Living World Deluxe Habitat X-Large Review

The tall one, with a balcony and a hideaway, and why height is worth more than you think.

The verdict: The Living World Deluxe is the shop-bought cage that gets height right, with 24 inches of headroom, a balcony to sit on and a dark hideaway underneath it, which suits a nervous or curious rabbit better than a longer, flatter box. Buy it if your rabbit sits up to watch the room and you want a retreat built in. Skip it if floor length matters more to you, because at 46.9 inches it is shorter than a Ferplast Krolik XXL and a lot shorter than an exercise pen.

Specifications

Specifications above come from Living World's published product information. Treat pricing as approximate, since Amazon pricing moves.

What it does well

• Twenty-four inches of height lets most small and medium rabbits sit fully upright, which is a normal behaviour that shorter cages simply block.
• The hideaway under the balcony is the feature nervous rabbits use most. A prey animal that can get out of sight settles faster in a new home.
• Mounting the bottle and hay guard outside the cage frees up interior floor, which is a smarter use of a small footprint than most designs manage.
• It clips together in minutes without tools, and it comes apart the same way when you need to scrub it properly.
• The food dish secures to the balcony floor, so it does not get tipped and flung, which rabbits do constantly to loose bowls.

Where it falls short

• At 46.9 inches it is short. A rabbit gets maybe two hops before the wall, and floor length is the dimension that most affects whether a rabbit moves.
• The balcony ramp is a fall risk for heavy, elderly or arthritic rabbits, and the balcony itself is not big enough to be a second living area.
• The wire top is comparatively fine-gauge, and rabbits that chew bars can wear the coating. Bar-chewing is usually boredom or a request for more space rather than a hardware fault.
• The included bottle is a bottle. Most rabbits drink more from an open bowl, so budget for a heavy ceramic dish.
• The plastic base is shallow compared with a 5.5 inch deep tray, so litter and hay scatter more than they do in a deep-based cage.

What owners report

Published owner reviews of the Living World Deluxe are unusually consistent for this category. The tool-free clip assembly and the ease of opening the top in two halves come up again and again as the things that make daily care painless, and owners of guinea pigs and rabbits alike single out the external bottle and hay guard for freeing up interior space. The hideaway is repeatedly described as where the animal spends most of its time, which tells you something about how much a retreat matters.

Complaints cluster on two points. The first is the plastic clips, which several owners describe as the weak part of the build and which can crack if the cage is moved often. The second, and the more important one, is size. Owners who bought it as a rabbit's only home consistently report outgrowing it, particularly with anything larger than a dwarf. That is the same story across nearly every cage sold for rabbits, and our cage size guide gives the floor area to measure against.

The practical way to use this cage is as a base station inside a pen or a rabbit-proofed room, which is the argument in our cage versus free roam comparison. If height is what drew you here but you also want length, compare it with the Ferplast Krolik XXL review, which is 17 inches longer and 4 inches shorter, and with the MidWest Deluxe cage review at a lower price. All three sit in our cages and pens roundup.

Who it suits

• Owners of small and medium rabbits that like to sit up and watch the room.
• Anyone with a newly adopted or nervous rabbit that needs somewhere to hide.
• People short on floor space who would rather build upwards than lengthways.

Who should skip it

• Owners of large breeds, who need floor length more than headroom.
• Anyone with a senior or arthritic rabbit, because of the ramp and balcony.
• People who want this to be the whole enclosure rather than a base inside a bigger space.

Alternatives worth considering

Keep reading

• Cage vs free roam compared
• Hutch vs exercise pen
• How much space a rabbit actually needs
• Rabbit hideouts and why they matter
• Best rabbit cages and pens

This review draws on published specifications, manufacturer figures and the consensus of verified owner reviews. We have not tested this product ourselves, and we say so rather than implying otherwise. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.