Proscenic P11 Smart review: A super-sucking stick vacuum

Humanity’s quest to make household vacuuming slightly less intolerable has produced a raft of tool innovations ranging from swivel-necked stand-up vacuums to backpack vacs to robots that empty themselves when they’re done cleaning. Cordless stick vacuums offer one of the more peculiar propositions: less suction and capacity and lighter weight than a corded vacuum for a much higher price. That makes Procenic’s P11 Smart an outlier of sorts; it’s still not cheap but it does offer an impressive 25,000Pa of suction that makes easy work of slurping up household dust and debris.

The P11 Smart has a standard stick design. The body, motor, battery, and a 650-milliliter dustbin with four filtering layers—HEPA, sponge, steel mesh, and a cyclone—are contained in a single component. The vacuum comes with several attachments, including a metal extension tube, a motorized floor brush, a round brush, a pet-hair brush, and a crevice tool. These accessories can be attached to the vacuum via the extension tube or directly to convert the P11 Smart into a hand vac.

Also included is a wall-mounted charging stand that you can attach with an adhesive sticker or screws. If you can mount the stand adjacent to an electrical outlet, you can simply hang the vacuum on it and plug the power adapter into the battery to charge it. If you don’t, you’ll need to remove the battery and connect it directly to the adapter whenever it needs a recharge. Proscenic says it takes about 2.5 hours to fully charge the battery, but in my tests, it was closer to three. The P11 Smart has three power modes, Eco, Auto, and Max, which should give you 60, 30, and 15 minutes of runtime, respectively.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

On top of its lightweight build, the P11 Smart further removes the backbreaking labor of vacuuming by literally putting all the controls at your fingertips. You power the vacuum on by depressing a trigger underneath the handle and select a power mode from the touch display on top of the body. When you’re done vacuuming, you just depress the trigger again to turn the P11 Smart off.

To clean my floors, I generally used the Auto mode, which automatically adjusts suction power based on the floor type. The vacuum glides nimbly over hard flooring but required more effort from me to push and pull it over carpet. That’s significant if you have wall-to-wall carpeting, as it might translate into longer cleaning sessions and more frequent battery charging. Generally, however, the P11 Smart is a breeze to maneuver and navigates easily around and under furniture. Using it overhead to suck up cobwebs, I found it fatigued my arm much less quickly than the hose-and-tube attachment on my stand-up vacuum.

The vacuum’s suction ranges from 7500Pa in Eco mode to around 25,0000Pa in Max mode, with Auto mode operating in the range in between. In practice, it had plenty of power to suck up dust, dirt, and pet hair without a problem and deposit it deep in the dustbin so that no debris slipped back out onto the floor when I powered the vacuum off. I got equally good results when I attached the pet hair accessory directly to the vacuum body and used it to clean the cat sheddings from my couch.

Michael Ansaldo/Foundry

To empty the vacuum, you just hold the body over a trash can and lift the lock on the bottom of the dustbin. Loose debris will simply fall out, but you’ll probably need to reach in to remove pet hair, cobwebs, and dust bunnies. The filter assembly needs to be cleaned periodically. To do this, you press release buttons on either side of the dustbin and remove the filter assembly. The sponge and HEPA filters can be washed with cold water, and the owner’s manual provides detailed instructions for reinstalling the whole assembly.

The P11 Smart works with the Proscenic app to provide cleaning records, accessory replacement reminders, and easy access to customer support. It’s easy enough to set up, following a wizard-driven pairing process similar to other devices. Once paired, though, it would only connect when the vacuum’s battery was fully charged, which, given its short runtime, was rarely. Because of this, I hardly used the app and, frankly, didn’t feel I was missing anything essential.

All told, the P11 Smart is an impressive cordless vacuum, but at $289, it’s worth mentioning the usual caveats: With its limited runtime and dustbin capacity, it can’t be considered a replacement for a conventional corded vacuum. Its difficulty moving over carpet also makes it ill-suited for heavily carpeted floors. It’s best considered as a supplementary vacuum to your upright canister or bagged workhorse that you can grab for quick clean-ups and light-duty maintenance between weekly deep cleanings. Set your expectations appropriately and the P11 Smart will serve you well.