Yeedi K650 review: This robot vacuum is tough on pet hair

Budget robot vacuums necessarily make concessions, and that’s okay as long as cleaning isn’t compromised. Yeedi understands this. Its no-frills vacuums have performed consistently well in our tests even if they don’t have much, if any, advanced functionality. The Yeedi K650 continues this trend, adding a bigger dustbin and a tangle-free brush option that while not particularly sexy are most certainly welcome.

The K650 has a fairly minimal design, and its white finish is a nice change from the hordes of black botvacs on the market. On top are an Auto clean button and a Wi-Fi indicator. The power and reset buttons are located on the sides, and there’s 800ml dusbtin in back. The vacuum comes with a rolling bristle brush and an alternative silicone rolling brush, and it has a pair of spinning side brushes.

This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best robot vacuums, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.

You can control the K650 with the Yeedi companion app or your voice, via Amazon Alexa, though the latter is limited to simple commands. You’ll need the app either way to connect the K650 to your Wi-Fi network, switch cleaning modes, enable boundaries, and take advantage of other features.

Yeedi

This is the first vacuum I’ve used with the Yeedi app, and a clutch of one-star reviews in the Google Play store raised concerns about its usability. The seamless setup put those to rest, at least temporarily. I just needed to scan the K650’s QR code and the app prompted me through a handful of steps to connect to my network without a hitch.

The Yeedi K650’s default mode is to clean your entire space until it’s done or its battery runs out. You start a cleaning job by pressing the Auto button on top of the vacuum or in the app. In this mode the vacuum cleans in a random pattern, using its onboard sensors to navigate around furniture, walls, and other obstacles. The app displays the total area cleaned, cleaning duration, and battery level in real time.

The vacuum’s two other modes—Spot and Edge—can be activated from the app. Spot cleans areas of deep dirt in a spiral pattern, Edge mode cleans along walls and corners.

Yeedi

You can adjust the vacuum’s suction power by choosing from four presets in the app: Quiet, Standard, Max, and Max+. Quiet lowers the decibels to whisper levels, which is a small mercy with so many of us working at home. The suction tops out at 2000Pa.

I used the K650 on my downstairs level to see how it fared on medium-pile carpet, hardwood, and vinyl tile. It generally did well cleaning all three, but I quickly learned the secret weapon for cleaning the carpet was swapping out the bristle brush for the silicone one. With a quartet of four-legged family members, pet hair is a constant issue. These tend to get tangled in bristled rollers, requiring me to remove the hair with a cleaning tool or to cut it off with scissors. The silicone roller agitates pet hair as well as the bristle brush, but the hair gets where it belongs—in the dustbin. The K650’s extra-large dustbin meant that I didn’t have to dump it as often as smaller ones, which tufts of pet hair fill pretty quickly.

Being a budget robot vacuum, the Yeedi K650 doesn’t offer much in the way of features and customization. It doesn’t map your floor plan, so it can’t remember where it’s cleaned and where it hasn’t. That sometimes left areas neglected. You can’t do zone cleaning or set virtual boundaries, either. The app includes a toggle for enabling magnetic boundaries, but Yeedi doesn’t provide any magnetic tape. That’s something I missed with the Yeedi K600 and K700 as well).

Yeedi

In terms of app functionality, you can schedule cleanings, view cleaning logs, put the Yeedi K650 in Do Not Disturb mode, and track usage stats of the vacuum’s brushes and filter, so you know when to replace them. There’s also a Find My Robot feature that prompts the K650 to say “I’m here,” so you can locate it.

I never encountered any of the connectivity or usability issues mentioned in those app reviews. Still, given the number of them, Yeedi is hopefully investigating.

The Yeedi K650 sells for about $50 more on Amazon than the Yeedi K600. Both are solid, no-frills cleaners; but if you have pets, the K650’s bigger dustbin and tangle-free brush are well worth the extra cash.

• The Yeedi K650 is a no-frills robot vacuum that’s tough on pet hair.

  Pros

  • Includes a tangle-free rolling brush for pet hair
  • Extra large dustbin
  • Quiet mode allows you to vacuum while working from home

  Cons

  • No mapping capability
  • No physcial or virtual boundaries included

Michael Ansaldo is a veteran consumer and small-business technology journalist. He contributes regularly to TechHive and writes the Max Productivity column for PCWorld.