Postmortem of Oral-B iO Series 8s Electric Toothbrush

I bought this toothbrush almost exactly 4 years ago. It replaced my then 4 and a half years old Oral-B PRO 3000 toothbrush. Today, the Series 8s is dead, due to failed battery. This article is a little post-mortem, a review after the whole lifetime of the product.

Let us start with the good parts:

• The toothbrush cleans teeth well.
• The best feature is that the pressure sensor not only indicates when too much pressure is applied (all decent electric toothbrushes do this), but also indicates when you do not apply enough pressure.
• You can customize the color of the LED and it has RGB, which is always great.

However this is where the good parts end. The main problems with the device are:

• It is expensive, and so are the replacement brushes.
• Its smart features are pure gimmick: the position tracking does not work and nobody needs to track their brushing frequency.
• The travel pocket is way too small to actually fit the toothbrush properly.
• It gunks up easily.
• Too many brushing modes make the menu tedious to use.

The battery is so bad it merits its own paragraph. The toothbrush became unreliable after maybe two years of use. Randomly, in the morning it would drop charge from 100% to 0, suggesting faulty electronics. Even at its best it would not last through a 10 day trip.

Verdict

Do not buy this, and steer away from the iO line in general. Myself, I bought a newer model from the PRO series for two reasons:

• The battery in my old one still work and I use it when I go visit my parents.
• You can now get off-brand cheap (and ecological) brushes for the from The Humble Co.