Proscenic M9 review: Lots of features at a reasonable price, but falls short of perfection

The Proscenic M9 is the latest model in the company’s M series. Previous robot vacuum cleaners in the range have offered a broad range of cleaning features at an affordable price, and the M9 continues to plough the same furrow. In this case, that provides us with a combination vacuum cleaner and mop, with a self-emptying base station to clean the dirt out of the collection bin for you. That’s a similar set of features to the previous Proscenic M8 Pro model. With the M9, self-emptying is now integrated into the base model.

The other obvious change is that the mopping function has been upgraded, swapping the M8’s cloth dragging system for a pair of more effective rotating mop pads. We’ve seen these previously on more expensive vacuum cleaners, but it’s a first on a robot with an RRP of less than £500.

Proscenic M9 review: What do you get for the money?

To get to its price point without compromising on headline-grabbing features, the Proscenic M9 doesn’t have all the luxuries we’ve seen on more expensive robots. It may have the dual rotating mopping pads, for example, but it doesn’t give them a rinse when it’s finished cleaning like the Ezviz RS2 does.

The collection bin empties itself into 2.5l bags, but you’ll still need to remove it to keep the relatively small 125ml water reservoir topped up. This probably won’t be after every cleaning job, but it can be annoying considering that the rest of the everyday maintenance is largely hands-free.

In terms of size, the charging station stands at 35 x 15 x 30cm (WDH). A plastic parking plate extends across the full width of the station and out at the front to make the overall footprint of the unit 35 x 49cm (WD). You need this plate in place, though, as there’s no facility to dry the mops and we found them to be slightly drippy after completing a mopping session. In terms of appearance, it looks identical to the self-emptying charging station that comes with the more affordable Proscenic X1.

The vacuum itself is a circular puck-shaped robot with dimensions of 34.5 x 34.5 x 10cm (WDH), including the LiDAR turret, which protrudes 2cm from the top. It promises 4,500Pa suction and vacuums for up to 250 minutes from a full charge, which Proscenic claims can cover up to 2,690m². It has a brush bar with both regular bristles and rubber fins, which sit in a cavity located between the two main wheels.

The mopping pads spin at 120rpm and exert a downward pressure of up to 6N. The pads are connected to their mounts using a hook and loop style fastening, and the mounts then attach to the base of the robot with magnets. That ensures that it’s all simple to remove and clean. The mopping pads are always active if they’re attached, though, so you’ll need to manually remove them when you want to vacuum carpet without getting it wet.

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Proscenic M9 review: What is it like to use?

Setting up and subsequently controlling the Proscenic M9 is all performed with the smartphone app, which is available for iOS and Android. It’s a universal app used for all Proscenic’s robots, so you have to select your model from a list when setting up.

Connecting the robot to the app and your Wi-Fi is a straightforward affair and you’ll soon be sending the robot out on its first clean. The map starts to appear as soon as the robot goes out, though that initial clean will square off sections of the map and clean it section by section, going back and filling in any areas it might have missed afterwards. However, the LiDAR gets the measure of a room as soon as it has line of sight to the walls, so you can immediately start to set up boundaries and no-go areas.

When the robot has cleaned every space it can get to, it returns to base to recharge. The app analyses the map and breaks it down into rooms. You can label these and merge or split rooms if the automated system hasn’t got it quite right. From here on, it’s possible to choose which rooms the robot cleans. The robot will also tackle larger cleaning sessions on a room-by-room basis, efficiently covering the floor of an entire room before moving on and starting on the next one.

You can also use the app to perform a spot clean by dropping a pin on the position you want to centre on, or set a specific area you’d like cleaning that isn’t bound by the usual room designations.

The robot is in mopping mode as long as the mop pads are attached. These are easy to remove, but it doesn’t raise the pads (like the Eufy Clean X9 Pro and X10 Pro Omni) or remove them itself (like the Ezviz RS2) when it needs to operate on carpet. That means you have to make a choice whether the robot is going to mop or not before you start. Forcing the mop to avoid carpeted areas is straightforward if it’s an obvious split by room, but very fiddly if you want to accurately set it to mop around a room that contains both hard floor and rugs.

Proscenic M9 review: Is it good at finding its way around?

While the Proscenic M9 doesn’t boast anything overly sophisticated in the navigation department, it has the basics nailed. It uses a turret-mounted LiDAR to quickly get the size and shape of a space and it uses a front-mounted camera to help it navigate around table legs and the like.

I was impressed with the robot’s sensitivity around table legs and other furniture-like obstacles. If approached head-on, the robot does a decent job of gently approaching and then moving around the problem. If caught on the periphery, the bumper quickly picks up collisions and renders it harmless.

I didn’t see this robot clatter into any obstacles and it proved itself to be good at even tricky things, such as angled chair legs. It even skirted its way around some low hanging curtains, showing admirably that it’s looking at its path ahead rather than relying on the bumper to register when it comes into contact with something. Navigating from one place to another is equally effective, even where the floor plan is tricky and the robot needs to go around islands or take a convoluted route to a new area.

The M9 doesn’t appear to be particularly speedy as it’s moving around but there must be some efficiency at play here, because it managed to clean my 65m² floor plan in 67 minutes, which works out to 53 seconds per square metre. That’s not quite a record – the Ecovacs Deebot N10 holds the record at 49 seconds – but it’s a comfortable second.

Previous Proscenic robots I’ve reviewed have been problematic when it comes to managing multiple maps, with the Proscenic X1 being the first to even attempt it, and the last-generation M8 Pro not even having the option.

On this robot, Proscenic seems to have ironed the problem out a little and I happily created a second map of my upstairs. Bringing the robot back downstairs seemed to lose my original map, which almost had me writing off the software as still not capable. However, after messing around creating a new downstairs map for a while, the original one suddenly came back and, try as I might, I couldn’t get it to recreate the problem. Perhaps it was a blip.

Switching between floor plans isn’t quite as simple as I’ve seen on other, more expensive robot vacuums. With more advanced models you can reliably just pick the robot up and put it down in a familiar spot to scan the room and load up the most appropriate map. Here, it relies on you to apply the map of the area it’s in, otherwise it will start creating a new map. It’s a bit more of a faff but at least it works.

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Proscenic M9 review: How well does it clean?

Robot vacuum cleaners aren’t just a balance of features and price, they have to be able to clean adequately. For the price, the Proscenic M9 performed reasonably well here, though I was more impressed with its vacuuming than I was with its mopping. Our vacuuming tests involve dropping measured quantities of rice, flour and pet hair onto both hard floor and carpet, then measuring how much the robot can collect. If possible I use the spot cleaning option, otherwise I set an area on the map around the spillage and instruct the robot to do its thing.

The Proscenic M9 was particularly good in our rice tests. Robots with sweeping brushes have a tendency to scatter rice before it has a chance to be trapped by the brush bar, which can cause robots problems, scattering it out of reach or into an area that’s been cleaned already.

It would be fair to say that the M9 followed this pattern of scattering, but because it uses a reasonably smart spot cleaning pattern and automatically covers the area twice by default, it presented the robot with few problems. In fact, it scooped up all of the rice on hard floor, except for a few trace grains. Carpet proved slightly trickier, with the robot leaving 4% of the spill behind, but both scores are considerably above average.

Flour is a trickier job for a robot. The M9 did a fair job, collecting 92% of my spill but leaving a visible dusting behind. That’s an above average performance, though. On carpet it didn’t fare so well, only collecting 36% – well below average and leaving a significant smear of flour behind. When it came to pet hair, however, the Proscenic excelled itself, collecting all the hair we dropped, on both carpet and hard floor.

Mop testing involves spilling ketchup and blackcurrant squash on hard floor and leaving a muddy footprint. All these are left to dry before the robot is allowed near them. Both the footprint and squash took two attempts from the spot cleaning pattern to clear. Most robots we’ve tested in this way can clear mud in a single pass, though it’s about average for dry cordial.

The ketchup proved to be much more difficult, and I stopped counting after sending the robot out 10 times to tackle the problem. This was a disappointing result but not a great surprise considering the affordability of this robot.

Proscenic M9 review: Should I buy it?

With the Proscenic M9, Proscenic’s robot vacuum cleaners have taken another step towards competing with the best models out there. However, it’s only a step and there are a handful of elements that stop this from getting a full recommendation.

Top of the list is the mopping function: the spinning mop pads are an improvement, but it doesn’t produce enough pressure to remove stubborn stains. It’s also necessary to remove the pads to clean carpets, which is an awkward solution if your home has a mixture of both. The app is also on an upward trajectory of improvement but doesn’t yet rival the apps of its best competitors. It’s great to see the multi-map management tools in there, but navigation remains clunky.

The best rival to this robot, which does everything it can and more, is the pricier Eufy Clean X10 Pro Omni. This is better at mopping, though its vacuuming fell a little behind the Proscenic M9 in the toughest tests. Crucially, though, you can set this robot to clean carpet and mop floor at the same time, and it will lift its mopping pads out of the way when not in use. It also cleans and dries the mopping pads when it’s finished.

For a more affordable alternative, consider the Ezviz RS2. This doesn’t have a self-emptying vacuum cleaner but it does keep the water tank topped up with water. It cleans its mopping pads when it’s finished and can remove them itself when you want to send it out to clean carpeted areas.