The bare minimum in oral health maintenance is to brush your teeth for 2 minutes twice a day – as recommended by the American Dental Association to keep your teeth and mouth healthy. You might be pretty good at brushing at least twice a day but the 2 minutes part can be killer. Time just seems to move more slowly when you’re standing at the bathroom sink with a toothbrush in your mouth.
For people looking to get those full 2 minutes of brushing in, an electric toothbrush can be the answer, and there are lots of options. The ADA says electric and manual toothbrushes do a pretty equal job of cleaning teeth and removing plaque, and almost all electric toothbrushes come equipped with a 2-minute timer that tells you when you can stop brushing. Electric toothbrushes can also be better at hitting those hard-to-reach spots, which combats tooth decay, gingival inflammation, gum disease, gum recession and bad brushing habits.
But which electric toothbrush to choose? There are a lot on the market, and it partly depends on your personal preference and oral health goals. Do you want to focus on plaque control, oral hygiene or getting whiter teeth? Do you have sensitive gums or teeth? Do you want a toothbrush with more than one brushing mode? Do you want a brush that comes with replacement soft bristle brush heads or an oscillating toothbrush? How about a rechargeable electric toothbrush? The options are pretty much endless.
Then there are the features to consider: Do you want a smart toothbrush? Are you looking for a timer? Again, dentists recommend brushing your teeth for 2 minutes twice a day with a soft-bristle toothbrush head. Some brushes even have more than one cleaning mode, which might help you get spotless chompers and impeccable oral hygiene.
We get it, the choice can be bewildering. Before you start shopping for the best electric toothbrush for oral care, check out our guide to the best electric toothbrushes below featuring our electric toothbrush reviews, which we update periodically. Our electric toothbrush comparison walks you through nine high-end products for cleaning your teeth, avoiding gingivitis, improving gum health, whitening teeth and more. But regardless of which brush you choose, don’t forget to floss!
Colgate
Colgate’s millennial-esque branding has been on the up-and-up for a while, and when it released the Hum by Colgate in July, it became clear that Colgate is on a mission to make dental hygiene cool, which is an effort I can get behind. The release of the Hum by Colgate also felt kind of like a direct jab at the Quip brush (see below), and then Quip’s new smart electric toothbrush (also tested) felt like a “Right back atcha” to Colgate.
Anyway, the Hum by Colgate snagged “best overall” in my opinion because it’s smart, but not too smart. As you’ll learn later in this article, I get overwhelmed by electric toothbrushes that have too many features and too many techie integrations — sometimes I just want to brush my teeth and be done with it, you know?
That’s how the Colgate Hum won me over. This brush has three modes — normal, sensitive and deep clean — and it buzzes every 30 seconds to let you know when to move on to another quadrant of your mouth. The charger is small and easy to travel with, as is the carrying case, which fits two brush heads.
If you want, you can use the guided brushing feature within the app, which tells you how good (or bad) a job you’re doing. It’s kind of disheartening when your app tells you that you missed 20% of your mouth, but it offers encouragement and reminds you that you can earn rewards for brushing better. It might sound silly, but the experience really did make me want to brush better.
You can choose to brush offline, which I admit I did often while testing this brush, because like I said, sometimes I just want to brush and move on. You can also save your data to the Apple Health app, which is a bonus for iOS users.
Angela Lang/CNET
I’ve been on the hunt for a simple electric toothbrush for a long time. I’d scour the internet for my ideal toothbrush and end up overwhelmed with all of the high-tech, app-integrated options. Eventually I’d buy one, but I always ended up reverting to a manual toothbrush because I never found an electric toothbrush that did exactly what I needed and nothing more: cleaned my teeth better.
The Quip toothbrush is everything I’ve ever looked for in an electric toothbrush. For one thing — and a big thing to me — the brush head is actually close to the size of a manual toothbrush head. It’s not tiny like most other electric toothbrushes, which I know are designed to clean one tooth at a time like the ADA recommends, but I really like the full-size brush head on the Quip toothbrush. (CNET’s Sarah Mitroff felt the exact opposite about this, so be sure to read her Quip review if you’re considering a Quip brush.)
The Quip is simple in every aspect: It has one speed and a 2-minute timer that buzzes every 30 seconds and turns off once time is up. That’s it. There’s no app to fuss with and no chargers or wires to tote or store. The Quip electric toothbrush is powered by an AAA battery located in the handle. The charge lasts three months and at that point, you replace the brush head for a fresh brush and a charge.
Since there’s no charger, a Quip is easy to travel with. The toothbrush holder it comes with also doubles as a protective travel case.
While I gave the Quip the title of “best simple electric toothbrush,” I’d also dub it the best travel electric toothbrush and the “best feels-like-a-regular-toothbrush electric toothbrush.”
I will say that the Quip’s motor isn’t very powerful compared with those of other brands, such as Sonicare or Oral-B. To me, it felt like a manual clean with a little extra oomph. While I actually liked that, many people will not. And if you’re looking for a smart electric toothbrush with Bluetooth or an app, the Quip isn’t the one.
Waterpik
Water flossing changed my life. No joke! I’ve always hated flossing — in fact, when I was a kid, my orthodontist wouldn’t let me get braces until I became proficient at flossing. Now I have a permanent retainer on top and bottom and I still hate flossing.
Waterpik makes flossing incredibly easy and efficient. With hardly any effort and in about 5 minutes, the Waterpik water flosser removed food debris from in between my teeth (which are tightly packed) and from underneath my permanent metal retainer, which is something that could take me up to 20 minutes to execute by myself.
This was like an otherworldly revelation for me: “Flossing can be this easy?! Why did I never know?” My dental hygienist is going to be so proud of how clean my retainer looks when I go back for my next appointment.
Plus, the Waterpik Complete Care 5.0 is a bargain compared with buying an electric brush and a Waterpik separately: This two-in-one gets you five water flosser tips, two Triple Sonic brush heads, 10 pressure settings, three brush modes and a 2-minute timer with quadrant pacing.
The Waterpik does take some getting used to — when I first started using it, I was no match for the water dribble coming from my mouth. Eventually I learned to bend slightly so my mouth hovered above the sink and now it’s one of my favorite dental health products I’ve ever used.
Be warned, though: If you have sensitive gums, start with your water flosser on a low setting. I made the mistake of arbitrarily setting mine to level seven for the first use and my gums bled. Next time, I dialed it down to level three and I’ve been slowly working my way up to a more powerful setting as my gums become less sensitive.
Oral-B
The Oral-B iO electric toothbrush wooed people at CES 2020 with its smart pressure sensor and LED indicator lights, magnetic drive, 3D teeth tracking and mouth quadrant sensors. All that combined with the Oral-B app experience truly levels up the definition of a smart brush.
When using this Oral B electric toothbrush, I didn’t notice much of a difference compared with other Oral B brushes, except the bristles on this brush felt softer than other Oral-B brushes. That’s a big bonus for anyone with sensitive gums, as is the real-time coaching that tells you if you’re brushing too hard. The Oral-B iO has a quiet frictionless motor when compared with the Oral B Genius.
For a toothbrush, the display offers an impressive amount of information. Based on color, you can easily tell what mode you’re brushing in and follow coaching cues. The iO has seven brush modes, where most electric toothbrushes seem to have three or four. You can choose from daily clean, whitening, gum care, sensitive, intense, super sensitive and tongue clean. I think the tongue clean setting is a nice addition; it’s something you don’t see on most electric toothbrushes.
At about $300, this high-end offering from Oral-B probably isn’t in the budget for most people. However, those who want the best of the best — both hygiene-wise and tech-wise — will love the Oral-B iO. The brush comes with a year’s worth of replacement toothbrush heads, which eases the price pain just a bit.
Philips
I found the Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean 6100 the gentlest of all brushes on this list across its three settings, yet I still felt like my teeth were thoroughly cleaned with each use. Despite having sensitive gums, I sometimes brush too hard, but the Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean buzzes at you when you press down too hard with the Sonicare toothbrush — a gentle nudge to let you know to lighten the pressure.
The Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean 6100 has three different cleaning modes for different brushing habit needs: clean, whiten and gum care. I will say that I was disappointed to learn that this Sonicare toothbrush has different brush heads that are optimal for each mode (I thought I’d found the only one that had an all-in-one brush head!), but the modes still feel different even when using the same Philips brush head.
For example, my ProtectiveClean came with the “W Diamondclean” head (the whitening one), but I fared just fine using that Philips Sonicare Diamondclean brush head on the other settings. Was it ideal or optimal? I don’t know; I’d have to compare each setting with its correct brush head. But you’ll probably be fine without the three individual Sonicare brush heads.
If you have trouble remembering when to replace your brush heads, you’ll love this: Philips’ BrushSync technology tells you how long you’ve been using your brush head and how hard you’ve been brushing, two key factors in brush replacement and cleaning performance. A light on the handle will blink and the Sonic toothbrush will beep, letting you know it’s time to order a new one.
Shyn
Shyn (pronounced “shine”) is a newer subscription-based oral health company that currently offers electric toothbrushes, flossers, dental picks and teeth-whitening products. The company’s Ultra Flex 10 Brush Head recently received ADA approval, joining the ranks of other electric toothbrushes on this list.
You can choose from multiple brush heads to customize your Shyn electric toothbrush, including whitening, antiplaque and gum care. I tested the Ultra Flex 10 Brush Head and was thoroughly impressed.
The brush head is slightly larger than most electric toothbrush heads but still smaller than a manual toothbrush. The bristles are soft and flexible and the brush head has a thin, squishy rubber coating that makes it gentle on your gums.
I thought the Shyn electric toothbrush with the Ultra Flex 10 Brush Head gave a deep, thorough cleaning without making my teeth or gums feel sensitive (which is a big deal for me; more on that below).
Similar to Quip, you can opt to join a subscription plan that sends new brush heads every three months. Shyn’s subscription costs $6 every three months for the Ultra Flex 10 Brush Head.
Also tested
The electric toothbrushes in this section weren’t my favorites, but these toothbrush options do have some great qualities worth mentioning. One of these might be the right choice for you so I felt it worthwhile to include them here.
Bruush
The Bruush electric toothbrush is a powerful and functional product, but not necessarily more so than brushes from long-standing brands like Oral-B and Sonicare. It has six cleaning modes (daily, white, gentle, gum, tongue and max) and a 2-minute timer that signals you to move mouth quadrants every 30 seconds.
I tested the Bruush for a couple of weeks and, thanks to my sensitive gums and teeth, stuck to the gentle and gum modes for the most part. The daily and whitening modes felt too intense for me, so I didn’t even attempt the max mode. The tongue mode is great for extra-gentle brushing, in addition to its intended purpose.
A few key things I love about the Bruush are its sleek and modern-looking design and the travel case the brush comes with. The case is compact and has a magnetic closing mechanism. It’s also sleek, just like the brush it carries.
The Bruush boasts a four-week battery life, which is great for people who travel often and (like me), always forget their toothbrush charger. Between my headphones, smartwatch, laptop and smartphone, a toothbrush charger is the last thing on my mind when packing.
At $95 for a one-time purchase, I wouldn’t call Bruush inexpensive, but you can save some cash if you sign up for the replacement brush head subscription. For $79 up front and $18 every six months, Bruush will send you three brush heads twice a year ($6 per head).
Quip
Not too long after I tried out the Quip brush, Quip came out with a new smart toothbrush. Like I mentioned earlier, the Quip smart electric toothbrush feels very similar to Colgate’s Hum toothbrush. The Quip Smart Brush is essentially a Quip electric toothbrush with Bluetooth. It connects to an app, which tracks your brushing and tells you where and how to improve. The Bluetooth Smart Motor senses your brushing routine and sends data to the app.
The feel of the Quip smart brush seems exactly the same as the regular Quip brush, which was good news to me, but might not thrill people who were expecting big changes to the actual brush. I still like that the vibrations are gentle and the brush head is larger than average.
As for the app, it was easy to use. I didn’t feel that the app experience was any better or worse than other Bluetooth-enabled toothbrushes I tried out — I felt pretty neutral toward it. All in all, this new release from Quip can be a fun add-on for people who already love the Quip brush, but those who prefer a more traditional brush may want to look into a Hum by Colgate, a Philips Sonicare or an Oral-B brush.
Colgate
Several electric toothbrushes have Bluetooth functionality and app integration these days, but Colgate’s app-powered toothbrush is one of the only ones that didn’t give me a headache. Its simple interface gives you easy-to-understand visuals about the duration, frequency and surface coverage of your brushing.
I thought this was silly at first, because how hard is brushing your teeth, right? Well, I quickly went into denial when the app told me I only hit 68% of surface coverage during my first session with the E1 toothbrush. I no longer thought the toothbrush-app combo was silly when I found my percentage creeping up with each brushing session! The coaching really does work.
Aside from that, the brush itself is nice. It’s sleek, comfortable to hold and not as bulky as some other electric toothbrushes. When I first received the package, I thought, “Huh, this feels like Apple branding.” Call me a branding expert, because I later learned that the Colgate E1 is actually sold in the Apple Store as an Apple accessory.
With just 10 days of battery life, the E1 isn’t the longest-lasting rechargeable toothbrush on the market, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Just don’t forget your charging base when you go on a trip.
Oral-B
The Oral-B Pro 3000 is a good brush. It really is. It’s just way too powerful for me. The brush head both vibrates and oscillates, whereas most electric toothbrushes do just one or the other. Theoretically, that would produce a deeper clean, but even if that’s true, I don’t think it would be worth it for me.
My gums and teeth felt sensitive after every use with the Oral-B Pro 3000, but I do tend to experience dental sensitivity more than most. If you have sensitive gums, note that Oral-B has a variety of brush heads that might help. There’s definitely a chance that I wouldn’t have experienced as much sensitivity if I’d used these sensitive gum care brush heads.
There’s some good in this, though: I feel like the Oral-B Pro 3000 cleared away morning mouth sliminess better than every other brush on this list, plus it did a great job of knocking food debris out of the hard-to-reach back molars.
Because the brush head is small (which I typically don’t like) and oscillates, the Oral-B Pro 3000 actually did a wondrous job of cleaning my permanent retainers — something that no other toothbrush has ever managed. Depending on what I’d eaten, I sometimes felt like I didn’t even need to floss after using the Oral-B Pro 3000.
Waterpik
You already know how much I love the Waterpik, so you can safely assume that I was extremely excited to learn that there is such a product as an electric toothbrush that is also a water flosser. I don’t mean a water flosser that comes with an electric toothbrush — I mean a water flosser that is an electric toothbrush.
My excitement quickly turned into exasperation when I ended up first spraying myself in the eye and then proceeded to spray water all over my bathroom mirror as I, in a frenzy, tried to turn the dang thing off. Don’t make my mistake, folks. Just put the toothbrush in your mouth before turning the Waterpik feature on.
Aside from the initial flailing, I enjoyed my experience with the Waterpik Sonic-Fusion Toothbrush. It’s a bit awkward to use the Waterpik feature at first, as the brush must be connected to the tube through which water flows. Once you find the sweet spot on your bathroom counter, though, it won’t be an issue.
In terms of the cleaning power, I liked the Sonic-Fusion just as well as the Waterpik Complete Care, but in terms of design, the Complete Care is easier to use than the Sonic-Fusion. If you have enough space on your bathroom counter, I’d recommend the Complete Care over the Sonic-Fusion. But if you’re in tight quarters or want to travel with a water flosser and electric toothbrush, the Sonic-Fusion is a great option. Note: This brush is currently unavailable at Best Buy.
Brightline
While there are many inexpensive electric toothbrushes out there, my experience with the Hamilton Beach Brands Brightline Brush compared with some others in the same price range decidedly dictated this brush as one of the best value electric toothbrushes.
The Brightline suite of products is a brand from Hamilton Beach Brands that launched in December 2019, and was the company’s first foray into personal care. As a brand known for kitchenware and appliances, I’d say it didn’t do too badly.
The motor on the Brightline brush is powerful — I was actually a bit taken aback by the sound at first — but it’s not so powerful that it hurts. The brush head features contoured bristles that are rather soft and flexible. This particular brush only has one speed (with “adjustable intensity” per the user manual, although I never figured that out), but Brightline offers another brush with five modes for about $15 more.
How to choose the best electric toothbrush
When looking for the best electric toothbrush, you’ll want to consider a few factors.
Cost: First things first. What’s your toothbrush budget? On the lower end, you can get a cheap electric toothbrush for $20 to $50, but they won’t have certain features such as a lithium-ion battery, a water flosser or a sensor.
Many people won’t want to spend more than $40 or so on a toothbrush, but if you’ve got extra money to spend on your pearly whites, investing in a higher-ticket toothbrush in the $100 to $200 range with more features may be worth it in the long run, especially if it fights receding gums, helps you have fewer cavities and minimizes dentist visits.
Capabilities: What do you need the toothbrush to do? Maybe you just need one mode for cleaning a little deeper than you can with a manual toothbrush.
If you need help brushing for the dentist-recommended 2 minutes, it’s a good idea to select one with a built-in smart timer. If you want to easily track your oral hygiene habits, go for a Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush with an app.
If you have sensitive teeth or sensitive gums, consider looking at the types of brush heads that you can get for your electric toothbrush. Some models, like those from Oral-B or Sonicare, offer many different types of brush heads for different needs, such as brush heads for whitening, gum care and cleaning around braces. Some toothbrush heads have silicone bristles. It’s all about your preference.
Convenience: Are you going to remember to replace your brush heads when it’s time? If not, maybe a subscription-based electric toothbrush is right for you. And don’t forget to look into how long a toothbrush holds its charge because the last thing you want is for your toothbrush to be dead when you’re trying to get ready for bed. At that point, you’ll be yearning for a regular toothbrush.
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The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.
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