Samsung Jet 85 Pet review: Powerful suction but falling behind the curve for features

Externally, the Samsung Jet 85 Pet looks to be largely the same cordless vacuum cleaner we reviewed last year – the Samsung Bespoke Jet Pro Extra – only in a new guise. That said, the price has come down by several hundred pounds as this model doesn’t come with a self-emptying base station, though that means you have to empty the Jet 85 manually instead. What it does come with is a dual-roller floor head, with a brush bar and soft roller in one, as well as a good range of accessories for when you want to use it in handheld mode. But, while I can’t fault the Jet 85 for its suction power or accessories, it does fail in one key area, which makes it hard to recommend.

Samsung Jet 85 Pet review: What do you get for the money?

Samsung currently produces two Jet 85 models: the Jet 85 Complete, which comes with an additional floor head that has a motorised soft roller – potentially useful if you have a lot of hardwood floors – and the more widely available and more affordable Samsung Jet 85 Pet – reviewed here – which only comes with the basic Jet Dual Brush floor head.

As its name might suggest, the Dual Brush head has both a main brushbar and a thinner soft roller at the front to help dust and to help seal the head against the floor without compromising its ability to capture larger particles. Or at least, that’s the theory.

The Jet 85 Pet also comes with a decent set of attachments for other types of vacuuming. There’s a crevice tool, which is extendable to a maximum reach of 467mm to get deep into nooks and crannies and there’s a combination upholstery and dusting tool. There’s also a flexible joint that can attach to the handheld unit, though this flexible joint doesn’t pass power through it, so it’s only usable with the previously mentioned crevice and combi attachments. But the real star of the attachments is the Pet Tool+, a small motorised head designed for teasing pet hair from your soft furnishings, that’s also very handy for using on smaller areas, such as vacuuming stairs.

Also in the box is a wall mount/charging dock, which can hold a couple of the attachments and will recharge the device while it’s parked. If you don’t want to screw the whole thing into your wall, you can attach the removable battery without having to dock the entire vacuum. Though, perhaps rather annoyingly, there’s no way of plugging the power lead straight into the battery or the vacuum itself – it has to run through the dock.

Configured for regular vacuuming, the unit measures 25 x 21 x 113cm (WDH) and weighs 2.63kg. On its own, the handheld unit weighs 1.428kg, so it’s not too heavy, and it’s reasonably well balanced once the extension wand and floor head are connected.

The collection bin has a capacity of 0.8l, which is reasonable, and even slightly larger than the Dyson V11, the Dyson model closest to the Jet 85 in price. However, it might still need emptying partway through vacuuming larger houses, depending on how dirty it is.

Battery life is okay, but not brilliant. On the weakest setting, it lasted 48mins 44secs in our rundown test – better than the Hoover HFX but still lagging behind the Dyson V11 and Shark IZ400UKT. On the most powerful suction setting, this dropped to just 8mins 53secs, noticeably shorter than any of its rivals.

READ NEXT: Best vacuum cleaners

Samsung Jet 85 Pet review: What’s it like to use?

Samsung has kept the Jet 85 Pet nice and simple. All the parts click together satisfyingly, with a simple button to unclip them again.

The vacuum itself is controlled by an on/off switch at the thumb and the ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons on either side, which let you scroll through its four power settings: Min, Mid, Max and Jet. Yes, I found it mildly annoying that Max isn’t the maximum, but I suppose you’ll learn to live with it if you buy one.

As you select a power setting, the bright LCD screen tells you which mode you’re in and then switches to a countdown of how many minutes of use the battery has left. Any problems the vacuum might have – such as a blocked pipe – are also reported clearly on the screen.

With the thumb buttons, the Jet 85 Pet doesn’t have a trigger to be held for it to run but, for some reason, Samsung has still included a trigger guard on the handle to put your index finger through. I found this became uncomfortable after extended use as my long fingers tended to rub against the back of the guard, and it also restricts movement so that you can’t as easily adjust your grip as you go.

Emptying is fairly unsophisticated compared to most rivals but, thankfully, can be performed without having to remove the extension wand or any attachments. A button on the front releases the collection bin and filter unit, allowing you to lift it away. Take this to your dustbin then detach the filter from the collection cup – you simply twist it to unlock it – and the collected dirt can be tipped away.

Generally, I found this relatively mess-free. The manual removal of the filter means less muck and detritus can get trapped inside than with, for example, the levered mechanism of the Dyson V11’s collection bin, and this means less need to get your fingers involved, scooping stuff out.

Unfortunately, if there’s one significant disappointment with the Samsung Jet 85, it’s the lack of anti-tangle technology. During my tests, the brush bar thoroughly wrapped itself up in long hair. The brush bar is lined with two regular brushes and one rubber flipper, which ought to do a good job of picking dirt out of carpet, but once hair had become wrapped around the roller, the brush just seemed to hold it in place while the flipper was pulled into the roller by the tightness of the tangles.

Clearing it isn’t a complicated problem, as the roller can be removed by pressing a single button and pulling it out of the side of the floor head. Then it’s just about possible to get scissors under the tangled hair; to make this easier, it would be nice if the Jet 85 Pet had some more substantial grooves in the roller. However, what would be even better would be a system for avoiding this problem altogether, such as the combs that are built into the floor heads of vacuum cleaners from Shark, Dyson and Hoover.

READ NEXT: Best Shark vacuum cleaners

Samsung Jet 85 Pet review: How well does it clean?

With the third of four power settings being labelled ‘Max’, there’s something a bit This Is Spinal Tap about the Samsung Jet 85 Pet. Perhaps surprisingly, it actually did perform one better than the Dyson V11 – as you can see in the chart below – but, like its rival, the Samsung pulsed then cut out when our suction gauge was attached and it reached a certain amount of pressure.

Suction is an important metric for vacuum cleaners, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that the hardest sucker is also the best cleaner. So, to see how well this Samsung’s cleaning prowess compares against other vacuums we’ve reviewed, I put it through our standard battery of cleaning tests. In these tests, I dropped set amounts of flour, Cheerios and pet hair onto both hard floor and carpet, and then measured how much the vacuum cleaner could collect on a single pass.

I started with Cheerios on carpet and the vacuum collected all but a single morsel, which somehow managed to escape the suction. The fluffy roller at the front helped the floor head push these large particles into the carpet, which held them in place while the vacuum mounted the mess and surfed its way over the top.

Unfortunately, it didn’t fare so well on a hard floor. Usually, soft rollers are excellent at this task, so I was surprised to find the Jet 85 Pet struggling. In the end, it collected just 27% of this spill, with the rest simply being pushed forward by the floor head.

At first, I suspected the reason for this might be a smaller-than-average soft roller. However, while this might play a part, upon closer inspection I discovered that the soft roller on the Jet Dual Brush head isn’t motorised, so it doesn’t help to catch the Cheerios and pull them under. Vacuums with more substantial, powered soft rollers – such as the dedicated floor head of the Dyson V11 or the dual roller head on the Shark IZ400UKT – generally perform much better in this test.

Moving on to pet hair brought the Jet 85 Pet back – it managed to capture all of the hair we put down on both hard floor and carpet. As a side note, I tested the Pet Tool+ attachment on all of my dog’s favourite pieces of furniture and the hair capture proved good here too.

The vacuum was also good in the flour tests. From the hard floor, 97% of the spillage went into its collection bin, with very little left on the floor. There were some traces of flour left in the cracks between my laminate floor tiles, but this was lifted out easily with the more concentrated suction of the crevice tool. Any remainder probably got caught in the tubes – hardly a big deal as, in my experience, the vacuum will end up wiping that clean as it sucks up carpet fluff.

The vacuum was almost as good on carpet, collecting 94% of the flour. This is above average, and while a single pass left some residue behind, that became less visible with each subsequent pass.

Samsung Jet 85 Pet review: Should you buy it?

The Samsung Jet 85 Pet is something of a mixed bag. I was generally impressed with its cleaning on most spills, but it let me down when it came to tackling larger particles on hard floor, despite having a soft roller at the front of the main floor head – though Samsung’s decision not to motorise the soft roller leaves it little more than a draft excluder. It also suffers from hair tangle, and I found the floor head collected much more long hair on its roller than the collection bin did.

It’s a shame because the Jet 85 Pet performed well in the other tests and it’s a decent package with some good quality attachments but, with better options available elsewhere and essential anti-tangle features becoming increasingly common, the powerful suction of this Samsung just isn’t quite enough.

You don’t even need to travel that far up Dyson’s range of vacuum cleaners to find a rival: the Dyson V11 offers everything the Samsung does in, arguably, a more effective package. Admittedly, you have to switch between the soft roller and brushbar floor heads, but that hassle is worth it for its best-in-class cleaning.

Or, if you’d rather not switch floor heads every time you go from carpet to hard floor, the Shark IZ400UKT has both rollers built into a single head, just like the Samsung. However, unlike the Samsung, it’s equipped with a larger diameter front soft roller that’s motorised to help capture larger particles on hard floor.

It’s also not necessary to spend more money to get better cleaning. The Hoover HFX is a good example of this – the suction isn’t as powerful and the battery doesn’t last as long as the Samsung, but it had better results in our tests and it keeps its roller clear of hair tangles, all for a lower price.