Yeedi Cube review: Premium features meets economy performance

Yeedi is yet another robot vacuum cleaner brand vying for your money and a place in your living room. It's got a catchy name and more premium features than you'd expect given the price. 

Even the results delivered by the hardware here didn't exactly blow away the competition, it did succeed in making me second guess my first choice of affordable robovac brands. The promises that this robovac makes when it comes to things like self-emptying, auto-lift mopping and AI-powered room-mapping aren't new, but they are are delivered on. That isn't something you can say about every robot vacuum out there.

Though it does little to inspire love, there's plenty to like about the Yeedi Cube.

Despite the name, the Yeedi Cube looks like most other robot vacuum cleaners in its weight class. The unit itself is shaped like a chunky disc, with a set of cameras built into the curved sides.

As is the standard nowadays, The Yeedi Cube is able to map, vacuum and mop your home all by itself. It also comes with two smart twists on this template. The first is that it features a nifty built-in handle. It's not exactly high-tech, but it does make the Yeedi a little bit more intuitive to handle whenever you need to do so.

The second is that the water reservoir is built into the top of the unit. It's also transparent in texture, so you can see how full the tank is at a glance. Watching the liquid slosh around inside the Yeedi as it zips around your home is as fun as it is informative. The robovac also rocks a much larger water tank than most others, which means you don't need to top it up nearly as often.

The vacuum inside the Yeedi Cube is graded for 4300Pa as standard and 5100Pa on the most intense setting. Enabling the latter will drain the battery a little faster, but it's nice to have the option. Both of these settings sit slightly below what a premium robovac might offer and slightly above what budget models can do.

As for the mopping side of things, the Yeedi Cube is graded for a sonic mopping experience to the sum of 2500 scrubs per minute. That sounds impressive, but I wasn't quite as blown away with the results as I was with the Roborock S7 Pro.

Of course, the vacuum-slash-mop itself is only half the package. You also get the Cube docking station. This is basically a little white plastic parking garage for the Yeedi to live in when it isn't putting in the hard yards. Between cleanings, the robovac will check in to charge itself, ditch dirty water, dry out its mop and empty the dust it collects.

While this accessory shares a lot with the alternatives available from other brands, what's here is still fairly well implemented. Both dust and dirty water are removed from the Yeedi between cleans automatically, you just have to remember to empty the relevant bins from the time to time.

The Yeedi app is the last piece of the puzzle here. This software-based companion lets you tinker with the various settings of the Yeedi Cube, and tee up more specific routines when needed. You can set the robovac to automatically clean on a schedule or even clean specific zones within your home while leaving the rest undisturbed. These kinds of settings are fairly standard for the category by now, but they're welcome regardless.

The setup process for the Yeedi Cube is as simple as these things come. Once you've unboxed and charged it for the first time, all you need to do is hit either the physical (or digital) go button and the vacuum will get right to work.

The first clean is always the longest, as the robovac will be building out a map of your home for the first time. Subsequent runs are usually a fair bit shorter. This process isn't radically different from most robovacs nowadays, but I will say that I noticed Yeedi throwing itself at walls and furniture with a zeal that easily exceeded most other robovacs I've tested. Yeedi told me that this tendency towards lower obstacle avoidance was a deliberate design choice that was "made to ensure a more comprehensive and thorough cleaning experience."

I wouldn't say this enthusiasm necessarily worried me, but it set the Yeedi apart from the other robot vacuums I've tested and not always in a welcome way.

The Yeedi Cube relies on all the usual tricks when it comes to cleaning your floors. The results were rarely as spotless as you'd get with proper deep clean, but they'd usually represent a definite improvement. All told, the Yeedi Cube does a great job of sweeping up mess where it could but suffers from a few bad habits. It'd miss the the odd tuft of cat hair and snag tie itself in knots if it ran into the wrong cable, but both scenarios are a common shortcoming among most robovacs.

Likewise, the Yeedi Cube also often struggled struggle with the corners of larger furniture and wasn't able to traverse the lips that separate my bathroom and laundry from the rest of the other rooms in many apartment. I could always invest in a some sort of ramp-based solution, but it would be better if this limitation was something you didn't have to factor in at all given the money involved.

The Yeedi Cube is rarely exceptional at the mopping half of the equation. Even when toggled to the most intense mop setting, I'd usually have to finish the job myself if I wanted it done properly. In addition, many of the same issues that the Yeedi Cube has when it comes to working around corners and libs apply just as aptly to mopping as vacuuming.

That said, even a light wipe-down of the floors in my apartment can go a long way. I may have some feedback about the quality of its work, but it's hard to grumble too loudly when I factor in the sheer amount of time and effort that the Yeedi Cube's mostly satisfactory work saves me on a regular basis.

According to the Yeedi website, the Yeedi Cube is good for 150 minutes of runtime on a regular charge. Given the speed with which the unit worked, this proved to be more than enough for my needs. If you have a larger home or you like to run the Yeedi at its most intense settings, that might not the case and it might take a few cycles to get the job done.

For comparison, the Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni touts 140 minutes of cleaning on a single charge while the Roomba S9+ is good for just 120. Given the difference in price between these three models, it's nice to the see the Yeedi Cube come out ahead on this particular front.