Kind of an older topic but I thought I'd chime in here. I've used CakePHP, Yii, Laravel and played a little with CodeIgniter. I've been a fan of Yii for a while, but recently started developing a new project in Laravel. For me Laravel is just easier. It took me a couple of months to build up a decent proficiency with Yii. I hadn't even heard of laravel until a month or two ago and I've already built several projects with it in a fraction of the time I spent with Yii trying to do the same thing.
Both frameworks have great online resources & tutorials to show you the basics and the more comfortable you are with OOP going in the easier it will be to learn either one.