There were several times when I thought the Proscenic M7 Pro wasn’t going to end well. There was the time it firmly wedged itself underneath the dining chair and took 15minutes to find its way out. Or the lentils incident, when a test went horribly wrong and I ended up with soggy split lentils adhering themselves to my floors.
The idea of a robot mop was an appealing one. I feel like I spend too much of my time trying to keep the high-gloss white tiles that cover far too much of our downstairs floors free of easily spotted grime and debris. Imagine being able to not only hand over responsibility for the vacuuming to a handy robot minion, but also the mopping.
The Proscenic promises to do both and, if you have the right voice assistant, you can do it all through a few commands.
But I learned one lesson early on: the mop function on this particular home robot isn’t a patch on what you do yourself. If you are anticipating that this will do a thorough mop of your floors while you put your feet up, it’s best to lower your expectations.
The mop is equivalent to wiping a damp cloth across your floor – fine for maintaining, but in no way going to tackle any ground-in stains.
That’s because the mop attachment is a small microfibre covered tank that fits on to the M7 Pro. You can programme the mop to go in a certain pattern, and hope for the best. But you’ll probably end up having to tackle any real stains first yourself.
Also, if you leave the tank attached while not in use, the water seems to eventually seep out into the cloth – as it is designed to do – but without the robot’s movement to spread it evenly, you’ll just end up with a damp spot on your floor.
So discounting the mop, how does the M7 Pro fare as a robot vacuum? Reasonably well, actually.
The device works as most of these cleaners do. It uses small rotating brushes to flick the dust and dirt into its path, sucking it up into the small bin as it goes.
Sensors stop it from chucking itself down a step, or getting stuck on furniture. Collision sensors gently steer it away from your furniture – or, if necessary, help it free itself from under furniture – as it moves around the room.
There are a few options for cleaning, including a deep-cleaning mode and a quiet mode that can be used when you don’t want a vacuum running full pelt around your house.
All of this is controlled via the Proscenic Home app. Once you have the app and the robot paired, you can control every move your robot makes, connect it to wifi and control it remotely.
The M7 Pro maps your home, so you can also see a graphical representation of where your robot has cleaned, where the dock is located, and occasionally where it has run into trouble. For those zones, you can set up restrictions to keep your robot away from a trouble spot – a thick rug, for example, or cables that will get snagged. It’s a handy feature, and seems to work well.
It also has a section that tells you how worn your filter is, how long before you need to replace the side brushes and how often you need to clean your sensors. It’s helpful and will make sure your robot is kept in reasonable shape.
There are things that will need replacing too: the Hepa filter; the side brushes as they wear down; the rubber roller brush for underneath the device. Spare parts can be found online and won’t cost the earth to have delivered, which is something to consider.
The good
The M7 Pro does a decent job of picking up dust and bits of debris, and if you run it on a regular basis, it should keep things ticking over. The remote control via the app is handy, allowing you to control the robot from wherever you are.
The not-so-good
If you are expecting this to be a decent mop, forget it. It’s more of an option for keeping things in check than a deep clean. The water tank is too small for large areas, and even with the option to make it mop in a Y configuration, it doesn’t get everything clean as such.
The rest
The app also allows you to integrate your cleaner with Alexa for voice control, and keep an eye on the various filters that may need to be replaced.
The verdict
Buy it for its vacuum abilities, rather than as a replacement for your mop.
