Save or splurge: Does your toothbrush need to be smart?
I’ve tested the priciest of smart toothbrushes and think they’re a waste of money. Here’s why
If you’ve been in the market for an electric toothbrush recently, you will have been bombarded with smart features touted as the top tech for keeping your teeth and gums healthy. From brush mapping and Bluetooth app connectivity, to countless brush customisation options, we wouldn’t blame you for wondering if it’s all a bit of a fad.
I’ve been overseeing Expert Reviews’ electric toothbrush coverage for months now, and have noticed a pattern emerging among our reviews. Ineffective apps, patchy tracking and painfully high price tags are becoming ubiquitous features of electric toothbrushes. Though I had hoped it would be an exception, this was even the case in the £400 Oral-B model I’ve been testing recently. That’s why it’s high time I share my hottest take.
Electric toothbrushes do not need to be smart
No matter what the big dental care brands tell you, or how useful you think brush tracking might be for your oral hygiene, you do not need to splash out on smart features to get a great clean. Bringing your phone to the bathroom every time you brush is inconvenient, and mid-range electric toothbrushes without smart features will give you an equally good clean without the hefty price tags.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s a deep dive into smart electric toothbrushes, their pros and cons and why I’ve developed such a strong aversion to them.
Jump to:
- What are smart electric toothbrushes?
- Why should you avoid buying a smart electric toothbrush?
- Which smart electric toothbrushes have we reviewed?
- What alternatives are there?
What are smart electric toothbrushes?
Smart electric toothbrushes are nothing new. In fact, the first offering from Oral B was the Smartseries 7000, which launched at MWC in 2014. The brush allowed users to connect their brush to an app on their smartphones using Bluetooth. This app, once connected, could track how long you’re brushing for, as well as when you’re brushing too hard. It also served up daily news and weather reports to, I assume, keep you entertained through the full two minutes of brushing.
In the decade that has passed since then, multiple brands have jumped on the smart toothbrush bandwagon. While the newsfeed and weather reports have been replaced by articles about dental advice and personalised dental plans, app-connectivity is still one of the defining characteristics of smart brushes.
That being said, the data that’s collected from your brushing has become far more “useful” with time and refinement. For example, where the early smart toothbrushes could only track the amount of time you’re brushing each day, more recent brushes use gyroscopes to track zones around your mouth. The app will now display a graphic depicting these zones to, in theory, ensure that you brush your whole mouth thoroughly.
The main selling point of smart electric toothbrushes is the healthier teeth and gums that supposedly come as a result of this. I find this completely understandable – who doesn’t want to invest in their dental health? However, having used the top-of-the-range smart brush you can buy from leading dental care brand Oral-B, I’m here to offer my brutally honest opinion.
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Why should you avoid buying a smart electric toothbrush?
Alongside the smart features I touched on above, many smart brushes come with a huge range of settings, which can be personalised easily through an app. The Oclean X Pro Elite, which we reviewed recently, has four brushing modes and 32 different intensity levels for each mode. That’s more adjustability than anyone could ever realistically need, but it’s still good to have right?
Sure, more is more. However, app connectivity is a double edged sword. Many apps, including the Oclean app mentioned above, suffer from patchy Bluetooth connections and overcomplicated user interfaces. And, since many smart toothbrushes don’t display the brush tracking graphic, you have to bring your smartphone to the bathroom with you every time you want to use this feature.
Some attempts have been made to solve this problem. Oral B deserve some credit for releasing a nifty smart charger with the Oral B iO10 brush. This neat little charger connects to your brush via Wi-Fi – no more patchy Bluetooth connection – and has six LED strips spanning its diameter. These six lights correspond to the areas of the mouth and they turn from a dark blue to a sparkly white once the area has been thoroughly cleaned.
This solution sounds fantastic and clear in theory, but my tests threw up two major problems. The first was that the charger only comes with a two-pin bathroom plug adapter. As someone who doesn’t have a plug in their bathroom, and has to charge their electric toothbrush using an adapter in the living room, it wasn’t convenient to use the charger’s tracker every day. At least, I didn’t fancy tracking through my home to sit in the living room while brushing my teeth.
This inconvenience was bolstered by the second major issue, which is a problem with every smart brush we’ve tested. Getting the brush to correctly register which area of the mouth I was brushing in was borderline impossible. Every time I tried to register it correctly, I would spend so much time over-brushing my mouth in a specific area that I wasn’t focused on brushing my teeth properly, thus entirely defeating the object of brush tracking. After a few weeks, I gave up trying to get the thing to work and just used the brush as if the smart features didn’t exist.
To state the obvious, if there was one thing I expected from reviewing an £800 electric toothbrush, it was that all of its features would work flawlessly. Sadly, I was disappointed and, having spoken to our electric toothbrush reviewers over the years, you’ll get the same brush tracking problems whichever smart toothbrush you choose. That doesn’t mean that every smart brush is an ineffectual waste of money. Below, I’ll quickly run through the features of each electric toothbrush we’ve tested over the years to give you a realistic and honest idea of what’s out there.
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Which smart electric toothbrushes have we reviewed?
We’ve reviewed a wide range of smart electric toothbrushes since their inception in 2014 – too many to list in detail here. But, I’m willing to give summaries a shot seeing as you’re still reading.
Oral B Genius Range
I’ll start with Oral B electric toothbrushes. There are two smart brush ranges in their current lineup – Genius and iO. The Oral B Genius 9000 offers brush tracking, using the selfie camera on your phone. In theory, this allows users to track the brush around their mouth; in our tests, however, this was patchy and inaccurate.
Like the later iO models, the Oral B Genius X instead uses in-built sensors to track the brush around six zones in the mouth, but our reviewer admitted that brush tracking was far from perfect – “I was able to trick the app into giving me an almost-perfect score by simply brushing each section for long enough, even if I’d neglected to brush particular areas from every angle” they said.
Aside from flawed brush tracking, both Genius models gave good brushing insights, like brushing time, overpressure tracking and overall brush scores. The app also takes you through a daily-care routine, which allows you to track any dental problems like staining and bleeding gums. They’re also compatible with the standard, cheaper Oral-B brush heads.
Oral B iO Range
There are more brushes available in the pricier iO range, spanning from the iO3 all the way up to the latest iO10. All brushes in this range come with a dual-pressure sensor, various brush modes and an ultra-quiet motor. The brush heads are also far pricier than average, at £26 for four heads.
The first “smart” brush in the iO range is the Oral-B iO4, which, once connected to the app, can track brushing time and overpressure. That’s it. Also, since the brush doesn’t include a screen or LED indicators for each of the four brush modes, you can only tell which mode you’re using in the app. That said, the Oral B iO4 app does allow you to set the colour of the interactive 360 pressure sensing ring, which you could argue is a fun touch, albeit a little useless.
If you want a smart electric toothbrush that lets you see which setting you’re using on the brush itself, and one that offers brush tracking, you’ll need to splash out on either the iO6, iO9 or the iO10 I’ve tested.
The Oral B iO6 is the brand’s most affordable brush that comes with all the smart features included. So if you’re dead-set on trying brush tracking, get this one rather than the iO10 and save yourself some money and heartache.
Alternatively, the Oral B iO9 has more sensors than the iO6, which should garner more accurate brush tracking. That said, it will still present similar tracking issues, so I’d still always recommend the cheapest option, in this case the iO6.
Philips Sonicare
Moving onto Philips, two of our favourite Philips Sonicare smart brushes are the Philips Sonicare ExpertClean 7300 and the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean 9000. While neither of these brushes offer tracking, they do offer app connectivity. The app can give you brushing advice and put you on a plan to improve your dental hygiene over time by tracking your brushing time and overpressure. However, this feedback isn’t live – for that, you’ll need to splash out on the DiamondClean Smart models, which are around £100 more expensive at the time of writing.
Unlike the Oral B models, there isn’t a real-time visible pressure sensor on either brush. This leaves me wondering how users are supposed to know what the correct pressure feels like if they aren’t warned when they’re using too much pressure at the time of brushing.
Philips smart brushes do get some points for convenience though. That’s because the brushes have a small amount of built-in memory, meaning you don’t need to connect your phone to the app every time you brush.
Lesser-known brands
Philips and Oral B aren’t the only brands to release smart electric toothbrushes. Oclean, for example, has released various smart brushes, such as the X Pro Elite (highlighted above for its range of intensity settings) and its latest brush, the X Ultra S.
Neither brush has a visible pressure sensor, handily though, they do feature screens that display a brush tracking graphic. That means you’ll be able to see your progress in real time, without needing to bring your phone to the bathroom. Our reviewer found the tracking on both brushes to be pretty patchy, suprise surprise.
That said, the X Ultra S does include bone-conduction audio prompts to guide you through your brushing live. What’s more, the app gives you pretty comprehensive roundups of your brushing. Despite coming from a smaller brand, it’s actually one of the best smart toothbrushes we’ve tested.
We’ve also tested the Evowera Planck 01 smart toothbrush, which is marketed as a toothbrush that “cares about you” – take a deep breath for this one. It has six modes at a range of intensities, a pulse timer and visual tracking feedback on its colour display. Its app also serves up so much data. Ever wanted to know what your Amplitude Deviation is? This app can tell you. Our reviewer puts it best, “it captures a lot of information but isn’t so good at telling you what it all means.” So, if you like information for information’s sake, this might be the brush for you.
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What alternatives are there?
The truth is that the high-end smart brushes use the same powerful brush motors as far more budget-friendly options on the market. That means you can get the same cleaning power in a far cheaper brush, especially if you don’t feel the need to buy into ineffective smart features. Put simply, you’ll be able to get a great clean as long as your brush has:
- A powerful motor to give your teeth a good polish
- A few cleaning intensities to help gently clean sensitive gums
- A pressure sensor, ideally visible, to protect your gums
The brush that springs to mind when listing these features is the Oral B Pro 3 3000. This has long been our favourite electric toothbrush for most people, since it’s affordable, offers a good clean and covers all the basics in style. Its replacement heads are also some of the cheapest on the market.
Alternatively, if you’re looking to invest in a powerful sonic toothbrush, consider the more affordable smart options from Oclean. Just level your expectations for brush tracking and you’ll find that the level of cleaning is excellent.
