There are few places as humbling as your dentist’s office. No matter how regularly you brush your teeth, no matter how diligent you are about flossing, the hygienist is going to pick away at your teeth and gumline and scrape out tartar, often with a very slight headshake that makes even the most confident person feel defensive.
Now Dyson, the company that reinvented the vacuum and several other household appliances, has what it says is a solution. The downside? This AI toothbrush will run you $500 — and it would prefer that you use a toothpaste and mouth rinse of the company’s creation. (Pricing on those wasn’t announced, but it’s a safe bet they’ll be more than the $3 or so you spend for a tube at Walmart.)
The CameraJet is about as far from your typical toothbrush as you can imagine. It includes an in-mouth camera, WiFi, Bluetooth and a special app to guide your oral hygiene. The camera, which boasts a 100,000-pixel macro lens, looks for gaps in your teeth, analyzing 28 images per second. Once it spots those, it sends a jet of mouthwash to the area, removing plaque and letting you bypass rinsing with mouthwash.
James Dyson, the founder of the company, and his team have spent the last six years developing the toothbrush. Part of the impetus, he admits, was his own dread of visiting the dentist.
“Although I’m quite a religious flosser, she always gets out the pickax and starts hacking away bits of hardened plaque,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “I’ve had to undergo the pickax every time I go to the hygienist, and get ticked off.”
Among the challenges was creating a water-based device that could operate equally well no matter what angle the user held it at. The device, which is available in pink and blue, will be sold at Sephora, Amazon and Best Buy, as well as Dyson’s website.
Optional, but recommended, is a nonfoaming Dyson toothpaste (as the foam from typical pastes could interfere with the camera). Oh, and if you’d like, you can also see the inside of your mouth as you brush via the accompanying app.
The company claims the brush removes up to 69% more plaque than electric toothbrush competitors in hard-to-reach areas.
Despite the onboard camera, Dyson says users don’t have to be worried about privacy. No images are recorded or stored by the device or in the cloud and the camera is only active during live viewing or auto-jetting.
Spending $500 on a toothbrush is a risk, especially when dentists hand out the manual kind for free. But the price isn’t significantly higher than other high-end electric brushes. Oral-B’s top of the line device sells for $400 while the Philips Sonicare sells for $429.
“I had no idea of the market size, and I’ve got no idea how many we’ll sell,” Dyson told the WSJ. “We don’t really structure things on a business plan.”
Chris Morris is a veteran journalist with more than 35 years of experience at many of the internet's biggest news outlets. In addition to his activities as a writer, reporter and editor, Chris is also a frequent panel moderator and speaker at major conferences, including CES and South by Southwest.
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