Oclean X Pro Elite review: Great toothbrush, rubbish app

At a basic level, sonic electric toothbrushes such as the Oclean X Pro Elite use high-frequency vibrations to polish the surface of the teeth. However, this specific brush comes with a wide range of brushing modes, intensity settings and smart app-connected features. 

Having tested the brush, I found it to be excellent. It offered a superb brushing experience and left teeth feeling thoroughly clean after use. However, as you’ll see, its Bluetooth-connected app was a huge let-down, with bugs and limitations that make it potentially useless for most users.

That being said, if you aren’t looking for the extra “smart” features, this toothbrush ticks all the boxes. At £80, it’s a high-quality toothbrush that’s easy to recommend as a rival to larger Sonic toothbrush manufacturers such as Philips.

Oclean X Pro Elite review: What do you get for the money?

The Oclean X Pro Elite sonic toothbrush comes equipped with colour touchscreen controls and app connectivity. Weighing in at 95g with a length of 25cm, the slimline brush feels premium. This is in part thanks to its slick metal casing and speckled light grey finish – a rarity even among premium toothbrushes. For instance, the top-of-the-range Oral-B electric toothbrushes still use plastic for their casing, but we think metal casing feels more high-end and durable.

The brush uses a versatile Maglev motor that, according to Oclean, can deliver up to 84,000 movements per minute, at 32 different intensities. Despite this high frequency, the brush is remarkably quiet. Oclean claims the brush is 25dB quieter than other models, though it’s not clear which brushes this refers to. Marketing imagery suggests this noise difference was tested against a rotary electric brush, such as the £40 Oral-B Pro 3 – but bear in mind that rotary brushes are generally noisier than sonic toothbrushes.

The brush has four brushing modes – Clean, Sensitive, Massage and White – which can be selected using a scrolling motion on the touchscreen. To start the brush, just press the circular power button below the screen. The brush also has a two-minute timer that buzzes every 30 seconds to ensure you’re brushing each quadrant of your mouth for the correct amount of time. 

While you brush, the screen displays a graphic to show you which areas of the mouth need more attention, according to brushing data collected from the built-in gyroscope. This graphic is also displayed on the Bluetooth-connected app. While it can give you a personalised brushing plan to help improve your dental health, the app also provides information such as brushing progress reports and brush head information. I have some reservations about the efficacy of the brush tracking and bugs in the app generally, but will detail this later on in the review.

Smart features aside, the toothbrush comes with a magnetic wall holder, which allows users to store their brush away from cluttered or cramped bathroom countertops. There’s also a wireless charging base, which is plugged in via a USB cable – not a 2-pin bathroom plug, as some might assume. Handily, the brush can also be charged using most wireless chargers, making it convenient to charge the brush if you already use a wireless charging pad to charge your phone. 

Like the Oclean Endurance toothbrush, this one sadly doesn’t come with a travel case. If you want a travel case, you can purchase these separately from the Oclean website for £15. 

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Oclean X Pro Elite review: What’s it like to use?

Smart features can be overwhelming, but I found the Oclean’s X Pro Elite’s touchscreen menu easy to navigate. Once you get the hang of swiping through the menu on the touchscreen, switching between the four modes is a breeze. If you want to change between modes mid-clean, simply press the pause button before making your choice.

Unlike other electric toothbrushes, you can also change the brushing intensity. Thanks to the versatile motor, there are 32 different levels to choose from, with 1 the lowest and 32 the most powerful. I tested a good range of these settings, and noticed that there was a significant difference between the highest, middle and lowest intensities. Is having 32 intensities a bit overkill? Sure. However, I can see this being useful for those who want to build up the intensity gradually over time to avoid gum irritation. 

In terms of cleaning performance, I found the X Pro Elite delivered a thorough clean – even at the lowest intensity. The small brush head made it easy to reach the tricky back corners of the mouth, and you can really feel the bristles getting to work on your teeth. If the brush detects you pressing too hard while brushing, the motor automatically reduces vibration frequency to protect your gums.

As mentioned, the Oclean X Pro Elite has an accompanying app, available to download via iOS and Android. If the app is working, you should be able to track which sections of your mouth were cleaned but, in my experience, the reality didn’t measure up. While the initial connection was simple to set up, it often struggled to connect to the brush on later occasions. Add onto this a whole host of options and unclear directions that were nigh on impossible to follow, and you have an underwhelming app that’s more hassle than it’s worth. 

Oclean X Pro Elite review: How well does it clean?

In my experience, the Oclean X Pro Elite delivered a first-class clean. Having used it twice a day for a week, I noticed that my teeth looked cleaner and whiter than ever before. 

In our tests, I put all four modes through their paces, and found the brush’s bristles were soft but robust enough to deliver a good polish and potentially help buff away staining using the whitening mode. Since my gums are on the sensitive side, I found the Clean and Sensitive modes worked best on my teeth. The Sensitive mode in particular achieved a robust polish without leading to any irritation whatsoever. As my gums get stronger, I’m happy that I’d be able to increase the intensity of the clean to boost cleaning performance further.

Oclean X Pro Elite review: What’s the app like?

In short, the app isn’t great. Electric toothbrushes that give you feedback via Bluetooth are nothing new, but sadly the app is the main thing holding us back from giving the Oclean X Pro Elite a five-star review. 

My main gripe is that the app doesn’t work in real-time; you can’t use it while brushing your teeth to direct you towards areas that need more attention. This doesn’t really help you cover every area of your mouth thoroughly. That is, unless you continually check the app every day after brushing to monitor problem areas. Once the novelty has worn off, even the most dental-health-conscious person will tire of checking this daily. Especially since, on multiple occasions, the app failed to open when we tried to access it.

Tracking issues aside, when I did manage to access the app, it threw up so many different options which I thought overcomplicated an ideally straightforward brushing experience. For example, the options allow you to create a personal brushing mode but I found the pre-programmed ones satisfactory enough. 

If you do try to customise your own mode based on data from brushing, the instructions helpfully show you which part of the mouth to focus on, for what amount of time. However, the instructions aren’t displayed on the brush’s touch screen, which means you need to have your phone with you to see the plan. Of course, not everybody wants to take their phone into the bathroom with them, making the personalised plans impossible to follow. 

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Oclean X Pro Elite review: How long does the battery last?

The battery life on the Oclean X Pro Elite is excellent. Despite not quite performing as well as its advertised 35-day battery life in our battery run-down tests, it ran for 125 minutes from a full charge. That translates to 31 days of brushing for two minutes twice daily – not too shabby. 

When the battery level falls below 20%, you’ll see a low battery animation on the toothbrush’s touchscreen, with the motor vibrating at the same time as a reminder to charge. What’s more, a full charge only takes 3.5 hours, which can easily be done overnight.

Oclean X Pro Elite review: Verdict

It’s hard to fault the Oclean X Pro Elite as a standalone sonic toothbrush, since it delivers a better clean than any other toothbrush I’ve tested. However, the app isn’t reliable, and there are cheaper options available without the smart features. 

Take the app out of the equation and the Oclean X Pro Elite is an excellent toothbrush: it’s quiet in use and extremely powerful. Having used it twice a day over the course of a month I could see my teeth were pearly white and fresh. It’s a superb option – as long as the app and smart features aren’t deal breakers.