Is my robot vacuum a toddler? Puppy? I went along with the crowd and after going minimal and keeping my surfaces clean each day I decided I was ready for a robot vacuum. I bought a Yeedi on an Amazon Lightening deal that can mop (wet dust) and vacuum, as of this writing it’s on sale at Yeedi’s website for $300. The first several runs it felt as if the vacuum always started with the room I was in.
I ran it while at home for a month or more and this week I was brave enough to set it to auto-clean while I was away. So far, in 2 out of 2 days, it has gotten stuck in places that it navigates while I’m home just fine. Instead of coming home to a clean floor and a docked vacuum, I’ve been leaving work, looking for where my vacuum got stuck.
The warnings:
I was warned. The vacuum tanked on small light cords early on, so I’ve twist-tied all of my lamp chords and pulled all the electronic chords up onto the desk. I don’t love this, but it appears to be necessary. It sees thick cables well, but with the small electronic or light strip cords it gets entirely tangled up.
I’ve only known a few people in person who have decided to get a robot vacuum. When I first got it, I was warned that they push items around the floor and that I’d likely come home to some weirdness.
Automatic Cycle Day 1:
I can’t be sure in what order it started out as it had some app freezes. However, it clearly got ahold of my phone charging cable that I always leave plugged in and just tossed over the air purifier. It trotted it all the way out to the front door floor mat, where ultimately it lost the battle and decided the main brush was far too tangled to work through.
Given past patterns it likely did the entire office fine, then moved to the bedroom and grabbed it in the last pass-through, then drug it through the bathroom and into the open shared dining room living room space. I have hard floors on the entire main level, so the cord likely didn’t get too bad until it was doubling up with higher suction on the front door mat. It may have gone back and forth a few times, but it was done trying.
Error: Main brush tangled.
Well, thankfully I don’t enter from the front door. I saw the map of my house and where the vacuum was in the house prior to coming in. It was accurate…and the tangle was pretty crazy. This USB cord was wrapped around the roller brush about four times and it was cocked up and tilted to one side with a blinking red light.
The cable seems to be fine…though ick…it went through the bathroom. I set it back down where it was and hit the button that was flashing red and it started cleaning. It didn’t say it was resuming, and it did repeat spaces.
Automatic Cycle Day 2:
The map said it was stuck by the office wall. This means that it barely started before getting stranded.
3 Errors:
- 7 minutes after starting: The Bumper is stuck. Please check.
- 4 minutes after that: The Anti-Drop Sensor is covered with dust. Please clean up
- Same time: The Bumper is stuck. Please check.
What happened? It had tried to vacuum up the sides of my trumpeted bar stools with nickel coding and lost traction between the two.
I picked it up and set it down a foot away. Thankfully, it decided it was done with that area and moved away instead of doing what it normally does which is heading right back into danger.
Household Hazards:
This vacuum is stubborn around round surfaces and slams into the legs of chairs and my side tables. It will push and hit so hard that the lamps rock and if it were to also get itself tangled in the cord then it would twist like a Pitbull. Lamps!
I was home the first time it wrapped a lamp cord up and started hitting the side table so I was able to save that one. This is also why I’ve run it in several modes while home before trying it in auto mode when away.
Plant stands.
Oh yes. It moves all my plants and hits the stands hard enough that it has collapsed my three-level collapsible plant stand. Additionally, it attempted to doc on my stationary three-tiered plant stand. The map even switched to think it was in the room with the dock. Thankfully, this hasn’t happened since but it spends a little too much energy trying to investigate it.
Folded rug corners.
This one is irregular for sure. It actually did work itself around it eventually, but it spent a lot of energy trying to get out of a corner where a bookcase leg and a folded rug corner kept it pinned. The day I decided to hang curtains it also insisted on being under my step ladder banging at the legs.
Uneven floors.
Actually not an obstacle at all. This one handles these very well. My bathroom and kitchen both have a step up of about 1/2-3/4″. It will start into its higher suction mode while transitioning but drops right back down to the quieter setting on the hard floors.
Stairs.
So this was my concern about running in auto mode…or at least it was my primary concern. I have one of those tight side doors that are a few steps down from the kitchen and a staircase away from the basement. This is the door I use every day and generally doesn’t close, so I was concerned that I’d forget to close it and the vacuum sensor would fail and crash to its death.
I just tried it out and watched it navigate this “cliff” both in the dark and during the day and it had no issue. It’s great at detecting doorways. While it’s not my intention to leave the door open to the kitchen, I’m not going to worry about it moving forward. After all, it has yet to get close to starting the kitchen in auto mode!
Day 3 of auto clean mode:
Success! I left the door to the stairs open and went off to a doctor’s appointment. It started running shortly after I left and finished before I got home. It didn’t tangle or fall down the stairs.
Mopping:
Here’s a bonus section because who wouldn’t want their vacuum to also mop, right? It’s great for me but don’t mistake this feature as capable of scrubbing up messes. It won’t get that spilled soda off the floor…and it’s just going to trail it around your house. It is wet dusting. And it does that VERY well.
I have all hardwood, except tile in the bathroom, and cork in the kitchen. The cork should be mopped but doesn’t handle water setting for long periods. I LOVE my cork floor. The cork and the hardwood floors show dust easily and also you feel the dirt you’re walking on in a day.
Why Pay over $300 for a wet/dry duster?
This is what I would have thought too. It may not be right for you. There’s a lot you can do with $300 and by the time you get your space to the place where a robot works well, a hand mop doesn’t take long either. In fact, the robot takes much longer. My floors get cleaned with the wet mop in just over an hour. The vacuum cycle is just a tad under an hour. If it gets lost it might be 20 more minutes.
It really doesn’t save maintenance costs. The mop pads are reusable but don’t work forever as they basically have Velcro on them. The dust bin also requires a bag and the wide sweeper brush also needs to be replaced.
What it does do is allow you to do other things while it’s taking care of the task of vacuuming and wet dusting. It also helps you do it more frequently. Click here to find out more about the Tidy Home Challenge!