Savic Hamster Heaven Metro review

The Savic Hamster Heaven Metro is the best-built wire hamster cage we have assessed and it does not clear the published floor minimum. It measures 80 x 50 x 50cm, which is 620 square inches of base against PDSA's 775 — 20 percent short. Against that, it has 9.5mm bar spacing, which is tight enough for a dwarf hamster and tighter than most of the category; it is made in Belgium to a standard the plastic-and-wire competition does not approach; and it arrives with two platforms, two houses, a wheel, an exterior tunnel, a toilet, a bottle and two bowls, which is the most complete fittings set on sale. If you want a wire cage, this is the one to buy, and you should buy it knowing it is 155 square inches under the figure and that no accessory in the box changes that. If you want to clear the figure, you need a solid-walled enclosure, and the best hamster cages is the shortlist.

We are reviewing this cage because it is the one product in the category where build quality and specification point in different directions, and because it is recommended constantly in European hamster keeping — often as the answer, rather than as the best of a category that falls short. Both of those are worth addressing directly.

The specifications, from Savic's own listing

What it genuinely gets right

Build quality, which is not a specification but is real. Savic is a Belgian manufacturer and this cage is built like one: the wire gauge is heavier than the category norm, the powder coating is even, the base is a single deep molding rather than a thin tray in a frame, and the doors close on metal rather than on a plastic tab. Nothing about it feels like it will be in a landfill in two years, which is more than can be said for most of the aisle.

9.5mm bar spacing. The same figure as the Prevue 528, which is the tightest on any mainstream wire cage, and tight enough to hold a dwarf hamster that a half-inch cage would not. No welfare body publishes a hamster bar-spacing figure, so our 3/8 inch recommendation for dwarfs is labeled as ours throughout hamster cage bar spacing — and on that measure this cage passes where most of the category does not.

620 square inches, which is the most floor on any wire cage here. The Prevue 528 gives 480 and the Savic gives 620, which is 29 percent more at the same bar spacing. If the decision has already been made that it will be a wire cage, that is a meaningful difference rather than a rounding error.

A deep base. Deeper than the three-to-four inches typical of wire cages, which means it will hold more substrate than its class. Still not ten inches, and more than most.

Wire walls, which solid enclosures cannot offer. Something to climb, which for an animal that climbs rather than digs is not a trivial point. It is the one respect in which this cage offers something a 1,109 square inch acrylic box does not, and it is covered as a general trade-off in tank or cage for a hamster.

Why it still does not clear the figure

620 against 775 is 80 percent, and the shortfall is 155 square inches, which is about the floor area of a sheet of letter paper and a half. There is no configuration of the two included platforms that changes it, because a platform is not continuous floor: it is a second surface above the first, and the animal's burrow, latrine and running space all have to fit on the one below. Every figure on this site is measured as continuous floor at one level for exactly this reason, and hamster cage size explains how to measure it.

The bedding figure compounds it. A wire cage's base depth caps substrate at the height of the plastic molding, because above that line there is nothing to hold bedding in. Even generously filled this cage will not hold ten inches, and a shallower burrow in a smaller footprint is not a smaller burrow system — it is often no burrow system at all. Deep bedding is the page that explains why depth and floor area are really one requirement.

The wheel in the box, which you should replace

This is the one place where the generous fittings set works against the cage. PDSA publishes 30cm, or 12 inches, as the Syrian wheel minimum with a solid running surface; the San Diego Humane Society publishes a 10 to 12 inch band. A wheel supplied inside a cage that is 50cm tall and 50cm deep cannot be a 30cm wheel standing in substrate and still leave usable space, and bundled wheels across the category are routinely 16 to 20cm. Treat the included wheel as a placeholder, measure it, and if it is under the figure for your animal, replace it — the safest hamster wheels is the shortlist and the quietest hamster wheels is the same five products ranked on noise.

Who should buy it

• Someone who has decided on a wire cage and wants the best one. This is it, and on bar spacing and floor area together nothing else in the format beats it.
• A dwarf hamster owner who needs 9.5mm bars and more floor than the Prevue 528 gives. 620 square inches at the same bar gap, and the best dwarf hamster cages sets out where that leaves the decision.
• Anyone who wants a climbing environment and will solve floor area another way, for instance by using the cage as the sleeping and feeding area inside a larger playpen setup.
• Someone replacing a plastic tube habitat. The step up from a 230 or 448 square inch tube habitat to 620 square inches of properly built cage is the biggest single improvement available in this category, even though it does not reach the figure.

Who should not

Anyone buying one enclosure, intending it to be the animal's whole world, and wanting it to meet the published minimum. For that buyer the answer is a solid-walled enclosure: a BUCATSTATE 3.0 47 inch at 1,109 square inches, a Niteangel Vista Large at 1,069, or a DETOLF conversion at 1,086 — all three clear 775 by a wide margin and all three hold ten inches of substrate. Niteangel versus BUCATSTATE is the head-to-head between the two finished products, and is my hamster cage too small is the page to read if you already own this cage and are deciding what to do about it.

One last note on fairness to the manufacturer. This cage was designed to a European retail format that predates the current published figures becoming common knowledge, and Savic builds it better than anyone builds anything else in that format. The shortfall here is a category problem rather than a quality problem, and we would rather say that plainly than mark down a well-made product as though it were badly made.