Philips Sonicare DiamondClean Toothbrush

My recent obsession with my smile has led to a high frequency of visits to my dentist, and ultimately resulted in me getting my teeth whitened (which worked out great!). So the next logical step was how should I preserve my smile, and my new whiter teeth?

Almost any question these days tends to lead me to Google, so I started looking into replacing my long-lived electric toothbrush. I have had my Oral-B brush for 6+ years, and although it generally still works, it certainly doesn't have the same power that it used to. Generally I have good fortune with electrical items, so I tend to invest a bit more than usual as I normally get a really good lifespan from them.

The Appeal

I am fortunate to travel quite often and it never felt quite right stuffing an electric toothbrush in a little plastic food bag to carry it halfway across the world, and my Oral-B charger was a fairly chunky stand which wasn't luggage friendly. The last thing which sounded more gimicky, but I do still like, was the induction charging glass.

I did have a look into similarly-priced Oral-B products, but they really did seem a bit too clever for my liking; Bluetooth connectivity, or partner iOS Apps aren't really what I want from a toothbrush – atleast the added features of the Philips brush were things I would actually still care about in a few weeks time!

The Function

The electric toothbrush market appears pretty much divided between Philips and Oral-B, and it seems that most supermarkets or dentists tend to have a huge preference for one brand over the other (I first seen this toothbrush at my new dentist, who had no Oral B products). There are a few obvious differences between the brands; Oral-B seems to favour the little round heads my old toothbrush used, and the Philips that use a more traditional narrow head shape. In practice I found this had some pros and cons; the narrower Philips head was easier to clean my teeth with, and I could get it around my wisdom teeth easier – as seemingly I have a small mouth, must to everyones surprise! What I am not yet used to is the Philips toothbrush is much, much softer and although my gums are in good health, I think I preferred the sensation of a firmer brush.

I always found though that Oral B seem to have countless different kinds of brush head, some with rubber caps, coloured tips and all manner of nonsense, I couldn't actually ever notice the difference between them in any way other than the cost difference! This toothbrush seems to generally just use one primary kind of brush, and that just seems to make a bit more sense to me.

The induction charging is pretty cool, but deep down, is not really any different to how almost all other rechargable brushes work; the only difference being instead of placing the brush on a stand, you have a little glass to put it in, and aslong as the brush is touching the bottom of the glass it will charge just fine, you don't need to care about alignment.

I do think that as nice as it is, this isn't really hugely beneficial – generally rechargeable products last longer if you allow the battery to drain before recharging, so that means you should really only charge this every few weeks. Especially if you want your (big) outlay to last as long as possible. That said though, this does mean it's very hard to forget to keep it charged, and the glass can be used as a normal glass (for mouthwash/water/whatever) – but I'd really bug me if I broke it, so I just leave it stationary!

Read on to find out about how effective the cleaning was, and how we rated the toothbrush overall…