Real Homes is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s why you can trust us.

We've put the Proscenic M8 Pro through its paces in a pet-friendly household, to see if this self-emptying machine can vacuum and mop floors simultaneously

This brilliantly simple yet feature-packed robot vacuum can mop your floors whilst collecting dust and debris, and it even takes itself home once finished and empties its dust bin. With minimal effort required from you, keeping your floors clean has truly never been easier, plus it syncs with your smartphone for control wherever you are in the world, and it can be turned on using your voice through your Alexa or Google Assistant device.

Empties itself and has a sizeable bin

Fast cleaning as it works out the best route

Plays noise so that you can find it

You can schedule it to clean

Alexa and Google Assistant compatible

Tells you when to change bin bag and replace parts

Might not fit under some of your furniture

Loud when emptying its bin

Can't lift the mop head up, it avoids the area instead

Get the best home decor ideas, DIY advice and project inspiration straight to your inbox!

Thank you for signing up to Realhomes. You will receive a verification email shortly.

There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.

If you've been forever searching for a robot vacuum cleaner that mops too, that's affordable in price and bursting with features, then the Proscenic M8 Pro is one for you. We've been testing this robot vacuum at home for the past few months, in a pet-friendly household with a pug and a lionhead rabbit running around to test how well it cleans up hair. 

When I first had the opportunity to test this robot vacuum, I practically jumped for joy as it couldn't have come at a better time. I was going back to the office post-pandemic and we were both struggling to keep up with vacuuming and mopping after gaining another furry family member whilst we'd been stuck inside. We considered finding a cleaner to come in once a week, but once we calculated the cost over a year, we were hesitant. Enter the Proscenic M8 Pro, which has been our solution, and for £499/$693 RRP, it practically paid for itself. Our cleaner quote was £45 per clean, which is just 11 uses of this vacuum. Something to consider if you're in the same boat. And while it won't clean the toilets or kitchen surfaces, it does save a lot of time.

We wanted to see if this is one of the best vacuum cleaners that money can buy, especially if you live a busy life or if you live in a busy household. Carry on reading for our full Proscenic M8 Pro review, when it comes to setting up, maintaining and generally just using this brilliant robot vacuum mop.

Proscenic M8 Pro in box

The Proscenic M8 Pro comes with a lot included in the box, and while the box itself is large, it has to be in order to fit the self-emptying charging station inside. First of all, we unboxed everything and laid it out, ensuring we had everything we needed before starting the setup process. There is an anti-collision EVA component in the robot vacuum cleaner that you'll want to pull out before use. This is just a white tab that hangs out so you shouldn't miss it.

When you're ready to set up your robot vacuum, you can scan the QR code on its plastic cover to take you to download the app you need. Here, you'll find it easy to get your robot vacuum ready for use. The vacuum will speak to you and the app will guide you through this process. The first thing you want to do once the app is up and going is to get the robot vacuum to map your house. Doing this will let you set areas and rooms, and you won't be able to make the most out of your vacuum cleaner until this is done. Once your vacuum cleaner has mapped your house it will look a little like what you can see below.

Proscenic M8 Pro on wood floor

It's hard for us to think of someone this robot vacuum cleaner wouldn't suit. It's quite simple to use, so even grandparents or technophobes would benefit from having this in their home. Not to mention its also great for anyone who may be less able, or struggles to bend down. But do note they will need to pick it up to change the mop head and to add water to its tank. 

You can turn the vacuum cleaner on with your smartphone or schedule it to clean whilst you are out so there are no disturbances. It'd also be a great buy for anyone with kids, to schedule to come out once a day, perhaps once the kids have gone to school, whilst you're doing the school run, or even post-dinner to clean up the mess. You can also segregate it to clean singular rooms in one trip. 

On the other hand, it's the most ideal for flat owners as it obviously cannot get up the stairs. So for someone like me, who lives in a two-bed flat, it's ideal for cleaning my entire house in one fair sweep. I also have wooden floors and tiles throughout my house, so the fact it can mop at the same time is a game-changer. It works to pick up hair, too, so any pet owners needn't worry about its suction ability.

In one word: easy. Whether you schedule this vacuum to clean or you turn it on only when it's needed, this robot vacuum makes cleaning your floors easier than ever. Before you get going, take the water tank to your sink, fill it up with water and close it. Slide on the mop head (it sticks too) and pop the tank back onto your vacuum. You might want to hold it so the mop head is facing your ceiling, as if you hold it downwards, water will start coming out. 

You can then put your vacuum down on your floor and press it on, and it will find out where it is and auto-clean your home from there.

Proscenic M8 Pro on rug

To set room boundaries, so that you can send your robot vacuum to clean a particular room at a time, you'll need to find 'Room Manager' in the functions part of the app. Once the vacuum has initially mapped your home, you can draw where your rooms are and number them. This makes it easy to tell your vacuum where to avoid and where to clean first. All of us always make sure to mop our bathrooms last, right? And you can make sure this robot vacuum mop follows suit.

Proscenic M8 Pro on wood floor close up

This vacuum cleaner has a built-in laser to avoid it bumping into furniture, walls or falling down any stairs (we don't have stairs so cannot comment on this) and the vacuum cleaner always knows where it is in your home. You can see where it is at all times on the app, and should you lose it you can make it play a sound so that you can find it with ease. A game-changer for us, as we've previously lost robot vacuum cleaners when they've been cleaning whilst we've been out and found them tangled in lost pyjamas under our bed.

The only negative thing about this laser is that this extra part of the robot vacuum cleaner makes it taller, so we noticed that it struggled to fit under some of our furniture.

Proscenic app with more feature options

We've gone through, in detail, this vacuum cleaner's modes below. Otherwise, here's what else you can control from your phone. 

You can set virtual boundaries for where you don't want the vacuum cleaner to mop/vacuum or both. For example, you might want it to avoid mopping one of your rugs or a doormat, or to avoid mopping an entire room that's carpeted. On the other hand, you might want it to avoid vacuuming the kids' bedroom where there's always LEGO on the floor, to avoid it from getting stuck, instead it can just mop this room. Set this once and the robot vacuum will remember it forever.

You can adjust the robot vacuum's light brightness on its buttons, and change its volume level for when it speaks. 

You can choose a water volume from low to medium, high and extra-high depending on how wet you like your floors to be when being cleaned. We've always gone for medium and found it enough. 

There's also the chance to change suction power mode, from off to eco, normal and hyper drive. We found the hyper drive mode to offer the best suction power, though it is a lot louder than the normal mode. On eco mode we didn't notice a huge difference than normal, but it should benefit battery life even more.

Proscenic app with map, after cleaning two rooms in Annie's home

This robot vacuum has five different modes that you can choose from when cleaning. It will automatically set itself to Auto Clean mode if you just turn it on by the button on the vacuum cleaner itself.

Auto Clean The default mode for the Proscenic M8 Pro will ensure that the machine vacuums and mops every accessible room in your home. It will clean your home by room, starting from where it lives, and it will begin by making an outline of the room and then it will clean the room from one side to the other.

PowerMop As the name would suggest, this setting will only mop your floors if you choose to select it. This means that it will avoid any no-go zones for the mop setting. 

Room Clean This is one of our most-used modes but it will only work once you've set rooms on the 'Room Manager' section of the app. Then, you can select this mode and tap the rooms you want it to clean and it will make its way around them.

Area Clean In order to use this mode, you'll need to set areas in the 'Area Manager' section. This is great for cleaning specific areas of your home that you know often get dirty. Such as the floor around your kitchen worktop, so that you can tell it to clean here twice over after dinner. Or, around the dinner table if your kids (or you) are messy. Even around the dog's bowl. You can also use this to set areas in which you have a rug, so that they won't get mopped.

Spot Clean Spot clean is ideal for when you've had a spillage, let's say a dry cereal nightmare, and you can't be bothered to go to the cupboard to get your main vacuum out. Select this mode and move the marker to wherever the spillage is, and it will head there and give this spot deep a vacuum and mop. So clever and very handy whether you have kids and pets or not. We also used this mode to clean rugs, and we took the mop head off the machine and emptied the water tank before we directed it to our rugs.

Proscenic app with map to show Spot Clean mode

One thing we will complain about is that this vacuum cleaner cannot lift its mop head up to vacuum places in which you've asked it not to mop. In this case, it just avoids this area altogether. To avoid this, you can set the place in which you want only vacuuming as an area in the 'Area Manager' section of the app, and tell it to vacuum here separately, making sure to empty the tank and remove the mop head before doing so.

Battery When it comes to battery life, this robot vacuum cleaner can last for up to 200 minutes from one charge. This should be plenty of time to go around your home, no matter how large it is. We've never had the issue of it not being able to clean our spacious two-bed flat in one charge and it always has some battery left when it takes itself home. It is worth us noting, however, that if it does run out of battery mid-charge, it will take itself home and once it has enough juice, it will resume its job where it stopped. You can send it home or make it empty its bin at any time.

This robot vacuum comes with its own charging station that doubles as a bin so that it can take itself home to charge and also empty itself at the same time. It does require some floor space in order to do this, but rest assured it sits neatly. You'll need to ensure wherever you choose to place your robot vacuum cleaner's home is nearby a plug socket. 

When it comes to maintenance, as we previously said, the robot vacuum cleaner empties itself into a bag once it goes back to charge. This is admittedly quite noisy and might make you jump the first time it happens. Once the bag is full, it will signify this to you on the actual bin and through the app. We're yet to fill an entire bag even though we live with two pets, and we've used the vacuum cleaner a total of 54 times which is impressive, to say the least.

You'll need to also maintain the actual robot vacuum cleaner after every few uses. Turn it over once it has finished its cycle and check the side brush for any hair or dust, remove if there is any. Then, you will want to take out the robot vacuum's roller brush and remove and clean its filter. You can get away with doing this every two or three uses depending on how dirty your floors get. Hair does tend to get stuck in the roller brush, but that cannot be helped and we still think it is a good vacuum for pet hair. You can clean the mop heads in your washing machine along with your tea towels or cloths.

Looking at reviews on Amazon (opens in new tab) , the Proscenic M8 Pro gets a 4.3-star out of 5 rating with lots of people commenting on its reasonable price tag considering its features, and how its suction power is impressive. The only negative reviews seem to be from people who have received a faulty machine that won't actually work. 

The reviews direct, on Proscenic (opens in new tab) , are all very positive, with more than 600 in total. Lots of these are in other languages than English, however, the ones that are in English explain it's an easy-to-use machine that's reasonable for the price tag and simply enough, it just does what it says on the tin. And we couldn't agree more.

Before the M8 Pro, there is an M8 (opens in new tab) version of this vacuum cleaner available direct from Proscenic for $499 (only available in the US). This vacuum is similar to the M8 Pro, but with a 120-minute battery life instead, and different modes which include Total Clean, Partition Clean, Area Clean, Point Clean and Mopping Mode. Also, note that it does not come with a self-emptying base.

There's also a Proscenic M7 Pro (opens in new tab) vacuum cleaner sold at Amazon and also direct from Proscenic (opens in new tab) in the US, which retails at £399/$618.99. This doesn't come with a self-emptying base either, and it offers only 150 minutes of battery life. These vacuum cleaners both offer the same suction power, but it seems that when using the M7 Pro by app, it doesn't look as easy to use.

We always say that when buying tech or appliances, you're best to get the newest available model if your budget allows. So long as there are actual differences between the models, that is. This way, you won't be tempted to upgrade a few months afterwards, and you know you're getting the best technology available at that time. You also know you'll be able to buy spare parts for the machine for a good while.

Yes! We cannot recommend this robot vacuum cleaner mop enough. Whether your home is carpeted or has hard floors throughout, this machine is a game-changer. It will shed valuable time off what you would otherwise spend doing chores, and although the initial outlay is high at £499, it will prove to pay for itself if, like us, you are using it several times a week. A few of our friends and family members have been over while this vacuum cleaner has been out and doing its thing, and they have commented on how clever it is. In fact, we've already inspired a few people to buy one and they are totally obsessed with it.

Annie Collyer is our Deputy Ecommerce Editor at Real Homes with years of knowledge when it comes to reviewing everything from BBQs to mattresses, mops and scented candles. Annie previously owned her own robot vacuum cleaner which admittedly did the job at hand but it was basic, and after a year and a half of use, it broke. With something to compare it to and two pets to help her test suction power, Annie has this robot vacuum in her living room, by her dining table, and it comes out three times a week without fail, on a Monday, Thursday and Saturday, at 1:02pm, to clean her living room, kitchen and hallway.

Annie has been testing this robot vacuum cleaner for 947 minutes in total, with 737m² of her home covered, and it has come out 54 times to clean. Visit our how we test page to discover our review process if you're interested in more information.

Annie is our Deputy Ecommerce Editor at Real Homes, with her particular area of expertise being home fragrance (there isn't a candle out there that she hasn't lit in her home). She's our guru when it comes to what to buy, when — and also where. She has years of experience when it comes to finding deals — Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday or not — and she particularly loves finding a bargain. With some of her favorite homeware pieces coming from Amazon, she's always looking for budget-friendly alternatives and dupes, as well as eco-friendly products to help her on her recent journey to being more sustainable at home. There's nothing she loves more than her Pug, Doug, and a bargain thrift shop find (yes, she once thrifted a brand new Le Creuset pan). Next up on her to-do list at home: DIY crittall-style doors...

Real Homes is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site. © Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.