Samsung AirDresser Review: It Sanitises and De-wrinkles Clothes?

If you've heard about the LG Styler, perhaps the Samsung AirDresser that has finally dropped in the Singapore market (having first launched in South Korea back in 2018) would interest you. The appliance works on a similar level—it sanitises, deodorises, dries and refreshes clothes. Even their forms look similar—both come with a sleek, monolith built with a mirrored facade for elegance and also for looking at yourself wearing your cleaned clothes.

Sleek and stylish: The Samsung AirDresser is essentially a garment care appliance.

I took the swanky Samsung AirDresser out for a spin and tested it out for a couple of weeks. Here are my thoughts on it.

Design: 6/10
User-friendliness: 8/10

It’s a really heavy appliance—it weighs a whopping 85kg—so the Samsung AirDresser really isn’t meant to be shifted around the house despite its slim and sleek appearance. I would recommend placing it stationary in a walk-in closet or bedroom. It comes with a tinted mirror finish that although stylish, will leave fingerprint marks.

The AirDresser features a depth of 63.2cm, when closed, and a height of 185cm. See the illustration below for the full measurements and include a bit of clearance space around it for proper ventilation, if you are intending to have it flush with your built-in wardrobe. It doesn't really emit heat or moisture during operation though, so there's no need to fear it will ruin your carpentry.

Measurements for the AirDresser

Inside, you’ll find three chunky "AirHangers" that hold up your clothes. They are designed with a hollow centre so that jets of air can pass through your clothing to sanitise and dry them properly. The hangers don’t come with side ridges, so some of our clothing couldn’t quite hold up and slipped through.

Inside the Samsung AirDresser

Close-up of an AirHanger

The AirHanger is designed with a hollow centre

A soft ‘click’ sound will indicate that you’ve slot the hangers in place properly. Each hanger comes with a pair of metal clips, which are useful for holding up trousers or tea towels. The appliance also comes with a shelf (great for toys or cushions) that can be stowed away by the side of the door when not in use.

The Samsung AirDresser comes with a shelf, useful for holding up things that can't go on the hangers.

There’s definitely an effort to make things as fuss-free and seamless as possible. So even without looking at the manual, we managed to work things out for ourselves. Before starting, you’ll need to fill up the water tank located at the bottom of the AirDresser. A full tank can go for about 3 to 4 cycles, depending on what cycles you choose. The LCD control panel by the side will let you know when the tank needs to be refilled.

The water tank and drain tank are placed at the bottom of the appliance, side by side. The tanks are easy to remove, allowing you to fill or empty the tanks without much fuss.

On the panel by the side, select 'Clothing Care' if you want to refresh your clothes and ‘Drying’ if you want to dry your clothes.

Within the Clothing Care and Drying programmes, you can select a specific cycle depending on the items you are refreshing or drying. Under Clothing Care for instance, you can opt for cycles such as 'Baby wear', 'Bedding' or 'Wool/Knit'. The '>' or '<' buttons to select the cycles were a wee bit difficult to see under low light, so that could definitely be improved on.

The LCD screen panel will indicate the time needed to refresh or dry your clothes. Then all you have to do is hold down the start button and it’s good to go. It produces an almost inaudible hum when the cycle is running and a cheery chime is played at the end when the cycle is finished.

The controls panel by the side of the AirDresser. Things are very straightforward here.

You can’t disable the sounds (it also beeps when the buttons are pressed) unfortunately, so it may be a nuisance for families who have napping toddlers who will awake with the slightest noise. Otherwise, I didn’t find it too annoying and I actually found the tinkle at the end to be a little too soft in our open-plan space.

Programmes and Functionality: 7/10

The Clothing Care programme works for clothes that need a bit of a sprucing up and deodorising and is great for “in-between” clothes that aren’t dirty enough to go to the washer and aren’t clean enough to go back into your closet.

I tried it out on clothes that I’ve stuffed at the back of our wardrobe for a long time. The programme did help to eliminate the musty smells and even reduced the wrinkles on our clothing. Although it couldn’t completely remove the deep-set wrinkles on our linen and cotton shirts, it definitely helped to make ironing easier.

Before and After: How my linen shirt looks after a turn in the Samsung AirDresser.

Before and After: Work pants straightened out, although the deeper crinkles still needed to be ironed out.

We also tried out the Clothing Care programme with towels, soft toys and cushions. We didn’t see a huge visible change to these items since they didn't have a lot of wrinkles, but they did come out smelling cleaner (there’s also a very slight chemical smell that fades after a while). Our soft toys also felt slightly softer to touch.

Drying turns the Samsung AirDresser into a dryer. I tried the programme with various clothes—a towel, shirt, a pair of jeans and a queen-sized quilt cover—that came straight out from our washer. The towel and shirt managed to dry off under the AI Dry cycle, but the pair of jeans and the queen-sized quilt cover required a longer time and we had to restart the drying programme several times before they could be completely dried off.

Drying my laundry straight from the washer.

The ‘AI’ part comes into play when the appliance automatically adjusts the drying time based on the leftover humidity in the AirDresser. It shortened or increased my drying cycles when necessary, but it wasn't 100% effective or accurate since some of my laundry items were still wet even by the end of the cycle.

It's worth to note that I folded the jeans and the quilt cover during the drying programme in order to fit them into the AirDresser, so it may have affected the effectiveness of the appliance’s drying function.

The Sanitize function can be paired with Clothing Care if you want your clothing to feel extra clean as it incorporates a steaming process that according to Samsung will effectively eliminate “99.9% of bacteria, viruses and 100% of house dust mites.” It can be activated on a number of cycles including 'Baby wear', 'School wear', 'Toys' and 'Bedding'. They won't work with the Drying programme. Activating Sanitize will make the cycle run longer.

Cycles take a long time to run. The Daily Care cycle for instance takes around 40 mins, while the AI Dry cycle can go for more than an hour. If you add Sanitize, the entire cycle can run for approximately 2 hours. For those short on time, there are quick modes to reduce the time needed to refresh or dry your clothes, although these weren't as effective in drying or removing the musty smells of our laundry.

If you like a particular scent on your clothes, you can stick a dryer sheet (or a cotton wool infused with your favourite smell) on the Fresh Finish compartment at the back of the AirDresser. Your clothes will come out smelling like that particular scent after the cycle.

The Fresh Finish compartment in the Samsung AirDresser.

Stick a dryer sheet or your favourite scent soaked in cotton wool in the compartment.

There’s also a Keep Fresh programme, which you can select at any time during the cycle if you aren’t able to remove items right at the end of the cycle. This preserves your steamed and freshened up clothes from creasing or smelling bad until you are ready to wear them. The Keep Fresh programme will stay on for up to 24 hours after a cycle has finished. It will turn off automatically when you open the door to the AirDresser.

Delayed End works similarly, allowing you to end the cycle on a set time (up to 24 hours), so your clothes will be ready when you need them to.

For households with young children, there's a child lock feature to give you some ease of mind. It gets activated when you tap and hold the Delayed End button. Turning it on will deactivate every button except the Power button.

If your home runs on SmartThings, which is the Samsung smart home system, you can connect the AirDresser to it as well, allowing you to operate the appliance remotely via the SmartThings app. You will still need to place clothes manually inside though, so I didn't find that function to be particularly life-changing.

You can also use the Samsung AirDresser as a dehumidifier by keeping the door of the appliance open and hitting the Room Refresh cycle (located under Drying). This helps to control the humidity levels in an enclosed space like a walk-in wardrobe.

Maintenance

The drain tank needs to be emptied once it's full. The appliance will tell you when you need to do so. If you aren’t using the AirDresser for a long time, make sure you empty out both the drain tank and water tank to prevent water from sitting there for long periods of time. The insides of the machine can be cleaned by running the Self Clean cycle.

If you tend to use it for items that tend to accumulate a lot of dust, you can clean out the air filter located at the back of the machine regularly by brushing it down and running it under clean water. The lint filter, located at the bottom of the machine, can also be cleaned in the same way.

It also requires regular descaling. Like with most things, it will let you know when it needs to be descaled. The manual will take you through how to do so, and it's pretty fuss-free. Just make sure you have a descaling liquid on hand to pour into the water tank before the process starts.

What could be better

The Samsung AirDresser isn't a replacement for your major appliances, but it's a handy accompaniment.

This isn’t a machine for the impatient. Cycles, both the refreshing and drying one, tend to take a while to run. The waiting time drags on if you want to sanitise your clothes. As I've mentioned, you do get quick modes for those who are short on time, but these aren't as effective as the normal cycles.

It would help if we could place more than three articles of clothing in the AirDresser. Stacking clothes on the shelves reduced the appliance’s efficacy e.g. musty smells couldn’t be completely eliminated. And because of the small capacity, I couldn't quite straighten our bedding properly to dry it under one drying cycle.

The Samsung AirDresser is no substitute for your washing machine, dryer or iron. But it definitely does what it says it does. It removes smells on clothes that’ve been to the hawker centre, it straightens out a blazer that has been slung on your office chair for too long, and it can dry off more delicate clothes that you don't want to tumble dry without needing a separate water supply like a dryer does.

You'll find it extra useful if you have a lot of clothes that need to be dry cleaned, since you can just pop them to the AirDresser whenever you need a quick refresh, saving you hefty bills in the long run. Do note that it doesn't eliminate stains, so you will still need to run a trip to the dry cleaners for those.

It’s essentially a non-essential appliance, so it's not quite for everybody. My basic lifestyle (yes, I'm #basic), inexpensive clothes and small household mean I won't really need it around. Still, if you are looking to reduce ironing time and cut on your laundry loads and if you can afford the extra space, it's a useful appliance to have around to pick up some of the slack on laundry days.

The Samsung BESPOKE AirDresser is available on the Samsung Online Store and in major consumer electronics stores at $2,499.

TL;DR? See our video review of the Samsung BESPOKE AirDresser here: