Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ 3-in-1 Cleaning VR7MD97714G

Verdict

A huge step up in features and cleaning power from the company’s previous robot vacuum cleaners, the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ 3-in-1 Cleaning VR7MD97714G has some clever tech inside. For carpets, this robot can raise its mopping pads or ditch them at the station, making it more flexible than most. It’s a powerful vacuum, and mops brilliantly thanks to its stain detection, but rivals have better edge performance and more intuitive apps.

Introduction

If robot vacuum cleaners have one problem, it’s that they can struggle in mixed environments. The Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ 3-in-1 Cleaning VR7MD97714G does better: it can lift its mop pads to avoid wetting short-pile carpets or ditch them entirely for deep-pile carpeting.

Excellent obstacle avoidance, a self-emptying and self-cleaning station (with steam), and powerful suction make this one of the best high-end robot vacuum cleaners I’ve reviewed.

Design and Features

• LiDAR dome for navigation
• Large docking station

The last robot I reviewed from the company was the Samsung JetBot AI+, which was a vacuum-only product, with a wide roller at the back and no side-sweeper brushes. The Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ has a more conventional design, but that doesn’t mean it sacrifices clever features.

From the top, the robot looks much like the competition, such as the Eufy X10 Pro Omni. There’s a LiDAR dome on top for navigation and a sensor array at the front that uses AI to spot and avoid common obstacles, and to detect stains.

Turn the robot over, and the underneath shows a slightly different brush bar design to the competition. Samsung’s design sees the brush bar split in two, with the middle section designed to cut up bits of hair to prevent them from getting tangled.

Otherwise, there are two circular mopping pads, and a single side sweeper brush, which is used to tease dirt out from the edges of rooms.

With this robot, there’s a large docking station, which has a self-empty station that takes 2.5-litre bags.

That’s enough space to take 10 full loads from the robot’s internal 0.25-litre dust bin. This has a filter that should be removed for regular cleaning.

There are also two water tanks: a 4-litre clean tank and a 3.6-litre dirty tank. Both are easy to remove for refilling and emptying.

Rather than wetting the mopping pads, the station fills the robot’s 0.1-litre water tank, which it uses to dose the pads; when the tank is empty, the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ returns to the dock to refill automatically.

I’ve seen plenty of robots that self-clean their mopping pads, but the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ is the first I’ve seen using steam and hot water to sanitise the mopping pads before drying them.

That’s a useful trick, as it prevents dirty mopping pads from spreading germs around the floor. The alternative is to have a roller system that removes dirt, with fresh water constantly cleaning, such as on the Eufy Omni S1 Pro.

As this is a Samsung product, it’s controlled via the SmartThings app. It’s easy to get the robot connected to the app and Wi-Fi, and then start an initial mapping run. As the robot uses LiDAR, I found it quick to map out the Trusted Reviews Home Technology Lab.

Like other robot vacuum cleaners, the robot automatically finishes the map with suggested rooms. In this case, there were a couple of minor corrections that I needed to make, but it wasn’t clear how to edit the map; the deeper settings are hidden at the bottom of the app screen, where I had to scroll down. A slightly more obvious app layout would help.

Fortunately, although the app was initially a little confusing, the range of options available is excellent. It’s easy to merge rooms, create no-go and no-mop areas, and even add furniture.

The latter is so that you can tell the robot to clean around a specific bit of furniture, such as cleaning up around a dining table after eating. Otherwise, it’s possible to set the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ to clean everywhere, clean just one room or clean just an area.

Cleaning options are in-depth, with a choice to vacuum and mop (or vacuum first, mop second), vacuum only, and mop only. There’s control over the vacuum mode, although I stuck with the smart mode that automatically varies suction power, and the amount of water to use for mopping.

When it comes to dealing with carpets, the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ has some clever options. The default option is to lift the mopping pads by 10mm when a carpet is detected. That’s enough to deal with most shortpile carpets. However, there’s a smart feature that will detect longer pile carpets, and then can detach the mop pads in the cleaning station, vacuuming the carpet only.

I’ve seen this feature on the EZViz RS2, but here, the combination of lift or drop makes the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ one of the most versatile robot vacuum cleaners available.

With SmartThings there’s a new mode that will automatically detect larger stains and focus on them, using the camera at the front. It’s definitely worth turning this mode on.

Performance

• Excellent suction power
• Brilliant obstacle avoidance
• Deep mopping

I tested the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ with a range of tests to see how well it could perform. First, I started with my carpet test, adding flour to my test rug. After just a single pass, my carpet looked clean – that’s one of the best results I’ve seen from any robot vacuum cleaner.

It was similar on the hard floor, with a clean sweep of the mess, showing just how good the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+’s suction is.

I added flour right up to the skirting board in my kitchen. The result was good, but there was still quite a bit of mess left behind. Without the pop-out arm and mopping cloth of the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra, the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ can’t compete as well.

To test the mopping ability, I added several stains to the hard floor and allowed them to dry. First, starting with the coffee stain, I found that two passes were required to completely remove the mess.

It was the same with the red wine stain, which was mostly gone after one pass, but took two passes to really clean it.

Dried-on ketchup is hard to shift, but set to two passes, the robot dramatically reduced the stain, and a third pass removed it. That’s impressive and shows that the AI stain spotting works well, as the robot clearly focused more on this area.

My dried-on mud test, which consists of mud stamped into the floor, leaving a stain and particles, can be hard to remove, but the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ did a great job after two passes, with just a small trace of mess left. This is an exceptionally hard test and shows how well the vacuum cleaner performs.

I added human hair to the floor and then watched as the robot picked up the mess. Turning it over, I found that no hairs were trapped around the roller.

Navigation was excellent on this robot. The lab has plenty of cables and trip hazards, which the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ avoided. It also skirted around my fake pet mess, without touching it. I didn’t see the robot get stuck at all, which is good going.

Measuring the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ at 59.1dB, it’s one of the quietest robot vacuum cleaners around. Battery life is also excellent. Cleaning the entire lab, set to two passes, there was enough juice left for spot cleaning and the Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo AI+ was always ready to clean when I needed it to.

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