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.
