Every once in a while, something comes along and makes you go: Wow. If only I had the money to buy that. Today, that something is the Samsung Bespoke Mirror AirDresser. It’s $2,999, and it takes up a decent amount of space, and the more I used it, the more I had to remind myself of that. Because otherwise, I’d be trying to do some cash Tetris to make an AirDresser work in my apartment.
The Bespoke Mirror AirDresser is Samsung’s latest go at the device? Appliance? Thing?. A few weeks ago, Alice wrote about her obsession with Samsung’s 2022 model – saying that yes, she loves it and relies a lot on it, but of course also addressing the $3,000-sized elephant in the room.
I only used the Bespoke Mirror AirDresser for a few hours recently, while staying overnight in an Airbnb on Gadigal and Bidiagal land, arranged by Samsung Australia. During that time, I fiddled with the settings and gave two of my coats, a jacket, jeans, my partner’s suit pants, and a few other things a run. I also ate Beach Burrito and took a selfie in the AirDresser’s mirror. And, I have some thoughts.
Samsung Bespoke Mirror AirDresser
The Bespoke Mirror AirDresser is marketed by Samsung as its most intelligent home sanitising cabinet yet. It fits up to five jackets, has space for longer items like coats and dresses in two-to-three of those spaces, and it can also refresh your shoes. The idea behind it is that it provides a similar experience to what you’d get at a dry cleaner, in a way that doesn’t drown your clothes in harsh chemicals. It’s not going to iron your garments completely, but it will take out a lot of the wrinkles. Per Samsung:
“With just the push of a button, the Bespoke AirDresser can help freshen your clothes from odours*, wrinkles** and certain bacteria***. It’s perfect for clothes you need to wear all the time but can’t wash like suits, coats and uniforms”.
Those asterisks get expanded on in the footnotes. The first notes that the Samsung Bespoke Mirror AirDresser eliminates 99% of Iso-Valeric acid (sweat, 4-Ethenyl pyridine), tobacco, Valeraldehyde (roasting meat), and Tetrachloroethylene (dry cleaning chemicals). The second notes that wool fabric wrinkle recovery efficiency is 100 per cent and rayon fabric wrinkle recovery efficiency is 80 per cent after using the AirDresser in Daily Care mode. I don’t own anything wool to test, but from my short time with the AirDresser, I can tell you they didn’t need an iron and the wrinkles I got from packing the clothing in my suitcase were gone to the naked eye.
The third set of asterisks expanded on what type of things the sanitisation part of the AirDresser can remove. You can read those here.
Inside the AirDresser, it smells… nice. It smells clean, but not like a chemically-packed closet, nor like you’ve just sprayed toilet air freshener. It’s like a chemical-less new car smell mixed with freshly washed sheets that have been left on your parent’s clothesline in the sun to dry all day.
What can it do?
On the front of the Samsung Bespoke Mirror AirDresser are a number of settings you can choose from, such as drying something from a washing machine, sanitising, or just general freshening up. But you can also circle through 24 cycle options in total, including daily care, outdoor, delicates, bedding, and suits. AI control will learn from your usage habits and tailor the cycle to suit your specific wants.
While the AirDresser will make a pleasant noise once complete, it also sends notifications to your phone via the Samsung Smart Things app. Within the app, you can see the cycle’s status, too.
I had manually selected ‘winter coat’ from the AirDresser’s interface and this specific cycle ran for one hour. Each cycle type takes a different amount of time to complete, but there is a quick feature that’ll be done in under 20 minutes if you’ve left things to the last minute.
The hangers, even the clip pegs, are gentle on your clothes.
Does it work?
Yes, it works. It won’t replace dry cleaning in so far as removing heavy stains go, but it does freshen them up. In my time with the AirDresser, all I kept thinking was how nice everything smelt. There was no sweat smell on my puffer jacket, my lingering perfume was all but gone after one cycle on my blue coat, and the leftover hint of the dog I had pat earlier that day was impossible to locate on the black coat.
That photo, of course, won’t show how nice things smell, but the wrinkles were gone, and the slight marks around the collar from makeup were no longer there. I didn’t want to super-soil either of these coats in the name of content, but it seems the steam is strong enough to remove “everyday” grime, without that thinned-out feel my blue coat has every time it comes back from the $30-a-pop dry cleaner.
The Samsung Bespoke Mirror AirDresser is quiet, and even has a failsafe against kids opening the door mid-cycle.
It’s easy to clean, and because there is no plumbing required, the two ‘water in, water out’ buckets are neatly tucked into the AirDresser.
As it doesn’t require plumbing, nor ventilation, you can put it in a wardrobe.
Should you buy the Samsung Bespoke Mirror AirDresser?
Look. It’s nearly $3,000. It’s very clear this thing isn’t for people like me who live in a small apartment and wear band t-shirts and jeans to work. It’s for people with not only money to spend on something like that, but people who live in a home, one with the possibility for another thing taking up precious floor space in a bedroom, and those who dry clean a lot of clothes or wear things that can’t be washed in a washing machine. It’s cool tech, it definitely works (even better if you use the Samsung Smart Things app), and it makes your clothes smell fabulous. It even doubles as a dehumidifier if you leave the door open and run a cycle.
I really want one, but I won’t be buying one.
