Samsung Jet 90 Complete review: Banish dirt to the land of wind and ghosts

I don’t ask much from a stick vacuum. Just suction roughly equivalent to a black hole, and the ability to tear the very fabric of reality with its mighty power.

A few years ago, I invested in a Dyson V6 Absolute expecting it would fulfil my wildest vacuum fantasies. Dyson has done an excellent job of positioning its brand as the Mercedes of all things that suck and blow, so I imagined a vacuum powerful enough to extract the nails from my hardwood floor, or pull a Volkswagen Passat through a garden hose.

But expectation never met reality with my Dyson, and I began to make excuses for it as it ineffectually pushed dirt around and left debris deeply embedded in my rug. Perhaps, I thought, all stick vacuums are ineffective. Or, perhaps I’m just using it wrong. I imagined urbane silver fox James Dyson tinkering away in his laboratory, feverishly churning out the Platonic Ideal of vacuums. Certainly, he wouldn’t lead me astray?

The Samsung Jet 90 has put to rest my reservations about stick vacuums, and made the claims put forth by my Dyson seem like marketing puffery.

The Jet 90 doesn’t come cheap. At $999, it’s on the upper end of the stick vac price spectrum. It’s not Samsung’s top tier stick vac. That honour goes to the Bespoke Jet, which offers integrated self-cleaning and double the battery life for a price of around $1149. But it’s still a steep price to pay for most consumers.

Even at a high price point, however, the Jet 90 stacks up well against comparable models from other brands. Dyson’s V10 Animal will set you back $999, the Dyson V12 Detect Slim will cost between $1299 and $1349, and LG’s A9K EVOLVE also retails for $999.

The Jet 90 also offers add-ons that can inflate the price a bit. A self-cleaning station, for example, adds another $299 to the price , and an extra battery is yet another $249. If the extra battery life and self-cleaning functionality are non-negotiables for you, you’d be better off springing for the Bespoke Jet.

The Jet 90 promises 200W of suction power, but that’s a pretty byzantine metric for most people, so let’s put it in more understandable terms.

This is Pancakes:

He is a fluffy boi. And he loves to roll around on the rug in our lounge, leaving it looking like a Yeti exploded. My Dyson, which was specifically designed to handle pet hair, would just vainly push the fur around, rolling it into bigger and bigger clumps Katamari Damacy style, but never actually picking it up. Pancakes laughed at its quixotic attempts to remove evidence of his rug ownership.

In contrast, the Jet 90 easily removes pet fur, even fur deeply embedded in the rug. If it weren’t for his incessant meowing, I’d forget Pancakes even existed.

It also performs well handling larger debris. Our 5-year-old daughter, for example, has yet to internalise our pleas for her not to play with Play-Doh on the carpet. The Jet 90 managed to get all but the most deeply embedded bits of Play-Doh, as well as errant chips dropped in the course of her daily snacking.

While the Jet 90 has separate brush heads for carpet and hard surfaces, I found that its carpet attachment is quite effective on hardwood and tile as well, while my Dyson’s carpet attachment would just fling debris across the room when used on hard surfaces.

It’s tough to jam the Jet 90, but when you do, a warning light immediately tells you whether the clog is in the brush head or one of the suction mechanisms such as the dustbin or pipe.

My one annoyance was with the spinning mechanism of the brush head. It’s finicky, and a bit too much pressure can cause the brush to stop rotating, even when there’s no jam. After a few runs, though, I managed to find the Goldilocks Zone between rigorous elbow grease and featherlight touch, and my brush rotation problems mostly disappeared.

This is where the Jet 90 really shines. While Dyson’s dustbins are attached to the motor unit, the Jet 90’s is detachable. You can disassemble each part of the dustbin, and every part is washable. Whereas I had to resort to saving takeaway chopsticks to dig grime out of my Dyson, the Jet 90 is simple to clean, and you can get a deeper clean than with the Dyson.

If you don’t fancy getting your hands dirty at all, Samsung also offers the aforementioned self-cleaning station. Or, you can spring for the pricier Bespoke Jet with its integrated self-cleaning. Both offer the benefit of dust filtration so you don’t have to worry about emptying out your vacuum cleaner and generating a dust cloud.

The Samsung Jet 90 includes separate brush heads for carpet and hard surfaces, though as I mentioned before, I found the carpet attachment to be remarkably versatile.

It also includes four tools. It has a mini motorised brush tool that’s great for cleaning in the car or vacuuming furniture, a combination brush that works great on baseboards and a crevice tool for narrow spaces. There's also a bendable tool for hard to reach spots. I haven’t run into a use case for it yet, but I suppose it’d be handy for cleaning picture rails, the tops of cupboards or for stealth missions where you have to surreptitiously vacuum around a corner without being detected.

The crevice tool is the one that really proves its worth. Crevice tools are a pretty stock-standard inclusion for most vacuums, but the Jet 90’s telescopes, allowing you to reach some very difficult-to-access spots. You could even vacuum under your refrigerator, which — let’s face it — you’ve never done.

Samsung claims you’ll get an hour of battery life out of the Jet 90, and in perfect, laboratory conditions, you probably would. Running on the lowest speed and with a non–powered attachment, the Jet 90 can hit an hour. With a motorised attachment, I hit around 45 minutes on low.

Most of my vacuuming was done on medium power, and I found that more than sufficient for everyday vacuuming chores. With a motorised attachment, I got 24 minutes, which was usually ample for vacuuming my 2-bedroom house.

On the highest setting, the Samsung really burns through battery. I was lucky to get around 8 minutes running the Jet 90 on high with a motorised attachment, but I also found it generally unnecessary to kick the power up that high.

Ergonomically, the Jet 90 takes a bit of getting used to. For starters, it’s heavy. At 2.8kgs, it’s one of the heavier stick vacs in its class. While I actually liked the weight, my wife found it a bit cumbersome when using it for long periods.

It also houses all its buttons on the top of the unit, unlike the Dyson which uses a trigger set into the grip. This feels a bit unintuitive at first. My wife actually prefers the Samsung's setup, but when I vacuum I like to pretend I'm in WWII sweeping a minefield or using a flamethrower to clear out a machine gun nest, so I think I still prefer the trigger.

One feature I do like is the telescoping pipe. This makes it easy for people of different heights to use the Jet 90 comfortably. I’m 6’2” and can use the vacuum as easily as my wife at 5’4”. Be warned, though: you need to retract the pipe before putting the vacuum back on its base station or it will teeter precariously and a light knock with your foot will send it careening to the floor.

The Jet 90 also corners well, and has no trouble making tight turns around chair legs and other obstructions.

If you’re in the market for a premium stick vacuum but aren’t quite ready to splash out $1200-1500, you’re not going to do better than the Jet 90. It’s remarkably effective and has enough battery life to get through daily vacuuming chores with ease. It’s also easy to clean, and its self-contained, upright base station means you don’t have to drill into your walls.

If, however, you’re looking for a bit of extra battery life and self-cleaning functionality, you’d be better off springing for Samsung’s top-tier Bespoke Jet. Either way, Samsung seems to be carving out a niche for itself in the stick vac market, and sucking up Dyson’s dominance.