The Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum has a lot of cleaning flexibility, but you can’t run it at full power for all that long, and its AI implementation is sketchy at best.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| It has ALL the buttons | Expensive |
| Comes with lots of tools for home cleaning | Rear weighting can be tricky for some users |
| Auto emptying is very efficient | AI surface detection is inconsistent |
Score: 3/5
In this review
Specifications
Design
Performance
Battery
Verdict
Ethical disclaimer: The Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum used in this review was loaned to me by Samsung for two weeks for the purposes of this review. In that time, I tested the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum by cleaning my house quite a lot.
So… clearly “dirty” money has changed hands, right?
Nope.
I believe in being clear and transparent and upfront, even if others do not. Samsung has had no influence on this review, no money has changed hands and the product will be going back to them.
I’d rather be transparent and honest in my approach to both brands and readers, as I feel that serves honest and ethical journalism best.
For more on ART’s Ethics position, see here.
Design
The Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum is a vertically mounted stick vacuum that costs a lot of money. $1,699 officially at time of writing, though being Samsung and this time of year being what it is, deals and discounts are certainly feasible.
Still, at $1,699 you’d want a lot of vacuum for your money with a lot of gadgets and gizmos, and the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum certainly delivers on that score. Its dust collection and charging base allows for the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum to sit vertically in the base, at which point it takes on a rather space-age design look that had me puzzled for some time. It reminded me of something, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
Then I realised. The Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum absolutely looks like a Portal gun, and the use of AI doesn’t help with my suspicions that it’s actually been designed by GLaDOS.
This was a triumph, I’m making a note here… (etc)
For the purposes of being clear I will call it by its proper name in this review, but while I was testing it I constantly referred to it to my family as the Aperture Science Intelligent Dust Destruction Robot, because clearly that’s what it actually is.
The Aperture Science Intelligent Dust Destruction Robot, sorry, the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum has a pistol-style grip for holding it during use, but unlike a lot of competing stick vacuums it doesn’t incorporate an on/off trigger within its hand grip, with simple power and switch buttons instead on the top face of the vacuum head.
This sits beneath a small information screen that display current power mode, estimated battery life, any issues with the vacuum and, if you choose to, messages from a paired Samsung smartphone.
I’m not sure who asked for that, or how really useful it is, but it’s a thing you can do if you really must.
The grip is fine, but the weighting of the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum could be a little trickier for you if you’ve only got moderate grip strength; one family member of mine who helped with the testing noted that they found it a little hard to use compared to some other stick vacuums purely because of the way that the weight of the motor sits relative to your hand.
The Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum as sold in Australia comes with three primary powered brush heads; the Active Dual Brush which combines a soft roller and actively spinning hard roller for grot capture, the Slim LED Brush+ which works from a soft powered roller and the Spray Spinning Sweeper Brush, used for mopping/polishing duties.
Each of them clips on solidly and securely with a provided extension tube to give you extensibility while cleaning. Other accessories include a powered pet tool head, combination tool, crevice tool and a flexible joint tool that lets you curve the accessory heads around if needed to get into cramped spaces.
That’s a lot of additional tools, and Samsung does include an accessory stand in the box with the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum, though it’s a slightly odd design. Why odd? Because there’s not quite enough hanging and propping space for every tool on there to sit properly unless you’re leaving the flexible joint tool installed on the vacuum itself or its accessories.
The other issue with the accessory head is that the base station already takes up a decent chunk of floor space, and adding in a hanger with other tools on it simply exacerbates this. The design is quite eye catching, but this is also a big unit that you can’t really hide away in a corner.
Performance
With the accessory tools included, the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum can be set in four modes; min, med, max and jet. My inner pedant wants to note that Jet mode is indeed more powerful than the “Max” mode, and presuming that’s meant to mean maximum, somebody at Samsung doesn’t know what that word actually means. Maybe it’s a mode specifically for vacuuming people called Max? Do they get particularly dusty?
However, if you’ve got either the Active Dual Brush or Slim LED Brush+ installed you also get a fifth AI option. This doesn’t automatically turn the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum into a device for generating absolutely awful prose (yes, I have a strong opinion here), but instead with the idea that it’ll detect the flooring type beneath it and adjust suction on the fly.
It’s hardly the first vacuum cleaner with variable suction depending on floor type, though it is interesting to test it out and see it switch between multiple modes… eventually.
The AI mode does function, but it takes a few seconds to make the switch between floor types, which means that inevitably you’ll already be partly across a surface before it works out that some level of suction change might be appropriate.
The other issue here is that the AI function can be inconsistent; across hard floors and some low pile and thick pile carpet, I’ve had it pick different suction modes for all three when switching between them. That’s most problematic for the thicker pile carpet where applying a lot of suction can make the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum rather hard to push.
Actual suction maxes out at 400W, which is a lot on most surfaces, though there is a catch with this mode which I’ll get to shortly.
General cleaning quality is decent, though I did note that with the Active Dual Brush – the brush you’re more likely to use than the others because the Slim LED Brush+ has a soft roller that makes it more useful as a hard wood cleaner only – the unpowered front soft brush sometimes pushed detritus forwards rather than capturing it for the vacuum’s suction to pick up, leading to some lines of dirt being pushed towards edges.
Careful manoeuvring of the vacuum head can minimise this, but it’s not exactly ideal for a vacuum cleaner that, after all, costs $1,699.
Cleanup of the actual dust is handled mostly-automatically by the base station. I say mostly-automatically because I’m still not 100% sure why it sometimes decided not to clear the dust away when I placed the vacuum back into its dock.
That was maybe only 1 out of every 10 times, and it’s not too hard to hit the emptying button on the front of the base anyway, but again I come back to that premium price. I don’t feel it’s out of sorts to expect this to just work at the kind of price Samsung wants for it. The good part here is that when the automatic emptying function does kick in it’s very efficient, which could be very useful if you have significant dust allergies.
Samsung also includes a mopping head with the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum, though here it’s worth knowing what it will and won’t do.
The Spray Spinning Sweeper Brush uses dual spinning mop heads, rather like a lot of robot vacuum cleaners along with a removable water spraying compartment built into the vacuum head. Samsung provides washable and reusable heads as well as disposable ones; I don’t much like the environmental impact of having a mop head that you might use only once, so I tested with the washable heads instead.
Also read:
The comparison to a robot vacuum cleaner’s mop heads is an interesting one, because while the Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum does have the word “vacuum” at the end, when you’ve got the Spray Spinning Sweeper Brush engaged, the one feature that isn’t running is the actual vacuum part.
It glides around on hard floors well enough, but because it’s never actually collecting anything from the ground, it’s essentially more of a floor polisher than a full on cleaner. If your floors are dirty beyond some basic dust, it would be wise to zip over them with the Active Dual Brush before polishing them with the Spray Spinning Sweeper Brush first.
Battery
Samsung’s promise with the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum is that it’s capable of up to 100 minutes of runtime, which should be enough for any house, right?
As always, the devil is in the detail, because that figure is highly conditional, with Samsung’s official notes stating that the
Stated run time applies to the minimum power level with a non-motorized tool attached
So, basically, if you want to spend $1,699 on a vacuum cleaner to lightly collect up spiderwebs with the crevice tool, you’re sorted.
What about in the real world in a house with a variety of floor surfaces to clean up?
Here it does depend on the power level you use, or indeed whether you trust in the AI to pick your floor types correctly. If you were keen on the idea of leveraging that 400W of Jet power every time you clean the house for maximum efficiency, you’ll need to live in a relatively small apartment, or just be very good at moving around swiftly.
Battery life at Jet level tops out around 14 minutes in total, though it does drop down to more acceptable levels of an hour or so at medium suction settings. This is one area where, as long as you’re vacuuming on a relatively regular basis the AI mode might make more sense, because its shifting of power usage is likely to maximise your cleaning time.
You’ll want to do that as much as possible, because recharging time is not rapid, with a full battery taking 300 minutes as per Samsung’s claims to recharge. I didn’t precisely time that, and for most people it might be moot because once you’ve dropped the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum onto its base it starts charging up again pretty much immediately.
Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum: Alex’s Verdict
The Aperture Science Intelligent Dust Destruction Robot is certainly eye-catching, and it does offer a nice variety of cleaning modes. For those with allergies, the automatically emptying dust bin is a big plus, and there’s presumably somebody out there who will want the ability to see (but not answer) calls and messages on their vacuum cleaner for… reasons that elude me.
However, it’s not inexpensive, the mopping head is much more of a polishing head than anything else and the battery life at full suction isn’t much to get excited about.
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Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum: Pricing and availability
The Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra Stick Vacuum retails in Australia for $1699.
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