Samsung Bespoke Jet Elite Extra stick vacuum review

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The Bespoke Jet Elite Extra vacuum from Samsung is not designed to hide in your laundry. It is not designed to be tucked away at the back of your cupboard.

This is a vacuum that was created to be shown off. It is sleek. Its base station looks like it was carved from a Formula One vehicle.

But it is also a vacuum cleaner.

And while there are plenty of reasons the Bespoke Jet Elite should be your next vacuum cleaner, sometimes that focus on design gets in the way of it just doing what it has to do – suck up dirt and dust.

Design

At the core of the Bespoke Jet Elite’s existence is the incredible base station.

It’s not just a storage mount for your vacuum cleaner. Taking a cue from some of the best robot vacuum models out there, the Elite’s base doubles as an integrated cleaning station.

That means when you dock the stick vacuum to charge, a powerful vacuum in the base station will suck out all the dirt and debris you collected, storing it safely in a vacuum bag.

There’s no messy transfer of dust from your vacuum’s plastic dust bin to the trash. The dust bag can hold two litres of dirt, so you can get through a fair few cleans of your home before you need to replace it.

Base station design challenges

The base station does have its quirks. For a start, the power cable isn’t very long.

When I went to set up the Bespoke Jet in my laundry, I couldn’t actually plug it in. My only power points sit quite high next to my wall-mounted Dyson or on the bench between my washer and dryer. The Bespoke Jet couldn’t reach either of them.

The second weird design quirk is the fact that the base station has cable management underneath that lets the cable come out from three out of fours sides.

That’s not too strange – my kettle has a similar setup – except that the fourth, missing side is the obvious side for it to use.

If the side you mount the vacuum is on the front of the base station, then it would make sense that the power cable runs out of the back. But it doesn’t.

Attachment storage is another factor to consider. Samsung does bundle a second storage rack for some bundled attachments – and there are a lot of them.

If you want to use the second battery – and you probably will – then you need to set up this accessory cradle separately to the base station, with a second power cable plugged in to charge the battery.

I found this quite challenging. Given the size of the base station, wouldn’t it be better to try to integrate all the accessories on it, rather than having another cradle (with another power source) for all the bits and pieces?

If not that, at least let me daisy-chain power for the second battery from the main base. Power points in the laundry (or the back of a cupboard where most vacuums live) are hard to come by.

The vacuum

While the base station’s design doesn’t quite nail the balance between form and function, the vacuum itself does a pretty good job of it.

Like most of the stick vacuums on the market, the vacuum canister sits connected to the end of a long pole, which then connects to a suction attachment or power head to do the cleaning.

Despite the fact there is a convenient hole for your index finger, the control mechanism is a simple button under the thumb to turn it on, with plus and minus buttons to control the suction power.

There are four levels of power: Min, Mid, Max, and Jet.

An LCD gives you a breakdown of how long the battery should last on the current power setting, as well as notifications on errors or when you need to clean the filter.

The accessories

If you’re after a versatile vacuum cleaner with plenty of attachments for different purposes, then the Bespoke Jet Elite Extra fits the bill.

Open the box, and you will get the vacuum, the base tower and the accessory cradle, but also all the following attachments:

• Jet dual brush
• Slim action brush
• Pet tool
• Combination & crevice tool
• Flexible tool
• 2 batteries
• Dust bags
• Spray spinning sweeper
• Reusable microfiber pads
• Disposable wet pads.

For those paying attention, those last three allow you to turn the Bespoke Jet into a power mop.

Performance

Samsung’s marketing materials make a big deal out of the fact that the vacuum features a hygienic 5-step filtration system designed to trap 99.999% of fine dust and allergens.

And while my home is not a scientific enough lab to test the accuracy of that claim, I can say that the Bespoke Jet does an outstanding job of capturing dust.

Compared to my Dyson V10, or even the Deebot N8 that rolls around the house cleaning up by itself, the Dyson feels like it captures that fine dust a lot better.

Admittedly, that’s probably because I don’t have to empty the dust bin on this like I do with the others. But that effortless transfer of dirt is a huge selling point, and should be considered.

How is the suction?

In terms of suction power, the Bespoke Jet feels a little on the weak side at the lower suction settings. To get the carpets feeling clean, I needed to crank the power up to Max or Jet levels, though Mid did a perfectly good job on my vinyl floorboards and tiles.

Of course, that power setting is going to have an impact on battery life. I have a three-bedroom home, two of which are carpeted. Add a couple of rugs and maybe 1/3 of my home is carpet, which required vacuuming on the Max setting.

From a full charge, the vacuum told me I had about 15 minutes of juice on the Max setting. I was able to get through that third carpeted third of the house, with just a bit of battery life to spare.

Samsung claims up to one hour of run time with its battery, but the truth is that to clean a mid-to-large sized home, you’re going to need that second battery charged and ready to go.

And that means having the accessory cradle plugged in somewhere.

Mopping performance

Perhaps one of the more surprising inclusions with the Bespoke Jet Elite vacuum is the power mop head.

Given how much Samsung already puts into the box, does the mop head really make much of a difference?

The review unit I was sent to test was unfortunately missing the water jug for the mop attachment. This meant I couldn’t fully test its performance accurately.

To make up for that, though, I walked around with a spray bottle and sprayed water on the floor in front of the mop instead of pressing the plus button on the vacuum.

The mopping attachment features two circular discs that rotate. That rotation, plus the water spray and the mopping pads, helps clean the floors beyond a simple vacuum.

Even though I couldn’t use the spray function during my review, I didn’t feel the mop did enough to warrant using it over a regular mop and bucket.

The rotating action is a constant speed. The design of the vacuum means it’s difficult to put any downward pressure on stubborn marks or stains. Instead, the mop just moves forward.

Leaving the rotating heads to go over and over a mark did eventually get it to come up, but it wasn’t necessarily easier than just using an old-fashioned mop.

There may be some use cases where people struggle with the effort of mopping, where the slow, repetitive action of the Bespoke Jet could be useful.

But for me, the mop head is effectively a superfluous attachment that will end up gathering dust.

And unlike the similarly ineffective mop components on robot vacuums, the Bespoke Jet still requires you to do the work, walking around your house to clean the floor.

Samsung Bespoke Jet Elite Extra review verdict

The Bespoke Jet Elite Extra stick vacuum cleaner from Samsung is immaculately designed to a point that it gets in the way of performance.

It looks fantastic, with its powerful base station and myriad of attachments.

But it’s not an easy appliance to store in your home. You almost need to consider it as part of a renovation product for it to have a natural spot.

That said, it does an outstanding job of cleaning. It picks up plenty of dust and dirt, and the automatic transfer to the bag in the base station makes the whole act of vacuuming easier. There’s no dust escaping from either the vacuum or the base station.

If you can find somewhere to put the Bespoke Jet Elite Extra where it’s plugged in and out of the way, then you’ll be more than happy with its vacuuming performance.