Anyone with hard floors is wondering how to mop it without actually mopping the floors. I don’t enjoy mopping (I’m not alone in this). I tried a couple of smart vacuums with mops in the past, but dragging a damp cloth behind the cleaner isn’t exactly cleaning confidence building. We can agree that even with a “Y pattern” featured on Xiaomi 2in1 vac, mopping the floors requires some elbow grease. The new smart vacuum I have comes with some of that grease! Meet yeedi vac 2 pro.
yeedi vac 2 pro – what’s “pro” about it?
It’s my second yeedi smart vacuum to test drive. Unlike the Xiaomi models, I used in the past, yeedi offers self-emptying stations with their models and that’s something you should really consider. Decreasing the frequency of emptying the smart vacuum is a convenient thing, but having yeedi vac 2 pro starting the clean with a full sucking power on each clean is a strong argument for an upgrade.
The base price for the yeedi vac 2 pro may scare you away at first. The smart cleaner is listed at €449.99 and you are expected to pay for the self-emptying module (€179.99), but you can split that into separate purchases, or even use a trade-in option to upgrade your previous yeedi vacuum.
Above aside, yeedi vac 2 pro brings advanced obstacle avoidance including carpet detection (for increased sucking power), and carpet avoidance (so you don’t mop your rugs). But most importantly, it introduces an oscillating mop. It’s a specialised bad that uses micro-movements to imitate the hand cleaning process. It looks very convincing in the product brief – is that enough to handle the toughest stains?
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Cleaning performance
Apart from the sensors, which supposedly increase the suction power over carpets (not something I have noticed myself), yeedi vac 2 pro comes with the advantage of having completely empty dust container with each clean. You’d have to purchase the additional vac station, but it’s an investment worth considering especially if you have pets. Robotic vacuums fill up quicker than you think!
The first run is used to create the map, so yeedi vac 2 pro can get familiar with the environment before switching to the advanced obstacle avoidance mode. So if the vacuum misses a spot, don’t panic. It gets a bit better on consecutive passes.
My docking station is placed in the difficult spot (under a piano, surrounded by legs) and yeedi vac 2 pro handles docking/undocking like a champ. As the bottom of the house is mostly carpeted (with the exception of the kitchen and a small hallway), yeedi vac 2 pro works without the mop function.
The average clean takes approx 45min (35m²) which is only a little slower than the Xiaomi vacuums and the vacuum cleans 1m³ in approx 1min 30. I’m ok with this as the vacuum isn’t particularly loud either.
Oscillating mopping
Where the device exceeds my expectations is mopping mode. A quickly oscillating mop does a great job of leaving the surfaces clean. It’s considerably louder than previous vacuums, but that’s one of the prices to pay for the luxury of not doing it yourself.
If you have hard floors, you know that vacuuming hardly does the job, with the surface often retaining marks and smudges from day to day abuse. The regular mop is able to add a bit of shine to the cleaned surfaces, but yeedi vac 2 pro takes this to another level. The surface is clean and the smart hoover handles even dried up stains.
I prepped a torture test involving dried up stains from coke, milk, coffee, latte, Chinese oily sauce and both dark and light soya sauce. I was very impressed when the yeedi vac 2 pro cleared everything including dark soy sauce – which was a nightmare to deal with for other 2in1 vacs.
Problems
The carpet detection works well. Too well in fact. When the mop add-on is installed, the vacuum refuses to drive over carpets. It won’t enter any of the carpeted floors and it will continue to look for the hard floor route to the next area. What’s worse, this will also prevent the yeedi vac 2 pro from returning to the station for a recharge.
I don’t recall this being a case for the previous yeedi vac, and I will report this as a bug. Especially since the vacuum will continuously try to get back until it hits the timeout. You will have to carry it around if mopping areas are divided by impenetrable carpets.
It also means that you can’t be lazy and you have to remove the tank with water if your dock is placed on a carpet otherwise your vacuum will literally spaz out trying not to mop any floors. As there are no options to turn off the mopping (Xiaomi 2In1 had these) when the tank is installed, you will end up with no choice but remove the tank each time.
Smart features
In my review of the yeedi vac station, I complained about “daft” movement patterns. The vacuum would appear to wander aimlessly while traversing my rooms. yeedi vac 2 pro suffers from the same, despite having advanced sensors. It wasn’t until I gifted one to my friends that I realised, the peculiar placement of my dock forces this seemingly misguided traversing pattern.
In their house, the vac would follow a more organised, and easy to predict, path – but neither the previous yeedi vacuum nor yeedi vac 2 pro were able to apply “logic” to my layout. I’m stubborn, I’m not going to move my station elsewhere, as I simply don’t want to have this in plain sight.
The “less than organised” pattern made a distorted image of the floor plan (this has been addressed in the latest firmware: 05/10/2022 and the maps are now accurate) which make it hard to use advanced features like area cleanup or no-go zones but in all honesty, the vacuum goes everywhere it needs to go and the cleaning performance isn’t affected by this.
In the yeedi app
Just like the previous yeedi cleaner, yeedi vac 2 pro comes with some cool options that you can take the advantage of, providing the map created in your home is accurate. A quick “do over” will enable cleaning the area twice (just in case the guests are coming) and 4 settings for vacuum strength and 3 settings for mop wetness let you customise your clean process.
What’s particularly nice is the option to set the clean order. This way areas are cleaned according to your preference and should the vacuum run out of power, the most important bits are cleaned first. It’s not that you have to worry about the power as with a 220min run time you could clean about 100m² before the pause for a recharge is needed. If it comes to that, the app gives you an option to continue cleaning once the charge is completed.
Imperfect
What’s still missing is better integration with Alexa, as right now you can start or pause the cleaning. There are no voice controls to target areas or even ask the yeedi vac 2 pro to return to the dock (it has to complete the clean first, or you have to use the mobile for that).
Just as before, the app suffers from a short list of room names, which means areas with more exotic names like “Hall” will inherit the name “A”, “B” etc… It won’t matter much as you can’t make the voice requests to clear particular rooms anyways. It’s unfortunate.
Get yeedi:
Get your own selection of yeedi smart cleaners and keep your house spotless:
Final Thoughts
It’s hard not to be annoyed at the clumsy mapping compared to Lidar based Xiaomi cleaners, but on the other hand, yeedi vac 2 pro does a great job of keeping the carpets and hard floors clean and doesn’t get stuck in the process. The last part is more important to me than mapping resources in the app. The less I interact with vacuums, the better my life is. If your house is predominantly hard floor-based, then go ahead and treat your floors to a decent clean and rugs to the unparallel suction. You definitely deserve the time off. Got questions? Let me know in this Reddit thread.
🆓📈💵 – See the transparency note for details.
