In general, smart toothbrushes aren’t necessarily better than regular run-of-the-mill electric toothbrushes. “A basic electric toothbrush will work perfectly fine in terms of cleaning the teeth and the gums,” Dr. Vaishali Singhal, an Associate Professor in the School of Dental Medicine at Rutgers University, told Engadget. “Smart toothbrushes have other functions that a user may prefer but in most cases those functions will not improve the brushing.” 

Colgate

The hum by Colgate aims to prove that smart toothbrushes are indeed beneficial, largely due to an app that’ll teach you better brushing skills. One of the first things that the companion app tells you to do is to brush your teeth like you usually do so it can figure out your technique. I did so, and then I checked the app to see how I fared. Apparently I only covered 49 percent of my teeth, and according to a 3D model, I didn’t spend enough time on my top incisors and bottom molars. How embarrassing! I had thought I brushed my teeth pretty well, but not according to the app. 

The app then instructed me to try out “Guided brushing”, a feature where it talks you through proper brushing technique in real-time. So I tried it, with the phone in front of me and the toothbrush in my mouth. The app instructed me to brush my teeth zone-by-zone, highlighting areas of my mouth on the 3D model as I went along. If I deviated from the instructions and brushed somewhere else, it would warn me to “check your zone” and would stop progress until I returned. It even prompted me to “Tilt the brush 45 degrees” so that I would brush closer to my gumline. After three minutes — which is certainly longer than my usual brush time — I achieved a much better score of 98 percent coverage, with almost no area untouched. 

Since the hum has offline syncing, you could also just leave your phone somewhere else and brush without it. Colgate says the hum will hold up to ten days of data, and all you have to do to sync it with your app is bring it close to your phone. This is better than some smart toothbrushes that require you to have your phone next to you as you brush — this Oral-B Genius 8000 model even insists you use the front-facing camera as a guide. 

Over time, the hum will personalize recommendations on how to brush better. So if you always tend to skip your back molars, the app will figure that out, and prompt you to pay more attention to that area. You can also use the app to just track basic stats like how frequently you brush and for how long. If you like, there’s an option to integrate these stats with Apple Health if you want a one-stop-shop location for all of your health data. 

Engadget / Colgate

If you use the hum without the app, it acts like a lot of other regular electric toothbrushes. A timer will beep every 30 seconds to remind you to switch to a different area of your mouth, with a much louder beep at the two-minute mark to indicate you’re done. It also has three setting levels: a “deep clean” mode that operates at high speed (the LED light will glow white), a normal mode at medium speed (blue glow) and a “sensitive” mode at low speed (pink glow). 

But there doesn’t seem to be a pressure sensor to let me know if I’m pushing too hard on my gums. This is a feature on my current Oral-B Pro 1000 that I find fairly useful, and am disappointed to find it missing here.

Another feature of the hum is that it rewards points for brushing (you get points for brushing as well as completing certain tasks). You can then redeem said points for actual goods, like more hum toothbrushes or replacement brush heads. But seeing as one point is equivalent to one cent — the replacement heads, for example, come in a 2-pack for $9.99 or 999 points — you’ll have to do a whole lot of brushing in order to redeem them. Colgate is planning on partnering with other “health and wellness brands” to offer more products in the store, and you could also potentially donate a certain amount to the charitable organization of your choice. 

Colgate isn’t the only brand to offer reward points for brushing your teeth. Quip’s latest smart toothbrush does that too, and similarly, you can redeem Quip points in exchange for Quip products or items from third parties, such as a Target gift card. The Quip doesn’t appear to have the same level of sensors and algorithms as the Colgate hum, but it’s priced similarly at around $60 (replacement brush heads are also priced at around $5 each). In fact, Colgate tells me that it’s also going to be offering a subscription service for its brush heads, which is very similar to what Quip is doing as well. 

Engadget

Even though Dr. Singhal acknowledged that smarter toothbrushes could be useful in terms of encouraging brushing, it might not be for everybody. “It really comes down to personal preference and comfort factor,” she said. On the whole, she said that proper oral health involved brushing your teeth for two minutes (30 seconds per quadrant), regular dental visits and flossing regularly. “No matter how good the brush, even a bristle cannot fit in between the contacts of the teeth in most people,” she said. “Flossing is a necessary adjunct to brushing.” 

You should also be aware that if you use the hum with the app, Colgate will collect data about you and your brushing habits (Other companies like Procter & Gamble (Oral-B) and Philips Oral Healthcare do the same with their smart toothbrushes). According to the company, the data is shared with third parties and affiliates, but is always anonymized and is never used for marketing purposes. Instead, the company claims that the data is used to provide the “connected brush experience” and help users with their brushing habits. You can also choose to opt out of sharing your data by not using the app at all, but that does negate the reason for getting the hum in the first place. You might not care about what your brushing data says about you and that’s fine, but it’s good to be aware of the privacy implications all the same. 

One potential benefit of this data collection is the hum could have diagnostic capabilities. “The mouth is connected to your health,” said Dr. Pat Verduin, Colgate’s Chief Technology Officer. “[With the data] we could figure out if you have a disease, and perhaps what kind it is, whether it’s an oral disease or something more systemic.” It could also enable the latest form of teledentistry and send brushing data to your dentist, which might help them learn about your habits and look into improving your dental health. “We think this brush has the capability to do that. We think the platform really gives us the option to do all of that in the future.” 

Colgate has already teased a new higher-end smart toothbrush at this year’s CES called the Plaqless Pro, which aims to actually detect plaque buildup as you brush. However, that’s slated to be much more expensive than the hum, and the availability date is still unknown. 

The hum by Colgate will be available this September from Amazon, Walmart and Colgate’s website.

The secretive company that might end privacy as we know it
Kashmir Hill,
The New York Times

Clearview is a startup that developed a facial recognition system that matches a photo of a person to publicly available images. Those can be from Facebook, YouTube or even Venmo. It’s powerful technology, and law enforcement is using it to solve crimes like shoplifting, murder and child sexual exploitation. The code in Clearview’s app references the ability to pair the software with AR glasses, giving the person wearing them the ability to identify whoever they see. And the company is monitoring who law enforcement is looking for, which makes an already massive privacy issue sound like something out of a dystopian novel.

The Plaqless Pro’s other trick is that its sensors create a “map” of your mouth and transmit that data back to your phone so you can see exactly where you’ve brushed and what spots you’ve missed. I feel like you need to be really dedicated to your oral health to take advantage of that data, but it’s there if you need it. The app also contains the requisite feedback and coaching tips based on how you brush — again, something that’s probably overkill for most people.

Colgate isn’t saying when the Plaqless Pro will go on sale or how much it’ll cost, but it will be more expensive than the company’s current electric brush, the $100 E1. Colgate says it will be in the same realm as top-of-the-line options from Oral-B and Sonicare, which should put it in the $200 range. That’s a big commitment, but immediate feedback on how clean your teeth are is something buyers should be able to immediately find useful.