have to be so careful to line up tabs to make sure you get everything right, but in all honesty both are pretty simple. The nice thing about the Dogit is that the reservoir is enclosed, so you can fill it at the sink to it's maximum capacity and then carry it to where you want with less chance of spilling anything. Once it is set up, the Drinkwell is much louder than the Dogit, although both are noisy enough that I put a folded bath towel underneath to dampen the sound. After that, both were on par with one another and quiet enough that I can't hear it from one room over. The Drinkwell has a feature where you can increase or decrease the pump speed to make more or less water flow, but I found that once I put the towel underneath, I just left it on maximum flow for the entire time I owned it. Regarding acclimating to the fountain, the Drinkwell was the cat's first fountain, and I will say that they took to it immediately. The open reservoir pool was much like their previous bowl so that was good. In fact, they even started playing with the water - batting at the water stream that falls from the spout to the ramp in the pool. This caused them to leave cat footprints everywhere and was actually quite annoying. It also served to clean their paws, which on it's own was good, but the kitty litter that came off was always showing up in the pool of water that they drank out of, which is kind of gross. The Dogit doesn't have a stream of water, so the cats seem less apt to play with the water, although it is my second fountain so I can't say for certainty that they aren't just used to it. A big difference in the two fountains is that on the Drinkwell the cats drink from a pool, much like they do from a bowl. For this reason, they took to it immediately and I didnt notice any decline in their water uptake (or output). Whereas the Dogit they kind of lap the running water up as it flows across the plastic island. One cat seemed to get this right away, another took probably half a day to figure it out, and the last cat took maybe a full day or so. In the end, they all got it and I don't think they're worse for the wear because of it. As for capacity, the Drinkwell holds about a week of water for my cats, whereas the Dogit can last about 3 weeks. I had to replace the water in the Drinkwell more often than that initially due to the cats cleaning their paws in the stream and leaving litter and other crud in there, but after the novelty of the fountain died down, I got about a week out of it before refilling. When the fountains run low on water, both get considerably louder, with the Drinkwell much louder than the Dogit. The downside of letting the Dogit go 3 weeks is that there is more and more hair and other particles that accumulate in the fountain filter. So it's a little more gross when you do clean it. However, the filter is much larger in surface area and much more porous than the Drinkwell, so it doesnt impede the pumping action at all, which is nice. If you let the Drinkwell go for 3 weeks and just kept filling the pool, I think the filter would be gunked up enough that it might not even pump. Actual cleaning is much easier on the Dogit since all components come apart and you can easily access all sides of them. The underside of the island and the outer plastic part still has nooks and crannies, but a small soft brush (e.g., toothbrush) makes short work of them. To clean the Drinkwell, you take a few pieces off, but then there's still a rectangular chamber, maybe 6-8 inches deep that is enclosed. Slime and gunk accumulate down in the corners and bottom and it's nearly impossible to get in all the corners to get it actually clean. The last thing I'll mention before concluding is that the inherent design of Drinkwell is flawed in my mind. The water flows in from the pool, where the cats drink/shed/clean their paws, through the pump, then through the filter and stream into the pool. So the dirtiest water goes through the pump before it is filtered. This makes the pump get all clogged full of cat hair. The Dogit, by design pumps water up through the center of the island where the cats drink it and then through the filter and back into the reservoir. If the cats slobber or shed or whatever else on the island, it goes immediately to the filter where it is trapped. When I clean out the Dogit, there is scarcely a single hair in the reservoir. And to top it off, the one time I did run it without a filter and the pump got clogged, the end of the pump snaps off so you can actually clean out the inside of the pump rather than try to get at it with pipe cleaners and other inefficient methods. As you can probably tell, I like the Dogit much better than the Drinkwell. There is nothing that it doesn't do as well, and many things that I think it does much better. In the end, the Drinkwell lasted me 2 years before the pump was internally clogged so bad that the water had slowed to a trickle. With proper care, I think the Dogit should last much longer. As an aside, I recently moved the Dogit so that my dog and all 3 cats can share the water. It eliminates one more bowl I have to fill every day, and the water only lasts about 1.5 weeks now, so I rinse and clean the fountain more often, which means the pets all continue to get fresher water.
