A December 1969 report from the consumer magazine Which? explored a relatively new gadget that, it predicted, many people would be giving as Christmas presents: the electric toothbrush. For those who hadn’t yet seen one, the magazine described it as “not that much different in principle from an ordinary brush – you have a stick with a brush on the end. The difference is that an electric one moves the brush head for you”. Progress indeed.

Nearly six decades on, electric toothbrushes can do a lot more than merely jiggle, offering multiple speeds and movement sensors for real-time tracking of where you’ve brushed – some even promise gum-massage or tongue-cleaning modes. Prices range from about £25 for a basic Oral B model to £599.99 for a Philips Sonicare model that gives “smart coverage feedback”. The latest super-toothbrush – a mere £419.99 – features a camera and a built-in water jet to clean between teeth, using AI to identify gaps. Created by Dyson, it’s still, essentially, a stick with a brush on the end (although there is another toothbrush on the market that’s shaped like a mouthguard, with individual brushes, that claims to clean your teeth in 20 seconds).

In the UK, 59% of adults use an electric toothbrush and sales, including replacement heads, reached £361m in the last year, according to market intelligence company Mintel. Any product launch by Dyson – still associated with reinventing the vacuum cleaner – feels like something of an event, so its incursion into oral health does feel significant, says Rachel Bairsto, the head of museum services at the British Dental Association. “We’re seeing more and more expensive toothbrushes,” she says. “Expensive toothpaste as well.”

These highly designed everyday objects have become symbols of affluence. “If you see a picture of a swanky bathroom, it will definitely have plug sockets for some kind of rechargeable electric toothbrush,” says Bairsto. “Whereas I’ve tried to look through the archives to find pictures of bathrooms with toothbrushes in them, and I can’t. Was everybody appalled at the sight of a toothbrush in the bathroom? I don’t know.” With many toothbrushes now, she says, “I think there’s definitely a status symbol [aspect] to it.”

We’re more interested in oral health than ever, says Dr Zaeem Jafri, a dentist and the founder of Nova Smiles, an online advice website. “From what I’ve seen from my patients, people are more conscious about it, wanting to avoid dental treatment, wanting their teeth to look nice and feel nice, and I think a lot of people are turning to gadgets to help.” Another dentist, Dr Reena Wadia, known as Dr Reena, a periodontist or gum specialist at the RW Perio clinic in London, says: “Gum health has become super topical. One reason why is because there’s really good evidence now that gum health is linked to your general health, so gum health is now part of the wellness conversation. People are taking it more seriously.” There is growing evidence that gum disease, she says, comes with an “increased risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Those are the two key ones, [but] there’s lots of other conditions related to it.” A poor oral microbiome has been associated with a range of diseases, including Alzheimer’s and several types of cancer, as well as depression.

Both Dr Reena and Jafri recommend rechargeable electric toothbrushes over manual ones, but neither are urging their patients to go out and buy a Dyson brush, or spend similar sums on other brands. “There’s no robust research that says a certain kind of electric brush removes plaque at a better rate than others,” says Jafri.

Jafri has tested Dyson’s CameraJet, along with many other electric toothbrushes. He found it messy – the water jet was hard to angle, and he says it didn’t seem to find all the gaps between his teeth. He points out that a non-foaming toothpaste is needed for an adequate camera view – sold by Dyson, with the cheapest at £8.49. The live stream to a phone app was a novelty, but in reality he says it was hard to see much with water, teeth and the inside of his cheeks in the way. Cameras in toothbrushes, says Jafri, “have the potential to be good. If patients had cameras that were detecting chipped and broken fillings and can send those images to a dentist to review [and] spot things early, that would be a phenomenal advancement. For Dyson right now, it’s using the camera to detect when the brush is in the right position to shoot the water jet – it didn’t really work that well for me. It’s a bit of an overkill.”

Another concern is that the water jet rinses away the toothpaste when most dentists now recommend spitting, not rinsing, so the fluoride in it stays on and around the teeth for longer. Dr Reena adds: “[The water jet may] make people think, oh, I don’t need to floss, or I don’t need to use interdental brushes. But actually, that jet is an adjunct, not a replacement.” Niamh Turney, a Dyson engineer who worked on the CameraJet, says, however, “The goal is to make interdental cleaning easier and more convenient for those who aren’t already managing to fit flossing into their routine.”

There have been reports of some brushes overheating, and charging problems; at the time of writing, the brush was unavailable to buy. Dyson says it is aware that “a small number of early batches may have experienced a component issue. We are isolating those batches and are taking all the necessary steps to support our customers,” and that there are “some shortages of supply as we are in the process of scaling up production. We expect the next wave to be available in the coming weeks.”

Meanwhile, we are in the midst of an oral health crisis. It is slowly improving on previous years, but access to NHS dentists remains low – 60% of the adult population in England have not seen an NHS dentist in the two years to March 2026. Inequality has a huge effect on oral health – in the most deprived areas, adults are less likely to brush their teeth twice a day, and children are more than three times more likely to have tooth extractions related to decay. The proportion of adults who use an electric toothbrush is 47% in the lowest income groups, compared with 76% in the highest income. Jafri says that the people who are considering spending hundreds of pounds on an electric toothbrush, or those who track their brushing on apps, are likely to be “health-conscious individuals who are brushing their teeth well to begin with, and [this is] probably not solving the bigger problem we have”.

The first electric toothbrushes, says Bairsto, had a “clunky side-to-side action, and that’s about all they could do.” There was an increased interest in dental and oral health in the 1960s – programmes to add fluoride to drinking water were rolled out – and electric toothbrushes were part of this, even if they were slow to take off. That 1969 Which? report tested “all 11 we could find on the market”, including those made by Bosch and Boots, alongside several by US manufacturer Ronson, more famous at the time for its cigarette lighters. Women, it claimed, preferred brushes with a softer touch; men liked something more vigorous “as you might expect”. Children liked them, the report said, “perhaps because they are a good way of doing action paintings with toothpaste on the bathroom mirror”.

Now the market is dominated by Oral B, owned by Procter & Gamble. Jafri says dentists don’t earn commission from selling products but, he adds, “in dental school, they come in with free pizzas and give everyone an Oral B brush. All the dental students kind of associate with Oral B quite quickly. There will be the ‘Oral B lecture’ that everybody talks about because it’s free pizza.”

It has a market share of approximately 60% according to Ziyu Tian, a personal care research analyst at Mintel. “Other brands like Philips, [own labels such as] Superdrug and Boots, and Colgate are also the big players,” she says. The Dyson launch, says Tian, while a premium product that won’t appeal to everyone, will raise the bar for consumer expectations and may force existing players in the sector to innovate. Alongside the increased awareness around oral health’s links to general health, she says, “teeth whitening and the beauty element of oral care is something that the younger generation is really embracing. So oral care is not only about cleaning the teeth or freshening the breath, it’s more about the beauty and wellness routines in general.”

As more evidence emerges, particularly links to the gut microbiome, companies will lean on this in their marketing, says Tian. You can already see it in products such as toothpaste that contains “prebiotics and probiotics for our microbiome, magnesium for evening wind-down, and exosomes [“messengers” between cells, already used in skincare] for tissue regeneration, anti-ageing and longevity”. Toothpaste flavours are branching out, too, from the traditional mint, with berries, chocolate and even fried chicken. “I think it is tied to the rise of the GLP-1 [weight loss injections],” says Tian. “Consumers might not get these indulgent flavours from food and drink, and oral care like toothpaste and other things can be a substitute.”

One of the more recent incomers to the toothbrush market is Suri (from £65), launched in 2022, which makes nicely designed, recyclable, largely plastic-free electric toothbrushes. Its founders, Mark Rushmore and Gyve Safavi, both previously worked in marketing for Procter & Gamble. They were driven, says Rushmore, by the environmental impact of toothbrushes. “Billions of brushes are thrown away – manual, electric – and end up in landfills and oceans. Every brush you’ve probably ever used since you were a child still exists somewhere.”

Damien Walmsley, an emeritus professor of dentistry at the University of Birmingham, has worked with all the big powered toothbrush companies, and most recently with Suri. He says he is probably still under non-disclosure agreements so won’t go into detail; “but I’ve seen some wacky ideas out there, some strange ones”. Companies are constantly trying to add new features, “so that people feel they’re getting a newer product, and people will then be attracted to it. If it’s something new, it will catch the imagination, and that’s what this new Dyson has done.” If it encourages people to brush their teeth more effectively, and more often, “that’s really good”. But Walmsley questions how long the novelty lasts. “We’d like to see more long-term studies evaluating the cost. Was it worth paying the extra money, and did it bring about extra value from that? Those studies aren’t out there.”

Walmsley was one of a number of scientists involved in the 2003 review of literature by the Cochrane library, with the latest update in 2014, concluding that powered toothbrushes were more effective in removing plaque than manual brushes – by 11% in the short term, and 21% after three months – and at reducing gingivitis (early-stage gum disease). Many of the studies were small, short-lived – and run by Oral B. Should consumers be concerned about that? Research studies are expensive, says Walmsley, and over the years Oral B was among the few companies doing them. “We have certain criteria, and we checked that [studies] followed that, and we followed up the evidence,” says Walmsley. “It was as open as it can be.” He also points out that toothbrushing technique and usage in a controlled trial may be different compared to use by a wider population in everyday life.

“Dental professionals should be showing their patients how to brush,” says Dr Reena. “It sounds basic, but actually, [many people have] never been shown. Essentially brushing along the gum line [at around a 45-degree angle] to remove bacteria that are trapped. The bristles should be going under your gum line a little bit.” But not too hard, which can lead to gum recession. A pressure sensor is a valuable feature. “Different modes [in speed for instance] are quite helpful as well, if someone’s got sensitivity or gum issues.” She is interested in the idea of a camera in a toothbrush, especially if it can provide “real-time feedback on what a patient is doing. But the key thing it always comes back to is that technique and consistency are more important.”