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My experience with the Lila composter so far.

As of the writing of this review, I've had the Lila composter for just over 6 weeks. I have never owned a composter of this type before. I've had a digester and a compost bin I kept in the corner of my backyard. So this version of a composter is new to me. Over all, I am pleased with the results of the composter, it appears to be doing the job. When the Lila people came to visit me a couple weeks ago, I put my very first batch of compost in the garden. The compost was a little dry and it didn't have a bad odor to it. The compost wasn't as dark as the starter compost given to me initially from Lila, but it looked good and the Lila folks seemed to be pleased with the results.So, what problems have I experienced, if any? To start, when you face the machine, there is a small hopper at the front, when you open the lid to the hopper you will notice blades like you see in a blender, only the the blades in the composter are slightly bigger in size. My initial thoughts were, I was to place all my compost in the hopper, after closing the lid, the compost would be chopped up and pushed down the opening at the bottom of the hopper. So my very first load of food stuffs to compost was placed in the front hopper, the food stuffs consisted of various vegetables and banana peels. When I closed the lid the, the blades cycled up and ran for about 2 seconds. When I checked the hopper where I dumped the food stuff, I could see nothing happened, other than the blades had moved a bit. I contacted Lila, was some discussion I was told that the hopper was not meant for the soft food items, like banana peels, the soft item should be dumped in the back of the machine, accessible under a different lid. The problem I experienced was due to the banana jamming the blades, so nothing was getting cut up. When I cleared the food stuff and blades cycled for about 10 seconds or so, like it supposed to. I have since tried putting small chunks of watermelon in the hopper and they get chopped up. I found putting too many chunks in the hopper caused a jam like I described above. The hopper up front is for harder items like small bones etc.In another case, my wife had made a salad and there were vegetables that have a high water content in them, eg: celery. I dumped those vegetables in the back of the composter, the next day, I found a puddle of water under the composter. The problem was due to all the high water content vegetables, I confirmed this in a discussion with Lila. If keeping this unit in your kitchen, could be a problem. I had put my unit in the garage, as there was a bit of a smell coming from the compost.As mentioned earlier, the compost in my machine is a bit on the dry side and I was advised to add water to the compost. If the compost gets too dry, I guess there is a sensor of some sort to detect this, and a blue light flashes on the power switch at the front of the machine. I added water to the compost in my machine, close the lid and seems to clear the flashing blue light, but at some point the blue light comes back on again. (when exactly, I'm not sure, as I don't stand around waiting for the blue light to come on) In reporting the problem to Lila, I was told the system needs a software update so ignore the blue light for now. In that same discussion, I was given instructions to do an "over the air" (OTA) update. I tried several times to do the OTA and have not been successful. When Lila was here I did mention the problem trying to do the update, they also tried to do the update and the update process failed for them as well. As of the writing of this review, this issue has not been resolved.As I stated at the beginning of this review, over all I am pleased with the composter, I think the problems(?) I experienced so far are "growing" pains. I guess time will tell.The people I have talked to at Lila have been approachable and easy to talk to regarding the problems/questions I have had so far.

Date of experience: Jun 25, 2025