I can't stand the dentist, and I'm fairly sure the dentist can't stand me too. Up until last year I only went to the dentist when I really had too - which was about twice in my life. Obviously this slack attitude to tooth care mean I suffered terribly last year from crazy bad tooth ache. I was awake for days as the pain consumed almost all of my mouth, I'd never had pain like it and I hope to never have it again. As such, I finally started taking the advice from my dentist and doing my best to get a more regular check up. As well as using better mouthwash, using floss and trying not to eat a metric tonne of sweets a day, I was told to get - and regularly replace my toothbrush.

Now, I'm also a man and every man loves gadgets so my first instinct when get an new toothbrush was to buy an electric one - so to Amazon I clicked and within a few minutes I had made my decision and a few days it was here. Unfortunately, that was early last year and despite it have being used a handful of times, its occupied a small space in the bathroom where its barely moved from, its standard non-electric counter part getting all the action. So what went wrong? Well before that, why this brush?


--------CHOOSING THIS BRUSH--------


Making this purchasing decision was fairly easy at it was the cheapest in a line of fairly expensive brushes. Braun do a few ranges and within those ranges are a few models of various price - so they offer a lot of choice. Braun, along with Phillips seem to have the electric toothbrush market nailed, you rarely see any other toothbrush manufactures so however good the choice among the brands, this does restrict buying choice some bit.

This is the cheapest electric brush I could find, at £20 - with some pipping £100 in price - way out of my range, but this brush seemed to have good reviews to I gave it a punt.

The brush boasted a brushing experience that was a notch up that regular brushing, which is what I was looking for, got fairly good reviews so despite being the cheapest one I could find seemed like a good buy and I was willing to shell the £20 out.

--------THE BRUSH-------

When you take the brush out of the box, you notice its made up of three parts; the charger, the motor and an interchangeable head. The simple components might hint to you how straight forward this brush is to use - just plus the charger in to a mains supply, sit the main motor part into the charger and click in the brush. Then, when you have allowed a few hours to charge it 'should' last 7 days, but rather than this as boasted in the instructions it gave me about 4-5 days which was a bit of a let down but as when I was I always just plugged it back into the base so it was always pretty fully charged. I took advantage of this fairly lengthy charge when I took it away for the weekend without the base unit - pretty handy but will only do you a weekend, not much more.

Before I put the brush to my teeth, as I clicked it in I notice how small the brush is - its very small and oval shaped. Comparing it to my regular brush its almost half the size. When using this it is a little odd and one thing that has left it unused for a while is that due to the small surface area it doesn't feel like its doing much to your teeth. This coupled with the head feeling slightly flimsy means it doesn't feel like it was doing much to my teeth - a very light polish rather than the deeper clean I feel like I get with my normal brush.

Function wise, this is pretty much a breeze. It has a single button on the motor part that controls a single speed. Charge it, put the brush in your mouth and turn it on. That is where the straight forward part ends and the whistles and bells aspect to the brush begin.

When using it, after 30 seconds the brush pauses, vibrates twice and begins again. This lets you know you have spent long enough on one quarter of your mouth and to move on to the next. Overall brushing with this brush should take you 2 minutes - if you abide by the brushes recommended procedure - which incidentally is designed to be an optimum cleaning time. This brush will also stop when you apply too much pressure, a feature I didn't like although I imagine this is there to protect me and the brush. I didn't like this feature as it took away the control I was used to with a regular brush, add to this that the brush doesn't feel like its actually doing much and I'm starting to feel like I wasted £20.

The brush states it whizzes and what not in a trio of ways - pulsating, rotating and oscillating or whizzing around, vibrating and whizzing a bit more. Its designed to work in this way to ensure it gets into the gaps and around your teeth and brushed your teeth in an optimum way - certainly more than you can manage by hand, but never the less brushing by hand still feels like its doing a bit more. Again, despite its doing more than you could do by hand on paper - the control and movement you can get brushing by hand still feels like your getting to all the bits to you need to.

To make the most of this brush you need to change how you brush your teeth and this is why I haven't really taken too it very much - rather than brush back and forth fairly aggressively with a manual brush, with this electric brush you need to gently move it along your teeth. Due to this, it just doesn't feel like its getting much done - plus I also like to scrub my tongue, but with this its a very uncomfortable experience that again, doesn't really feel like its doing much.

Another big negative for this brush is the plug. It comes with a 2 pin bathroom plug rather than the regular 3 pin plug - which is good as it can be used in bathrooms that have a 2 pin plug, but if you don't have one of those you will need an adapter. This wasn't a problem for me as I had an adapter already, and don't have the 2 pin plug it presumes you have. In fact, I haven't seen one of these 2 pin plugs for a while, never the less - its not clearly stared on the packaging or in the product description its a 2 pin plug, its likely you will find this out when you open the box - like I did.

-------OVERALL-------

All in, this brush did what it advertised to in terms of how it worked. The timer worked, it charged as it should, despite not getting as long as it stated and it is pretty easy to use. As well as being water proof this seems like a very safe and simple addition to the bathroom, but for me has failed to replace my manual brush so to be honest a waste of £20.

If I'm to be honest, the short fallings with this brush highlight the short fallings in general with electric brushes. Whats made me resort back to my regular brush was this just felt like it wasn't doing much, a very light brush rather than than the scrub I was used to. I'm sure this electric brush, when it comes down to it, its doing more to my teeth than a manual brush is, but I just can't really feel it. After I use this, my teeth don't feel particularly clean, let alone cleaner than with a manual brush that always leaves my mouth feeling clean and fresh. The brush moves quickly but a little lightly and the neck is a bit flimsy and it just feels like its not really getting you're teeth clean. One plus I can give this brush is interchangeable heads are available online pretty cheap - about £10 for 12 which means as long as the motor holds out you will get lengthy service from this brush.