If you have a couple of pets running around your home like I do, once you clean floors, it doesn’t take very long for hair and small messes to build back up. This is why daily robot vacuum cleanings have been a game changer for me. Rarely do I even get to see a mess appear, let alone stick around and get worse over subsequent days. After reviewing one of ECOVACS’ best robot vacuum cleaners, it was time to have a look at what its sub-brand, Yeedi, could do. Continue reading to learn about unboxing, performance, and some of the quirks I have run into while reviewing this unit.
Unboxing and assembly of Yeedi C12 PRO PLUS
In terms of packaging used by Yeedi, the robot vacuum and station were all inside of a pretty basic brown box. This pales in comparison to flashier, high-gloss boxes that have photos printed all the way around. Personally, that matters very little to me. So if a budget-friendly brand can cut those sorts of corners to save money and help bring the price down, I’m all for it.
Right out of the gate, Yeedi C12 PRO PLUS was easy to take out of the box and piece together. It didn’t take long for me to attach the side-sweeping brush and ensure any protective foam or plastic tabs were removed throughout the charging station and robot vacuum itself. This was my first chance to see the dust collection bin up close, which I was very excited about because it banishes the need for vacuum bags, a silly expenditure, at least from my perspective.
One thing I did not realize about this unit until unboxing it was that there were two attachments for vacuuming. One that would vacuum only, or one that would vacuum and mop. This seemed strange to me, but I had been spoiled by the ECOVACS DEEBOT T30S until then. I opted for the vacuum and mop option and carried on.
Downloading the Yeedi app and pairing C12 PRO PLUS
Once I hauled the Yeedi C12 PRO PLUS down to the basement, I plugged it in and began downloading the Yeedi app on my iPhone. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned the moment I saw a 2.2/5 star rating in the App Store. Determined not to be swayed by others, I pressed on without looking at user reviews. However, the pairing process was a bit confusing, and I’m far from a novice when it comes to interacting with tech.
The main issue here though was that I was supposed to hold down a pairing button for what seemed like a very long time, I would say, almost 10-15 seconds. There was no indication that the button press was being registered so I tried setting it up anyway and it wouldn’t pair. After doing this a couple more times I finally unplugged the station, powered down the robot vacuum, force quit the app, and tried again.
I waited a longer duration during setup and it did work just fine then, but take note that you may need to be much more patient compared to other devices during the initial setup process. Another quirk I noticed with this app is that occasionally I will get alerts that are in Chinese instead of English, even though the rest of the app is showing the correct language. So far, none of these messages seem to have been important, so it hasn’t been a dealbreaker. I just dismiss them and everything seems fine.
The next thing I did was queue up the mapping process. I was quite impressed at how fast it was. It made a very accurate map of my basement and office in a matter of minutes and then it automatically returned to the station. Finally, I filled up the water reservoir located within the mop attachment and then told it to start vacuuming and mopping.
Performance
There are a lot of settings that can be tweaked with Yeedi C12 PRO PLUS, and I opted for standard suction, a low water flow rate, and low noise vibration when mopping. My basement is unfinished, except for the office, so about two-thirds of the space is a painted concrete floor while the office is mostly covered with area rugs. The unit began vacuuming and mopping in the basement section first and did a great job.
This changed once it headed to my office. Because of the area rugs, it wouldn’t go in there. It took me a minute to realize the mop attachment was preventing it from going in there because it didn’t want to get the carpet wet. This was disappointing, but at least I could understand what was going on. For this reason I switched back to the vacuum-only attachment because I would rather have everything vacuumed instead of my office being entirely skipped each day. Once I switched back, everything worked as expected.
The next thing I did was schedule a daily cleaning at noon. With that finished, I was all set to enjoy drama-free clean floors, or so I thought. It turns out that there is some sort of time zone bug in the Yeedi app. It tried running at 4 am instead of 12 pm. I was really caught off guard by this. I checked my time zone in the app and it was correct. So I did the math, corrected it so it looked like it would run at 8 pm each day, and sure enough, it then ran at 12 pm and has been doing so each and every day since.
Outside of the aforementioned bug and need to manually switch to a mopping attachment every so often, performance has been great. The clear dust bin showcases just how much dust and pet hair it has picked up, even though I thought I was keeping it tidy before Yeedi C12 PRO PLUS came along. This great level of performance is despite keeping it on the standard suction setting, when I could raise it to strong or max suction to take full advantage of its strong, 8,000Pa capabilities. I have a cardboard scratching post for my cats and you can see in the before and after just how well it cleaned things up on its own.
Pricing and availability
When the Yeedi C12 PRO PLUS Robot Vacuum and Mop first launched in the middle of last month, it was priced at $599. Since then the price fell to $499, and now there’s an on-page $130 off coupon that takes the price down to $369. Given its capabilities, the current price point seems very good. However, the launch price of $599 was too high, in my opinion.
Final thoughts
Am I happy with the Yeedi C12 PRO PLUS? The short answer is yes. My floors are consistently clean now that it picks up after my pets each and every day. Outside of a few quirks, it has performed really well and I haven’t had to babysit this unit at all once I got everything properly configured. It reliably vacuums both my basement and office, keeping the floors spotless. Are there features I wish it had and bugs I wish it didn’t have? Certainly. But for the price of $369 right now, this is a great value, even if it takes a little extra effort to get things set up at first.
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