So I think I mentioned that I was getting the p@h silent spinner wheel for Hector, my robo, for Christmas. I put it in his cage at the weekend & thought I'd do a review. I had him in his play tank while I cleaned his cage so I took the opportunity to compare the p@h spinner with the Supervet version. My original spinner is from before the redesign that seems to be causing problems.
The p@h looks fairly similar but has a slightly different depth. It seems to be made of thinner plastic too. The most obvious difference is the plastic stand it comes on. The only plus of that stand is you can adjust the wheel height to have it set lower if you have a ham who can't climb up so well. But it feels a bit light & looks like the wheel is leaning forward slightly. Luckily, it can sit on the metal stand of my original wheel. I've already swapped it over to the metal stand as within a couple of days of being in his cage, I found the wheel (on the plastic stand) had toppled over. Luckily a wooden tunnel had prevented it from falling flat so Hector wasn't trapped or harmed but he was a bit wary of his wheel for a while after. So I wouldn't recommend using it on it's plastic stand, that could cause potentially nasty results.
It runs quietly but doesn't have the same bearing to run as freely for as long but from a hamsters point of view, it turns just fine. While the wheel itself turns quietly, the thinner plastic does mean that you can hear the footsteps quite loudly, which you don't get with the original model. And with a robo that's a lot of footsteps, really fast! I'm not sure how irritating that would if you had your ham in your bedroom. I'll have to have it a bit longer to see if it remains squeak free.
So, would I recommend it? Well, I don't think it's as good as the original & I think the stand is dangerous but if you can't get a pre-redesign version then I think this will do. And it's certainly a lot easier to get hold of for a lot of people.
To show you the wheel a bit better, I've tried something new & put together a youtube video. Hope you like it!
Hector demonstrates....silent spinners - YouTube