Oral-B Continues to Innovate, Strengthening Their Commitment to Access, Education, and Improvements in Oral Health

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Have you been taking care of yourself as well as you did before the pandemic began? Or have you fallen into a survival mode existence? With all of the extra stressors, uncertainties, and everything that has been going on, has your diet, oral health, and general well-being become collateral damage? If it has, you’re not alone. While Oral-B can’t solve or stop the trauma that so many have been dealing with, the company is trying to help refocus our attention to the importance of oral health and self-care by making the tools to achieve it more accessible.

Oral-B iO10 with iOSense

Oral-B iO10 with iOSense in Cosmic Black

Not surprisingly, the pandemic has created what’s been described as a dental disaster. Repeated lockdowns, isolation, restrictions on travel and other activities, working from or attending school at home, pandemic eating (and snacking), as well as other multiplied daily stressors, have all contributed to a shift in people’s daily habits and behaviors.

People who were once fastidious about daily showering aren’t doing it as often, and people have not been brushing their teeth as much as they used to before the pandemic began.

It’s been a weird couple of years. Hasn’t it?

One of the manifestations of so many people living in survival mode is negatively impacted oral health. Increased cavities and gum disease are two obvious results of neglected oral health, but not taking care of your mouth can also result in teeth grinding, cracks, chips, and jaw pain.

But unless you had a dental emergency in the last two years, have you even been in to see your dentist for a regular check-up and cleaning? Many people haven’t, whether it was because they were worried that it might be unsafe (it’s not) or because they lost access to dental health insurance and didn’t think they could afford the visit.

More accessible oral health is a problem in search of a solution, which brings us to Oral-B and their announcements today.

Oral-B iO10 with iOSense technology

Oral-B iO was launched initially in 2010 as the result of six years of dedicated research with dental professionals to “ensure people have the best possible oral health outcomes at home.” Oral-B iO balances effectiveness and experience while reimagining how a toothbrush performs; iO toothbrushes include innovative features, including a linear magnetic drive, a bi-modal smart pressure sensor, and a redesigned brush head that give you a professional cleaning every time you brush.

Some clinical test findings indicate that Oral-B iO provides deeper cleaning of teeth and gums, and using it allows users to easily and effectively maintain their oral health. When compared to manual toothbrushes, Oral-B users experienced:

  • 100 percent healthier gums in just one week
  • Six times more plaque removal along the gumline
  • Three times greater reduction in bleeding gums
  • 83 percent of gingivitis patients moved from unhealthy to healthy gums in eight weeks
  • Five times higher odds of achieving healthy gums

Joining the Oral-B line-up for 2022 is their newest flagship, the new Oral-B iO10 with iOSense technology. The Oral-B iO10 is an electric toothbrush that offers an intuitive and connected experience; it provides real-time insights and feedback regarding your brushing time, amount of pressure used, and mouth coverage each time you clean your teeth. An LED will even light up, letting you know when the brush head needs to be replaced based on your usage.

Built into the charging base are a clock and a timer that will help you brush for the dentist-recommended two minutes with a graphical display on the sections of the mouth that you should be focusing on.

With live coaching built right into the charging base, the Oral-B iO10 with iOSense technology has seven different cleaning modes and a Smart Pressure Sensor to help keep your gums healthy and protected.

While you don’t have to connect to the Oral-B app to use it, doing so is a great way to keep your brushing data synced and hold yourself accountable, and the app is also handy for when you’re traveling and have left the base at home.

Oral-B iO10 with iOSense

Oral-B iO10 with iOSense in Stardust White

When you brush with the Oral-B iO10 with iOSense, you’ll get immediate feedback from the brush’s built-in light ring as to whether you’re brushing too hard, not brushing hard enough, or brushing with the correct amount of pressure. There are seven brush modes you can choose from that include daily clean, sensitive, gum care, whitening, intense clean, super sensitive, and tongue clean.

At the successful completion of a two-minute brushing session, you’ll be rewarded with a smiley face on the brush’s display and a rainbow light ring “disco show.” It may sound silly, but Oral-B has found that that kind of encouragement and feedback is an implicit motivator, even for adults.

I’ve found that the feedback works well for me when I’m brushing with the  Oral-B iO series 9. If I’m not using the app as I brush (because I don’t always think to bring my phone into the bathroom with me), the red and green LED ring on the iO9’s neck lets me know when I am applying too much or just enough pressure. The smiley face that appears after two minutes on my brush’s LCD screen is confirmation that I haven’t skimped on brushing time.

After a brushing session with the iO9, my teeth really do feel like they have been professionally cleaned, which is amazing! Adding the iOSense countertop coach that also serves as a charging base to the iO10 seems like a brilliant evolution for this smart toothbrush line.

The Oral-B iO10 with iOSense will launch in 2022, and we’ll update this post with pricing once we have it. In the meantime, you can learn more about it and get on the iO10 VIP waitlist to purchase by clicking here.

The Oral-B iO4 and iO5

To help make better oral health more accessible for everyone,  Oral-B is also introducing the new iO4 and iO5 brushes, which feature the same iO technology found in the Oral-B iO10. Although they don’t include the iOSense countertop coach, the Oral-B iO4 and iO5 brushes are smart, so they connect to the Oral-B app for real-time coverage tracking and coaching.

These electric toothbrushes also feature multiple bushing modes for a personalized cleaning experience; they have rainbow celebration lights that will show after a successful two-minute cleaning session. Like the iO10, a refill LED reminder is also built directly into their handles.

Oral-B iO4 and iO5

You’ll be able to buy the Oral-B iO4 and iO5 in 2022 for less than $100; the electric toothbrushes will be available in a range of colors, including quite white, matte black, blush pink, icy blue, and lavender. You can keep an eye out for them here.

But that’s not all.

Oral-B x Grin

Through Oral-B’s partnership with Grin, a leading teledentistry platform, you’ll be able to capture high-res images of your mouth on your smartphone and securely transmit dental scans to your provider for an at-home consultation. With this set-up, Oral-B and Grin hope to transform at-home oral health by giving users access to personalized oral health insights and at-home professional consultations.

Oral-B x Grin

One example of this being especially beneficial would be with orthodontics; if seeing a local orthodontist isn’t easy, either because of distance or the time commitment, the Oral-B x Grin product could be a game-changer.

The Grin platform uses a scope that affixes to any smartphone, allowing orthodontists to transition patient check-ins from in-office to remote. With it, they can monitor teeth movement, gum health, and oral hygiene; the orthodontists can then recommend the oral care products and behaviors their patients need to maintain good oral health treatment.

We’ll have more information on this in the coming months, but you can learn more about Grin here in the meantime.  

Attack of the Cavity Creeps

Children are particularly susceptible to tooth decay. Did you know that having cavities at an early age makes you four times more likely to have dental issues as an adult? With this in mind, Oral-B and Crest have developed “Attack of the Cavity Creeps,” an immersive video game based on the fondly remembered ad campaign from the late ’70s and early ’80s.

If you aren’t old enough to remember, here’s a retro-refresher.

I am old enough to remember the “the Cavity Creeps,” and watching these made me laugh. 😉

With the “Attack of the Cavity Creeps” video game, which is showing at CES for the first time, players will drop into the middle of a significantly updated Toothopolis. There, players can learn more about proper oral health as they complete missions to combat bad breath, discoloration, early signs of gum disease, enamel erosion, in an effort to defeat General Decay.

“Attack of the Cavity Creeps” will also be rolled out to kids and their families online as a part of Crest and Oral-B’s commitment to “Closing the Smile Gap” through dental care access, education, and oral care donations.

•••••

Our mission does not end at a smart toothbrush or better brushing coach; it is about developing a larger digital health ecosystem that leads with advanced technologies, accessible solutions and more effective educational tools to improve oral care and health for all. With our latest announcements at CES 2022, we’re building a digital health ecosystem to take on the oral health crisis in America. Oral-B is committed to helping people across the globe access the very best in oral care technology while teaching them about the dangers of tooth decay and encouraging healthy oral care habits. – Alita Vegas, P&G Global Oral Care Senior Vice President

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About the Author

Judie Lipsett Stanford
Judie is the co-owner and Editor-in-Chief of Gear Diary, which she founded in September 2006. She got her start in 1999 writing software reviews at the now-defunct smaller.com; from mid-2000 through 2006, she wrote hardware reviews for and co-edited at The Gadgeteer. A recipient of the Sigma Kappa Colby Award for Technology, Judie has written for or been profiled by nationally known sites and magazines, and she has served on multiple industry hardware and software award panels. She is best known for her device-agnostic approach, enjoyment of exploring tech, gadgets, and gear, and her deep-diving, jargon-free reviews.