The Oral-B iO is a smart toothbrush that I paid 39,800 yen for (about $245, tax in). It is a toothbrush currently being marked as having “3D TEETH TRACKING with A.I.” but which utterly fails to track whether or not I'm on the left or right side of my mouth. Ostensibly the AI means “it uses an IMU with glorified fuzzy logic to select which side of the mouth you're brushing” but we can't just say this and ride the AI hype train.

I'm here to tell you that while multiple studies (summarized by multiple meta-analyses) show that Oral-B's spinning-type toothbrushes (particularly, the “ultimate clean” heads) beat out manual toothbrushes as well as sonic type toothbrushes (like Sonicare), the teeth tracking features aren't worth it.

Being practical if you want to buy a good toothbrush, you probably benefit from just getting an IO Series 2 ($65 before tax) or Series 4 ($99 before tax, includes travel case) or you might even be convinced to get the travel charging case but this requires you to move up the product lineup to the Series 9.

In any case, to be pragmatic about this, you do want the ultimate clean brushes for maximum efficacy and maybe you want to get a charging travel case so you can travel with it.

I mean why would you want anything less than the “ultimate clean”? If you do find it too rough you can get the sensitive cleaning / gentle cleaning type brush heads, but at this point you should consider another brush anyway because the Series iO line is more expensive than all other lines Oral-B sells.

Let's be practical. Are you going to use them? No, you're going to use the daily clean mode.

The tracking is bad. If you want to have coaching, you're better off practicing and just keeping track with where your brush is in your mouth yourself. If the tracking was good, it would be nice, but it isn't. The models with bluetooth do sync with Apple Health and do track brushing time, which is perhaps useful if you don't brush for 2 minutes each day.

The series 10 and 9 are the same brush with different chargers, and the series 10 charger just conveys a 2D representation of the “3D tracking data” that is inaccurate, after you're done brushing. What use is this? I guess it has a nice clock. Do not buy this brush.

Excuse me? Not even USB-A? The Sonicare line of toothbrushes charge with USB-A, but I guess the cleaning quality outweighs the benefits of being able to have a convenient travel story.

But seriously? $245 and not even a decent travel case that uses USB-A? Let alone C?

Lol.