A much more pleasant experience
It’s been a while since I was in the review boxes but after trying the competition, and returning, I’m down here again to share about these brushes.

Up front short and sweet pros and cons, pros first:
– They’re quieter, not quiet. Due to design they won’t make such a racket
– The battery life is as advertised with real use
– The heads all come with shields to keep them clean if left out on a shelf
– The on handle indication of mode and intensity is clear
– The on handle buttons are large and very comfortable and intuitive to use
– The motion of the brush head seems to be kinder to my gums, up down at the gum as opposed to a rapid side to side of a rotary head
– The brush bristles feel much softer, less abrasive to the enamel, yet my results show just as effective inside 10 days use
– The companion app Bluetooth has the handle initiate the connection (technical nuance competition has the phone initiate)
– The companion app can update the brush handle firmware: there are firmware updates
– The brush handle seems to be able to store many brush events to sync later
– The companion app does sync with HealthKit on iOS
– The good and premium brush heads have a chip so the app and handle can track how much use is left on them based on what settings you brush with (not really a money spinner, it seems quite fair so far)
– Includes C3 almost top tier brush heads available
– The charger stands can be rotated about. You don’t have to align anything, the handle just charges.
– The internal sonic motor seems to be able to make beeps so you can hear when the battery gets low and when to change zone, as well as feel.
– When you push too hard you don’t have to look for a light, you can hear and feel a wave noise and sensation

And for the cons:
– the app seems quite bland. But oh well.
– If you’re used to the competition you might prefer the C2 brush heads which are smaller, but less effective. C3 included I prefer, but they’re larger.
– The deep clean mode lasts 3 minutes but the app only seems to be able to support 20 seconds per zone, so (as documented in the instructions) when using the connected app; deep clean lasts only 2 minutes for no real reason. I’d recommend White+ as a result for a deep clean followed by a buff of front top and bottom 2min 40
– Replacement C3 heads are expensive. But they have a soft rubberised tip and feel top tier, a mishap and they won’t scratch or scrape.
– The mode to help you become accustom to the brushing style if you have come from a manual brush is buried in the instructions how to activate, no leaflet to show or prompt. It automatically drives the intensity up as you use it. It’s a good feature, con is that it’s hidden I guess.
– You can’t drive the brushing mode and intensity from the app.

The cons here I’ve had to think hard about. Together they amount to 1 star lost. Overall, we are talking about a pair of toothbrushes which have had a lot of thought put into the style of them as much as the function. One of the charging stands also doubling as a rinsing glass will probably appeal to some people. Some people will inevitably complain that the plug that comes at the end of each of the chargers is a two pin plug that looks similar to a European plug; in 2022 for some reason I’m reminded of those pictures being shared where some people don’t realise what a floppy disk is and I think that some people don’t realise what a British standard shaver socket is; The only legal mains power allowed to be installed in a British house bathroom / en-suite to my knowledge.
It’s obvious from the design that one of the charging stands, being a rinsing glass, these are intended to be plugged in in the bathroom, although with adapters sold separately, of course, you could plug them in anywhere.

When I first started to use the brush from new, being new to the Sonicare brand, I was shocked at the difference in sound level coming from the brush itself being much lower than I expected.
The next thing that immediately was noticed was that the brush head that came with these brushes was almost double the size of the immediate Rotary competition brush heads. I thought this might cause I’m a shoes but personally I’ve had none, however, my wife has had issues and has switched to a C2 brushhead which is much more comparable in size, although provides less efficient brushing and comes with a slightly different shield to cover the brush head.
I suppose that brings me onto the shields; what a brilliant idea! I don’t need to go into the gruesome details of why a shield is probably a really good idea for a toothbrush which is left out in the bathroom.
It seems like each official brush heads sold comes with its own shield as the replacement C2 brush heads we purchased each came with their own shield.

Talking about battery life; we temporarily tried a much higher specification set of handles from the competition which claimed to have a two-week lithium ion battery. Before we returned those brushes for a fault which I believe could have been caused by the companion app in actual fact; we noticed that the battery life reported for the brush had decreased by 40% in just a couple of days.
With these new Phillips brushes, whilst my brush needed to be charged after around 12 days, the other brush only needed to be charged after around 16 to 17 days.
These brushes take a much longer time to charge than the competition, however if that is to help protect the battery or enable the brushes to be placed at any angle to the charging base stand, then that does not bother me. I can’t remember exactly now but we are talking about at least a good 12 hour charge cycle from low to charged. That being said, there appears to be no downside to leaving them permanently on charge when not in use, or picking them up to use partway through a charge ( as long as it’s not the first charge ).
Placing the brushes on a charger not only gives you a soft pulsing battery light to show that the brush is charging but also a small chirp from the sonic motor to let you hear and feel that the brush has connected with the power

These brushes stand around 15% taller than their competitors that we tried. That might bother some people, but in my set up they look better and are easier to grasp from the holders that we have.
The handles have a matte effect to them however they are not rubberised like we had become accustomed to, although not rubberised we have noticed no group issues whatsoever.

Make a no mistake, these are expensive toothbrushes and when we purchased them they were heavily discounted at the time. I do not recommend them at the recommended retail price. You would have to be looking at half the recommended retail price for my recommendation; but that seems to be the case for all brushes from this manufacturer and their competition that heavy discounts are available if you’re willing to wait.

When it came to these brushes and the cost I found there to be a tipping point that I was looking for, a sweet spot almost, are you real two-week battery which was lithium ion and could be partially charged or kept fully charged with almost 0 detriment to the battery life itself, plenty of brush modes to support different types of brushing that might be needed after a different eating habits in a day, and the brush itself receiving updates to its firmware from a paired Bluetooth application. If you go lower you lose the battery or the features, if you go with the competition you lose the updates and you end up with a louder rotary experience, if you go higher you end up getting more frills showing you where you are brushing inside your mouth in particular; but I’ve always found I don’t have difficulty feeling and knowing where the brush is in my own mouth

The bulk of this review was performed with voice dictation software and I apologise for any minor mistakes in the dictated text.
I have not included any video or pictures of the product itself because I believe that the manufacture of supply pictures are entirely representative of the product. The only thing that was not abundantly clear from the description is that the rinsing glass is actual glass if that mattered to anyone, with the faintest Philips sonic care logo on one side. I thought the most interesting comparison would be the size of the C3 and C2 brush heads and a standard competition head.

A great toothbrush with a gimmick that can leave it bricked
My previous Philips Sonicare DiamonClean toothbrush finally stopped charging properly after almost 9 years of use so I thought I would upgrade to the latest and greatest.

The new toothbrush has a feature that allows you to adjust the intensity, a feature I’m not sure I will ever use, but it’s an option that is there. It also has a much smaller charging stand. Personally I preferred the glass to this new perspex base, but unfortunately Philips have not made this toothbrush backward compatible with the old charger, which has a higher charging wattage.

As they have introduced bluetooth connectivity with an App, I thought I’d give that a go. I connected my new handle to the app and was immediately required to allow my hygiene data to be shared with Philips to be able to use this feature. As I wanted to see what it was all about, eventually, after multiple attempts to continue without ticking the box and being sent back to the start screen of the App, I complied and checked the box that I did not agree with. I strongly feel that this is wrong.

After giving up my privacy to use all of the features of the toothbrush, I was informed there was a firmware update available. This is where things went downhill fast. The update bricked the toothbrush that entered a cycle of flashing lights. After talking with Philips support, I was advised to get Amazon to replace it, which they did, next day. Amazon, your customer service was amazing here, well done!

When the new brush arrived, I ensured I did the firmware update first, to make sure that if it happened again, I could just reject it immediately. Fortunately with this new handle things went smoothly and it updated and is still working.

Having spent a few weeks now with the toothbrush and the app I can say that the App is a gimmick. Even worse, there is no need to require sharing my hygiene data with Philips for its features to work as the “suggestions to improve your brushing” are limited to saying if your average brushing session is too short or using too much pressure. All of this is averages that can be calculated on device!

If you forget to launch the app before you start brushing, you get no data from that session. If you switch app whilst brushing, it records the brushing time as how ever long you’d been brushing for when you switched the app. Personally I think it would be better not to record this at all, as it’s just adding inaccurate data into the log.

So my advice: If you buy this toothbrush, don’t bother with the app, just use it on its own. It still has a built in timer that tells you when to move onto the next session. It still has pressure alerts from the handle. There is a light for when the toothbrush head needs replacing. There is simply no benefit to the app for someone who brushes their teeth twice a day for the length of time the timer in the handle runs.

Forget the app, enjoy a good toothbrush. Hopefully it will last as well as the one before!