Want the pearliest of pearly whites? There’s an app for that — and a brush.
Oral-B’s latest electric toothbrush, the Genius 9000, connects to an app on your smartphone via Bluetooth to help track your brushing and teach you better technique.
How it works
Connect your phone to the toothbrush and fire up the app. Stick your phone on your bathroom mirror at eye level with the screen facing you (a mount with a suction cup is included). The app will help you line up your face with the view from the front facing camera. Once you start brushing, the app uses the camera to judge the position of the toothbrush in your mouth in order to gauge how much time you’re spending brushing each zone of your teeth.
There’s a representation of your teeth on the screen, split up into different zones. When you’ve brushed for long enough, each of those zones will turn white. Your goal then is to brush each area for long enough to turn all of the areas white. The aim is to not only teach you proper technique in your brushing, but to also encourage you to keep it up.
You’ll be able to view your brushing history on the app, should you want to, and a handy pressure sensor in the handle alerts you with a red light if you’re pushing too hard and damaging your gums.
I tried the brush at Oral-B’s stand at Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona. While I found it a little odd brushing my teeth in front of a crowd of watching strangers, I did find that the brush and camera combo was good at recognising whereabouts I was brushing. Whether it’s enough to make my smile more dazzling than it already is — a tough ask, frankly — is something I’ll have to judge when I can jam one of these into my face on a regular basis.
The Genius 9000 is due to hit shops in the UK and the rest of Europe in July, and the US in December. Prices are expected to be somewhere between $200 and $300 (which converts to around £145 to £215).
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