You can get a good electric toothbrush for as little as 20 euros
A beautiful smile? Bring it on. At least if it is meant seriously and the teeth shown in this way don't make anyone flee. Brushing your teeth can help here. Electric brushes are supposed to make it more thorough and easier. Warentest knows which devices are recommended.
Brushing your teeth twice a day should be standard practice. Not only to make an impression with well-groomed teeth, but above all to prevent tooth decay. It doesn't matter whether cleaning is done with a manual toothbrush or with an electric appliance.
Increasingly, cleaning is being done electrically - which dentists are also recommending more and more frequently. This is said to be more thorough and also easier. Stiftung Warentest has taken this into account and looked at what ten devices are actually good for. They are available from 12 to 320 euros.
The result? Even inexpensive electric toothbrushes can clean teeth well. The cleaning performance of the expensive toothbrushes is good, but not outstanding; two of them are only satisfactory. And in the pollutant test, the testers found polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in some of the handle materials. However, the levels are so low that there is no cause for concern. No other harmful substances were detected in the handles.
Expensive extras and good basic care
Basically, electric brushes can be divided into two groups: On the one hand, there are the "oscillating-rotating" ones with round heads that oscillate back and forth in a semicircle around 8800 times per minute and sometimes also pulsate. There are also "sonic-active" toothbrushes with elongated heads (15,000 to over 20,000 oscillations per minute). They do not clean with sound, but by vibrating the brush head. In terms of cleaning performance, neither system has clear advantages. With the round-head brush, each tooth has to be cleaned individually, while sonic toothbrushes clean more surface area at once. The individual brushing behavior should therefore be the decisive factor when making a purchase. Meticulous toothbrushers do better with round-head brushes.
Among the six toothbrushes that achieved a good quality rating are three inexpensive drugstore brands that cost a maximum of 30 euros. However, three branded products with prices between 100 and 320 euros are also among the best. Some of the more expensive models offer many extras, such as travel cases for the brush, or they can be connected to a smartphone app to control the brushing technique. Whether you want the extras is a matter of taste, but they are not necessary for good teeth cleaning, according to the testers.
The test winners are two Oral-B devices. Namely the "iO 10" (320 euros, "good", grade 2.0) and the "iO 4N" (100 euros, "good", grade 2.0). The best inexpensive electric brush is the "Budni Diadent Total Clean Pro" for 20 euros. All three are oscillating-rotating.
The best toothbrush still available remains the Philips Sonicare 9900 Prestige (269 euros, sonic, grade 1.8), which was tested in December 2021.
Source: www.ntv.de
