The Internet of Things continues to expand, and companies are looking for ways to integrate connectivity and “machine learning” into basically everything. One such category is smart electric toothbrushes.
We’ve already seen app-enabled toothbrushes from the major players, but this year at MWC Oral B announced their new Smart Toothbrush the Oral-B GENIUS X that monitors you as you clean your teeth, gives you a visual indication of how much cleaning each area of your teeth still needs as well as a few other helpful tips such as if you are pressing too hard.
The Oral-B GENIUS X with Artificial Intelligence comes in a travel case that charges the brush and can also charge your phone at the same time. The AI is designed to help you brush the right amount of time, with the right amount of pressure no matter your brushing technique. The brush is available in in white, black, rose gold, orchid purple and anthracite grey.
One of the features of the app is a percentage score for how well you brushed your teeth, factoring in things like time spent on each tooth, excessive use of pressure, and how long you spent overall. At the Oral B booth, they had a “showdown” competition and Scott and I went head to head to see who could get the best score.
Using the app was simply and it was kind of fun to watch the toothbrush track where you were brushing in your mouth. This is likely achieved with sensors in the handle detecting the position of the brush and interpolating location when you are cleaning.
Unfortunately, Scott had to pull out of the race as head of his toothbrush “fell off” and had to hold it on himself while cleaning his teeth (Editors note: Scott’s helper was too busy checking Instagram to actually help). So the results of the Ausdroid MWC 2019 Brush off cannot be announced.
On top of monitoring and guiding your teeth brushing Oral B hopes to be able to provide actionable tips and tricks for improving your overall brushing technique. While some may sneer at this, dental hygiene is important for many reasons, and while we’re not sure you ‘need’ an app to help you brush your teeth anything that increases the quality or frequency of teeth brushing is in balance a good thing. (Editors note: as someone of a certain age who has been told by his dentist that his gums are poor and you should look after your adult teeth as you only get one set I think anything that helps is a great idea)
What both Scott and I did comment on is how clean our teeth did feel afterwards but that very may well be just because of the different location and that we were “looking” for differences. The Oral-B GENIUS X will go on sale internationally on July 2019.
Would you use an app-enabled electric toothbrush? Do you want us to review devices like this? Let us know in the comments below.
To find out about possible heart conditions, some emergency departments will ask how often you brush your teeth.
There’s a very strong link between some cardiac conditions and oral health