How bad do hamsters smell compared to a pet mice

[SweetPurple]

My brother recently got a male pet mice and it does smell a bit. I want to get a male Syrian hamster, however we still live with our parents and my mom doesn't want another smelly rodent at home. Do you guys know if hamster smell less than mice?

[Pebbles82]

Mice are very smelly - especially males. Hamsters aren't smelly. Although some people find female Syrian hamsters have quite a strong odour when they're on heat. I've only had Syrian male hamsters. They are very clean little creatures, forever grooming and tidying. They are also easily toilet trained (Syrian hamsters - dwarf hamsters maybe not so easily) and will use a litter tray if you put it in the right place.

The only time you will get a whiff of urine is when you don't have a litter tray and the cage hasn't been spot cleaned for some time - otherwise I'd say - you never get a whiff. I use chinchilla bathing sand in the potty, as do many others on here, and empty the potty about every 5 days. If I left it longer it may get a bit of an aroma. But generally - hamsters aren't at all smelly and are very clean and good at sorting out their houses and moving things around.

In fact if our hamster's potty gets a bit whiffy before I've emptied it, he covers it up with bedding

[Burakki]

As Serendipity said, when cleaned on time, they don’t smell at all and my female’s heat smell is not really that strong. You feel it only if you take her in your hands and hold her near your face. Other than that, no smell at all from neither my female or my male. The female one is actually a cleaning freak. She basically cleans her cage herself, throwing the trash out from the hidden spots. Last weekend she took out all her sunflower seed shells out from her nest and piled them in the spot I could collect them from. I think the myth about hamster smell came from people who never cleaned the cages. I once was in a pet store and there were a child with his grandmother and he was asking her to get him a hamster, to which she replied that they’re smelly. I told her that they aren’t , and she replied that she used to own them and they smelled, and I said that you just need to change the bedding regularly and she was so surprised by that fact! As if it’s unthinkable that every creature’s habitat should be cleaned once in a while.
Shortly, hamsters are one of the best pets in the smell department. Even my mom who has some kind of super nose and smells everything, doesn’t hear their smell))

[flowerfairy]

My roborovskis smell. I have moved them into a cage with better ventilation and that has improved things a lot.

My syrians only smell if I leave their clean outs too long. Otherwise not a problem.

Male mice are notorious for being smelly.

[cypher]

I doubt any hamster would be a match for mice when it comes to smell but they do vary.
No experience with syrians but the one female Russian I had was a bit smelly when in heat, it wasn't unpleasant or that strong though. None of my male Russians has ever been smelly, nor have my female Chinese, my male Chineseys do have smelly wheels though!