Smart, but terribly expensive: Oral-B iO makes brushing your teeth nerdy

The new Oral-B iO is a smart electric toothbrush with all the baffles that should take oral care to a new level with "revolutionary technology". But it also costs at least 300 euros. Ntv.de has tried out whether this is worthwhile or whether the manufacturer is mouthing too much.

Last November, Stiftung Warentest came to the conclusion that very cheap electric toothbrushes can be as good as really expensive devices. At that time, the examiners rated the Oral-B Pro 900 Sensi Ultra Thin for 95 euros as the best. With the equally good cleaning performance, the dm Dontodent Active Professional landed in second place, which cost just 16 euros. Now there is the Oral-B iO from the test winner, which should cost around 300 euros in the simplest version. How well she cleans and whether the extras justify the expensive purchase, ntv.de tested.

Basically, the Oral-B iO is an electric toothbrush with a round, oscillating-rotating brush head. However, it has a magnetic drive that justifies the term "revolutionary". Because the brush rotates extremely quietly and with little vibration. The cleaning is extremely good. After brushing, teeth feel very smooth and the gums have no reason to be irritated.

Display, light ring and app

You can probably do that with a very simple electric toothbrush, but the Oral-B iO offers all sorts of clever extras that should help users achieve optimal oral care. The toothbrush has a light ring underneath the attachment that indicates whether the cleaning head is being pushed too hard. With green you do it exactly right, with red the pressure is too high.

(Photo: kwe)

The integrated color display is also very practical. It shows different cleaning modes, which can be selected using a button underneath and the power switch. In addition, the screen helps not to clean too briefly by rewarding sufficient time with a smile. If you were too hasty, you will see less cheerful smileys.

Ki cleans too

You don't really need more, but there is also an app for real tooth-cleaning nerds. After the smartphone has connected to the Oral-B iO via Bluetooth, you can use it to perfect your oral care performance. To click the tongue is above all a dentition view, in which you can see in real time which areas you are currently cleaning and how you are in the time. For this purpose, the toothbrush has position sensors, the information from which is evaluated based on AI. After cleaning you get a summary of the most recent cleaning performance. If desired, all cleaning processes can also be saved in the cloud and long-term statistics can be called up. You have various instructions to choose from, you receive rewards for motivation and you can see exactly when a new brush head is due.

All of this works perfectly well, but not always. In the test, the app suffered a few dropouts, for example individual or sometimes all cleaned dentition areas were not registered. Since the latest update on August 4th, the application has been pretty stable again. Ultimately, however, after a few days you usually clean without the app when you get the hang of it and only check the evaluation occasionally. If only because when cleaning you drool more when you look down at your smartphone than you already do. And holding the cell phone in front of your face with your free hand is also annoying in the long run.

The slim electric toothbrush is charged inductively via a round base on which it docks magnetically. The charging station is pretty small and things look a bit shaky. But the toothbrush and socket duo also stands like a one on a spinning washing machine. There is also a charging transport box as an optional accessory, but with this equipment the device costs just under 350 euros.

Oral-B iO 9 electric toothbrush with magnet technology, gentle micro-vibrations, 7 cleaning programs & color display, charging travel case, rose quartz

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Very good, but also very expensive

300 euros or more is a huge amount of money for an electric toothbrush. Devices well under 50 euros can also clean thoroughly. The Oral-B iO differs from the low-priced competition primarily through its high level of comfort and clever, but not always necessary extras. Anyone who is still interested might be better off waiting for prices to fall. And then there may also be cheaper attachments from third-party manufacturers.