Contemplating treating yourself to the Samsung POWERstick Jet to whizz round the carpet, wood and tiles plus the other surfaces in your home? If this cordless stick and handheld vacuum cleaner is on your shortlist, here’s the review that’ll reveal if it should be number one in our pick of the best vacuum cleaners.
I tested a wide selection of vacuum cleaners on carpet, parquet, tiles, stairs and upholstery, and challenged them with mud, fluff, light debris and pet hair to give you the lowdown on how efficiently they’ll do the job, how easy they are to use, and how much space they’ll take up in your cupboard.
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Samsung POWERstick Jet at a glance
Type: cordless stick and handheld
Bag or bagless: bagless
Suction: plenty
Noise: amazingly noise-free
Easy storage: has its own stand
Samsung POWERstick Jet specifications
Maximum power: 200W
Cable length: Not applicable
Dimensions: H113.6 x W25 x D21.5cm
Weight: 2.8kg
Noise: 86dB
Energy rating: no ratings for cordless vacuums
Dustbag capacity: 0.5 litres
Who will the Samsung POWERstick Jet suit
Those who are already devotees of cordless cleaners, as well as first timers, with carpet and hard flooring that sees lots of foot (and paw) traffic, and the dirt that comes with it.
What is the Samsung POWERstick Jet like to use
This cleaner is really straightforward to use on every surface and for every possible vacuuming job and gets (what can be alarmingly) good results.
Hard flooring, carpet and stairs
The Samsung POWERstick Jet did a sterling job on all the types of flooring I have in my home, and the head with turbo action brush dealt with both hard floors and carpet: a time-saving design feature.
I was delighted by its work on both tiles and parquet, but where this vacuum cleaner particularly distinguished itself for me was on carpet, including one with deep pile. The latter had been very recently vacuumed, yet the Samsung POWERstick Jet sucked up both dust and hair (hence my use of the word alarmingly, above).
The other big plus with this cleaner? Despite its power, it wasn’t a struggle to push as I’ve found with some other vacs I’ve tested.
Angling the head into corners and near skirting boards wasn’t a problem, although I did find the very edges of the rooms required a tool to sort out the right-at-the-margin bits of debris. It was also simple to adjust the height of the cleaner with the telescopic pipe, making the machine just right for my height, but also helping when it came to reaching right under the furniture and cleaning stair treads. It was also a cinch to transform it into a handheld for other jobs.
Attachments
Opt for this cleaner and you’ll get a combination tool, extension crevice tool, and a mini motorised tool. That equals something to get upholstery, curtains and so on dust and pet fur free, an attachment that slides into awkward nooks, corners and edges, and a tool that can tackle bedding. There’s also a flexible attachment I found handy for use with either crevice or combination tool in order to get them angled as needed to do awkward jobs.
All the tools were no trouble to put on and take off the vac, which I should also note felt robust and well made and likely to stand the test of time.
The standout extra with this vacuum cleaner is that it has a wet brush head that can be slotted on when you’ve vacuumed floors and want to wash them. It can be used either with its multi-use wet pads alone, or with the discardable single use wet pads on top of those – Velcro keeps them in place. Both methods finished the vacuumed floors beautifully.
Power and debris removal
If your nearest, dearest and furriest household residents (or indeed you) tend to come home accompanied by lots of mud then be assured that the Samsung POWERstick Jet can cope. It picked it up well from both carpet and hard flooring. The story with light debris, dust, hair and fur on – and in – carpet was the same. Its most efficient work was on carpet rather than hard flooring: on the latter it did tend to scatter a little more, requiring a few more passes to pick up the lot, but the suction on both types of floor was excellent.
This machine offers a choice of power settings for floors: it automatically begins with the mid mode, and I found this got the results you’d hope for around the house. However, if you do need to clean up something that’s particularly challenging, it’s simple to press the plus sign on the handle and move up to the max setting, and if you’re pulling a rug off the floor, for example, you can press minus to create less suction. The display’s digital, which of course isn’t a necessity, but does add to the vac’s overall high quality feel and contemporary credentials.
With a fully charged battery, which takes three and a half hours to get there, the maximum cleaning time you’ll get from this machine is an hour in one go. In the mid power mode, we’re talking 30 minutes. The owners of large houses might find this a bit limiting, and a plug in machine could be preferable, but your view will also depend on whether you vacuum all your surfaces in one blitz each time.
It’s worth noting that while doing its fine work, this cleaner was a relatively quiet addition to my household, and it was possible to vacuum and talk, plus avoid upsetting four-legged residents unduly.
Dustbag removal
My vacuum cleaner testing has taught me to value a dust container that’s easy to remove and open to empty, and this one was a winner offering no fight back when it came to releasing it from the machine, and getting rid of the contents. It’s made to be washable under a tap, too, which means you don’t have to contemplate a container that never looks pristine again once you’ve used the vac for the first time.
The filter is washable and the instructions suggest using the combination tool to remove the dust from the metal mesh grille filter, which again felt like thoughtful design.
Handy features
The vacuum cleaner comes with a charging stand (of which more below), but the pleasing aspect of this to register here is that it has an accessory holder at the back to keep tools tidy and avoid the scrabble at the back of your cupboard when you need one.
Five layer HEPA filtration promises to capture 99.999% of dust particles and allergens – that is, preventing them coming out of the vacuum’s exhaust – making this a machine worth considering to cut down sneezing, wheezing and other unpleasant effects of dust, pollen and mould.
Not yet available, but to come in 2020, is the option to buy an additional battery, which would ensure you could keep on vacuuming when you’d exhausted the charge of the first one.
Storing
Of course you can prop a cordless vac up in a cupboard, but I like the alternative this model offers very much. It comes with a charging stand – the Z station – into which you can dock your machine, and on which you store the attachments (see above). The drawback from my point of view was that you need to be able to plug the stand into a power socket to charge up the battery. My cupboard is, alas, without this nicety, and I don’t (yet) have a utility room where I could store the machine and plug in. Good idea, though, and it means the machine won’t fall over.
Manoeuvrability
The Samsung POWERstick Jet proved easy to carry around as it’s relatively light. It also felt well balanced when I carried it even though, like other cordless stick models, it has the weight of the dust container near the handle. The upshot was that taking it up and down stairs, and moving from room to room weren’t awkward tasks.
How does it rate online
This machine is a brand new model, and there’s only one review so far for this new vac on Samsung’s own site, but it’s a five star verdict on an ‘amazing product’.
How does it rate against similar vacuum cleaners
The Samsung POWERstick Jet does come at a top of the range price in the cordless stick vacuum category. However, if you’re prepared to invest in a home vac, its cleaning results make it a worthy rival to competitors in the same bracket. Build quality and well thought out design add to its attractions, and the fact that it’ll mop floors as well as suck up dust and dirt makes it a stand-out choice, too.
About our review – and our reviewer:
Sarah Warwick has specialised in homes and interiors for over 20 years. She was Executive Editor of Ideal Home magazine, and has written for nationals, magazines and websites including Real Homes, Homebuilding & Renovating, Grand Designs, Homes & Gardens, Houzz, The Guardian, House Beautiful and Country Homes & Interiors. She put the vacuums through their paces all round the house, on all sorts of dirt and debris, and a variety of flooring and surfaces.