I tested Samsung's Bespoke AI 4-Door French Door refrigerator for 3 months — here's my honest verdict

I spend a lot of time writing about and researching the best refrigerators, but when it comes to my own kitchen, I've never caught myself looking at an appliance and thinking "man, I wish this had AI in it". So when Samsung offered me the chance to test its smart new Samsung Bespoke AI 4-Door French Door refrigerator, I was curious to see if it'd make a real difference in my life.

While this four door refrigerator is lovely to look at, I was immediately drawn to its timelessness. It doesn't necessarily look like an appliance that's packed with AI features, but the smarts are all under the hood. I've been testing this showstopper for three months, and while it wowed me for its capacity and ease of use, I came across some trouble when cleaning one of its shelves.

I tested the Bespoke AI 4-Door French Door refrigerator in the U.K., where it's slightly less feature-packed than its U.S. iteration. If you're shopping in the States, you'll get Samsung's Beverage Center included, as well as a smart and multi-faceted ice maker. I didn't get to test these elements myself, but I'll still go into detail about how they work in this Samsung Bespoke AI 4-Door French Door refrigerator review.

Price and availability

In the U.S., this refrigerator is called the Samsung Bespoke AI 4 Door French Door, and it retails for $3,599, although it's reduced by $1,300 at time of writing. You can also buy the refrigerator at Best Buy.

For the U.K., where I tested it, the fridge is called the Samsung Bespoke AI 4 Door French Door Refrigerator Series 8 SpaceMax 669L and retails for £2,999. As I mention above, the European iteration of this fridge lacks Samsung's beverage center and ice making capabilities, although it does still come with a handy ice maker and container which makes it easy to create a stock of ice without plumbing in your refrigerator.

First impressions

Visually, this refrigerator is a real winner. In fact, I've had multiple visitors say that they'd buy it for their own homes. One element I really enjoy is the hidden handles, which sit in grooves underneath the top doors and on top of the freezer doors.

The layout of the refigerator is a classic French door style, but I really appreciate how deep the door shelves go. You can fit a lot of condiments or drinks here, and if you want to chop and change, it's easy to move the shelves around and even between doors thanks to the four height levels on offer.

There are three vegetable drawers, one of which is a tiny, narrow drawer that sits in the middle. I was confused about the purpose of this, but after doing some research, I've found that this acts as an 'Express Water Filter' in the U.S. version of the fridge, which is a feature of the Beverage Center. For me, it acts as a lemon and lime storage drawer, which is handy as I often forget I have them to-hand when I do my weekly shop.

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As for the freezer, you'll find no shortage of storage space in the Samsung Bespoke. It does constitue roughly a third of the total space, but it's organized well, with deep in-door shelves on both sides. There are also two drawers and four shelves in total.

My European version featured an ice maker and a container. This is a nice touch, allowing you to prepare a new tray of ice and then store it in the container underneath if you want to prepare for guests by making multiple batches.

In the U.S., there are plenty of ice-making options in the Bespoke AI 4-Door French Door. It includes cubed and sphere ice, which sounds very fun. Obviously, you do lose some capacity to the ice maker, but it's a trade-off I'd gladly make if I could!

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Daily use

There's a lot of customizability with this refrigerator. One of the best features is the fold-away shelf, which lifts and slides to create space for taller items such as wine bottles or large cakes to sit on the bottom of your fridge. I like that this is only featured on one half of the fridge, meaning you won't miss out on too much space even when the right side is tucked away.

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When unloading groceries or being too lazy to close the door when adding milk to your coffee, the fridge will start to beep at you after around 30 seconds of being left open. It's inevitably annoying when you know you need to close it, but you're just not ready yet. But if you leave the door open accidentally, it's a game-changer. Plus, while it can be convenient to leave your refrigerator door open for some tasks, you should try your best to avoid it. By letting out all that nice cool air, you're creating more work for the fridge and also shortening the lifespan of your fresh goods.

The Samsung Bespoke AI 4 Door has ample capacity for large households. As someone who lives in a two-person home, it's possibly overkill. But then, I do have an abnormally large collection of condiments.

In comparison to my large refrigerator, this refrigerator really maxes out on in-door storage. I used to store my sauces in a single row, but I can easily fit 10 jars in a single shelf in the Bespoke AI 4 Door.

I really enjoy the built-in temperature displays on this refrigerator. As a smart fridge that can be controlled via an app, I was concerned it might remove manual controls entirely. But that's not so — the Bespoke AI has a large, bright panel inside which displays the temperature settings of the refrigerator and the freezer, making it easy to adjust manually.

AI features

This refrigerator literally has AI in the name, so how does it work? According to Samsung, it combines a high-efficiency compressor and a Peltier element which can work alongside one another, or independently. It's designed to learn your usage patterns and adjust its power source and usage accordingly. In theory, this should save you money and energy in the long-run.

One example is for overnight use. Unless you're partial to a midnight snack, you're unlikely to touch the fridge after you eat your dinner and before your first coffee, so the fridge will learn to reduce its compressor speed to lower energy usage throughout the night. On the other end of the spectru, the Peltier system will kick into gear if you leave your fridge open too long and let out all that nice cool air.

The best analogy I can use is that of a hybrid car — you still get the power of gas if you need it, but with the benefits of energy-efficient tech for day-to-day use.

App controls

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As I mentioned earlier, this refrigerator is app-compatible. In truth, most new fridges are app-compatible these days, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I've never cleared out my fridge and thought, "wow, I wish my fridge had warned me that this basil was going bad," but that doesn't mean it can't be a useful feature if you want to use it.

I do use SmartThings in my day-to-day life as I have an (awesome) Samsung washing machine. The thing I enjoy about the machine is that, while it does benefit from being connected to my phone and I enjoy receiving notifications when it needs cleaning or my wash is finished, it's still a great machine in its own right. You absolutely don't need the app to feel like your machine is performing at its best.

That's how I feel about the Samsung Bespoke AI 4 Door French Door. It's got some handy features on the app, if you want to use them. One such feature is the recipe feature, which allows you to enter a list of the foods you bought in your grocery shop. It will then not only warn you when you need to use these goods up, but suggest recipes that feature them.

Personally, I plan my food shop around recipes, but I do sometimes find myself stuck with some odd ingredients that weren't entirely used up during the week, and I found some decent suggestions to use these up when searching the app. It also allowed me to enter dietary preferences or requirements (vegan, low-carb, etc) and would incorporate these into its suggestions.

Recipes aside, the app also gives you useful status updates on your appliance. You can toggle temperature settings, activate 'Power Cool' and 'Power Freeze' (which will give your cooling an extra push top account for any abnormal activity) and even customize the sounds your fridge can make. So that annoying alarm I mentioned? That can be silenced, if you so wish.

Cleaning

Here's my only real gripe with the Samsung Bespoke AI refrigerator. It's niche but, in my view, quite significant. I managed to spill some milk on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, which then become wedged between the glass and plastic elements of the shelf.

That's when I realized that this component can't be separated. Or, I should say, I was unable to separate them. The shelf does have clips at the side which would suggest the glass can be removed from its plastic casing, but after a lot of attempts I wasn't able to do this without worrying that I could break the shelf itself.

This one element of the fridge is quite tricky to clean in-depth. I had to use a small pipe cleaner to reach between the two elements and rinse out the accumulated milk from my fridge. I've been extra vigilant ever since, and I'd recommend if you do buy this fridge that you don't spill milk in it!

This should've been an easy fix for Samsung. It's a shame to knock off points for an otherwise super-smart refrigerator due to a super not-smart design feature. I've not had any trouble removing or cleaning any other parts of the fridge, and considering that I've reported this issue to Samsung, I'm hopeful that it's an issue the brand will resolve in any future versions.

How does it compare?

Our top French door refrigerator is the LG 27 cu. ft. Smart Counter-Depth MAX French Door Refrigerator. Full transparency: we've not tested it, and instead selected it based on its excellent customer reviews. Visually, the main difference is that the Samsung has a French door design both on the top and bottom, whereas the LG only features this on the fridge portion.

The LG also has a larger capacity — 27ct. ft to the Samsung's 23. But as it's a much older model, Samsung's Bespoke AI offers more in the way of AI and other smart features, meaning it could end up offering a more efficent performance over the course of its life. It's also, surprisingly, cheaper than the LG.

Verdict

The Samsung Bespoke AI 4 Door French Door refrigerator has made a huge difference to my kitchen. It's smart, but still accessible if you don't like having to download an app with every new home purchase. Its capacity is impressive, layout user-friendly, and day-to-day use is a dream.

Little features like the adjustable shelf and accessible temperature controls show just how much thought has gone into elevating your average refrigerator experience. And while my European model didn't feature it, the beverage center would be a big draw were I shopping in the U.S..

Unfortunately, I did encounter a problem when it came to keeping one shelf of this refrigerator clean. It's worth noting that despite this, there have been no nasty smells or funky residue issues that have impacted my use of the Bespoke AI, but it's a shame that this one part of the frige is so hard to deep-clean.

If you can overcome that one design flaw, this is an otherwise excellent refrigerator. And while there are cheaper fridges out there, I think it's great competition for much more expensive family-sized fridges.

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