Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/18/rechargeable-sonicare-toothbru.html
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Might just be time for me to upgrade. I’ve had the same old electric toothbrush for like… 8 years now and the battery in it barely holds a charge now.
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I use sonicare and it’s great. Couldn’t recommend it more. The price is good here, but be careful, it looks like this is for an older model. Most stores sell the sonicare 2. It might be hard to buy replacement heads for this.
Another plug (ISWYDT) for Sonicare, but you’re right about older replacement brush heads; the first generation ones don’t fit the Elite handles, and the newest brushes don’t either (they look more like the Oral B brushes, rather than the screw on ones). Also beware of knockoff replacement brushes and try to go OEM whenever possible; the aftermarket brushes lose bristles, and the magnets come off easily (don’t drop your brush in the sink).
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That’s the one I’ve used for years – highly recommended – but Amazon shows me a price of $24.95.
The annoying part of this device is the cord from the charging station to the electrical outlet. It curls, never in the direction you want, and while there’s a cable storage mechanism in the base, it’s not big enough. So I find it interesting that, in all the photos on Amazon’s page, none of the charging stations have a cord. The cord isn’t detachable; they must have cut it off for the photo shoot.
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Editing for correctness, (and leaving for continuity with @Grey_Devil’s amazing powers of observation below.)
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My dentist gave me the high end sonic care for free. Probably because after the bloody horror of a deep cleaning, they didn’t want to have to wade through that mess again.
Even though I brushed all the time, my gums were being destroyed by bacteria. But 6mo after a deep clean and proper maintenance, I dind’t even bleed once from a follow up cleaning. My dental hygienist was ecstatic at how much better it was. Lesson learned, even if it doesn’t hurt, go to the dentist for maintenance.
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I get high marks for my semi-annual teeth cleanings, but I still get asked every time whether I use a water-pick or an electric toothbrush. And what do you know? They sell them there.
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And @roomwithaview i noticed that it also gave me the $24-ish price but if you look toward the price right below it there should be a coupon in green. It’s easy to miss, all i had to do was click it and it applied the coupon (screenshot below). When you go to the checkout it will automatically apply it, i bought the brush since it’s a pretty good price. I’m hoping the quality of the brush isn’t terrible but i guess i’ll find out soon. Either way can’t be worse than the cheap (and old) one that i already have.
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Don’t throw away the brush heads on the first generation Sonicare. They have an incredibly stong magnet in each brush head which you can harvest.
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If you’re deciding if you should go with Oral-B or Sonicare, you should check out the results of this Cochrane review:
only one type of electric toothbrush, the rotating oscillating toothbrush consistently demonstrated a statistically significant benefit over manual toothbrushes
I use a Sonicare (Flexcare and EasyClean) because at the time of purchase they used better Li-ion battery technology and Oral-B used NiMH batteries. My experience was that NiMH batteries didn’t last as long as the rest of the toothbrush. I’ve been happy with my Sonicare brushes (and my dentist agrees with the results), but they might not the be actually the best kind of electric toothbrush. Side note is that NiMH batteries are easier to source and replace.
If you hate needless batteries (like I do), there’s the French classic Broxo:
If I were to buy a toothbrush now, I would buy the Broxo because what is the point of batteries in a toothbrush. They have a limited lifetime and often decay before the mechanism dies. I mean I just stand in front of the bathroom cabinet anyway.
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It isn’t just your experience, it is well documented Li-ion last a lot longer and don’t degrade in their ability to charge. Assholes still putting in NiMH in stuff and make it near impossible to replace are doing planned obsolecence. Which means I have to buy a beard trimmer every 3-5 years. I made one last nearly 8 by taking it apart and swapping batteries out. I got a really price electric razor that won’t hardly hold a charge anymore, and about to be scrapped (I like the little slide up trimmer for close up work still.)
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I bought a bread trimmer and i made sure to buy a wired one because i really did not want to deal with batteries going out on it.
I don’t think i would mind an electric toothbrush that was wired if the construction was good enough to last a long time. But then again… electricity + water. Hmmm.
Pics or it didn’t happen!
Ahaha, didn’t notice my typo 
i’ll just leave it because why not
It made me picture a device, something like a weed-whacker used for slicing toast, and a guy wrecking his kitchen trying to make breakfast, so thanks for the inspiration!
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Still not fully automatic. I’d imagined you pull some sort of braided ripcord to set it going then set the thing careening round to dry your teeth, put toothpaste on, work to separate out the stuck bits, then exhibit them on the counter before cleaning them up, removing the paste, working a bit on the gums, and running out of spin. Does it plumb onto little bottles you squeeze or something instead of the water-pik business? Tiny watering cans with hay drying on top?
Still, it’s only a matter of time before there’s a permanent sort of dashcam thing you’re supposed to put in your mouth, that does regular deep periodontal dives, works up light shows if you’re caught snoring, stages adoring meal mementoes with oral biota, light and squid ink gnocchi. Maybe it helps you speak quadcopter and fill out surveys with derring-do.
Currently the closest to fully automatic is this (well, besides a tooth-slave):
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1071673943/amabrush-worlds-first-automatic-toothbrush
Seems doubtful that thing will clean all kinds of teeth well. What if you have natural non-corrected wonky teeth? Wisdom teeth? Abnormal amount of teeth? Vampire?
That’s a beautiful future. However, I’d prefer not to subject a new intelligent piece of machinery to a life of labor when we have all this biology wriggling around ready to be exploited. I’ve been waiting for the teeth cleaning worms for ages now:
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Waterpiks also have toothbrush attachments that run on the water, but I haven’t tried one yet. I’ll do so when my current Oral-B electric toothbrush dies. (I’ve never managed to successfully replace the batteries in an Oral-B, and I’m fairly good with electronics; they have ultrathin wires which they thread through sharp-edged plastic clasps to make breakage inevitable. The batteries themselves are cheap and easy to source.)
The NIMH batteries in my Panasonic are pretty easy to replace, and when they run down you can use the trimmer with the charger plugged into it; a long thin cord runs into the end of the trimmer, making it essentially a corded model. I assume pretty much any cordless trimmer can be converted to corded with an appropriate power adapter, a dremel, and some caulk or sugru to seal things up when done.
Molaroomba.
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