Van Ness Extra Giant Litter Pan Review: The $14 Box Everyone Owns

Litter boxes are one of those products where more features don’t necessarily mean a happier cat. A lot of cats — especially bigger breeds like Maine Coons, or households running two or three cats off one box — just want room to turn around, dig, and squat without brushing up against walls or a hood. The Extra Giant Litter Pan is built around that single idea: it’s simply larger than the standard pan, with enough floor space that a big cat can move around comfortably instead of hanging a back end over the edge.

The price is the other half of the story. At around $14, it’s cheap enough to buy two or three for a multi-cat home — which matters, because the general guidance from vets and behaviorists is one box per cat plus one extra. It’s also cheap enough to replace every year or so as the plastic scratches up and starts holding odor, which is the realistic lifespan of any uncoated plastic pan. With 45,000-plus ratings and a 4.7-star average, it’s clearly a product a lot of owners buy, replace, and buy again without complaint.

The high-sided rim is the main design touch that elevates this above a plain storage bin, and it does its job: cats that dig enthusiastically before or after they go tend to kick litter up and out, and the raised walls catch most of that before it hits the floor. It won’t stop tracking on their paws as they walk out, but it does cut down on the litter-flying-across-the-room problem that flatter pans have.

Because there’s no lid, hood, or liner track, cleaning is about as low-effort as it gets — scoop, occasionally dump and rinse, done. There are no hinges or filter compartments to fuss with, and nothing to break. That also means there’s no odor seal, so smell isn’t trapped the way it would be in a covered or self-cleaning box; it’s more freely vented into the room, for better or worse. Many owners specifically choose an open design like this because some cats are hesitant to use covered boxes at all, associating the enclosed space with feeling trapped or with the smell being concentrated right around them.

The tradeoffs are exactly what you’d expect from a bare-bones open pan. There’s no lid, so odor isn’t contained the way it is with a covered or enclosed box — it’s a fine choice for a laundry room or basement, less ideal in a small apartment where the box has to live in a main living area. Because litter isn’t sifted or contained beyond the rim, tracking around the box is more noticeable than with covered or top-entry designs, so a litter mat nearby is a smart pairing. And it is, by design, basic: there’s no odor filter, no automatic sifting, no divider — just a large plastic tray. If you want features, this isn’t the box; if you want something that reliably does the one job well, it is.

If your cat is on the larger side, if you’re running a multi-cat household and need extra boxes without spending a lot per box, or if your cat has ever seemed reluctant to use a covered box, this is a sensible, low-risk pick. It’s cheap enough that trying it out isn’t much of a gamble, and its long track record of ratings suggests it holds up fine for typical daily use.

If odor control is your top priority, or you’re dealing with litter tracking through a small home, you may be happier pairing this with a good litter mat and frequent scooping, or looking at a covered box instead. As always, if your cat suddenly avoids the litter box altogether, that can be a sign of a medical issue rather than a box preference — it’s worth a call to your vet to rule that out before assuming it’s just about comfort.