Oral-B iO Series 4 Electric Toothbrush, White

I was excited to get my new Oral B brush. I’ve used Sonicare for many years and thought a change would be good.
The brush is fine – when it works. But sometimes after charging for up to 36 hours, the brush only works for 2 or 3 brushings, then dies. (I could take the Sonicare on a 2 week vacation and not bother bringing the charger – the charge lasted a good long time.)
The link to online product support just goes to an Oral B product advertising page. The other option is a chat bot, which I just don’t have the patience for.
There is a one-month window in which you can return the product, but the first time it didn’t hold a charge I set it aside and figured I’d look at it again later. I went back to the Sonicare and let it slide. So it’s my fault that I missed the return window, but I sure do regret buying this expensive, useless item.

It’s a great electric toothbrush. Easy to use right out of the box and I loved the little prompts that let me know it’s time to move from one area to another. The cool light show at the end is fun when you finish the full two minutes of brushing.

The major bonus is I received high marks from my dental hygienist on my last exam! Worth the price!

I finally broke down and decided to get an electric toothbrush after a recent dentist visit. I drink a lot of herbal teas and concoctions for various health reasons, so staining is an unwelcomed problem. Having missed my previous 6-month cleaning due to having COVID, I was close to the 1-year mark when I sat down in the dentist’s chair. I saw seen by a new dental hygienist who showed me how bad the staining was behind my upper front teeth and mentioned that she too has some issues with dark stains, so it is not uncommon. However, when the dentist came to examine it, she indicated that it was not staining and recently discovered at a conference that although this appeared to be a stain, it is actually harmful bacteria that would require treatment with antibiotics and deep cleaning. I begged to different as I explained that I drink herbal teas and always have the same staining issues, but she insisted and said that I would need to come back for deep cleaning over 2 days. I asked her if the insurance company would cover it. She laughed and said that’s between you and your insurance company, I don’t get involved in that. I explained to her that I had the same thing happen many years ago and ended up paying out of pocket ($1200) because the insurance company said the deep cleaning was unnecessary. As she walked out, she proclaimed that this looks like five years of growth.

The hygienist looked at me after she left and asked, how long have you been coming here? I said 5 – years, she asked if that was the dentist who I usually see and I said no. This is only the second time she examined me; in fact, she was the dentist who examined me at my last cleaning less than one year ago. She said, so if this took 5 years to build up, why didn’t she notice it? I told her that is exactly what I wanted to say to her when she said that, but she was walking out as she said it.

Fast forward –

I purchased this toothbrush at the recommendation of the hygienist and low and behold, 95% of the stains were removed on the first use. This is a powerful toothbrush and the fact that it is round, makes a huge difference in getting at the plaque under the base of the gums.

Most dentists are using every tactic to charge more money. Her office now does Botox, laser hair removal, etc., and I get flyers and post cards from other area dentists who are doing this as well. So it did not surprise me when she insisted that I required deep cleaning, which is why I asked the insurance question since I’ve been down that road before. When they did the number system to determine how deep the pockets were, I had mostly 2s and 3s. The 4s that were initially indicated were dismissed as 3s when the dentist came to exam me until she noticed the staining behind the upper teeth and then suddenly, I needed deep cleaning.

Bottom line, this is a powerful toothbrush. I scraped the stains as much as I could, and manually brushed to no avail with a HARD Colegate toothbrush, but as soon as I used the IO4, the stains were nearly completely gone. Having used this toothbrush for the past several weeks, the sensitivity and minor gum pains that have been present for quite some time, have all but disappeared. The bristles of the brush stimulate the gums, and breach the gumline, helping to remove plaque buildup, which explains the disappearing pain.

As for the 4 modes, I only notice a slight difference between them, but usually use it on the initial setting which is for daily brushing. Cost is high on these, so I recommend shopping around and checking the Oral B website for sales. I got this from Amazon when they were at $59, but nearly missed the sale. I placed it in my car the night before and forgot to complete the transaction. The next morning it was back to $99. I quickly checked the other colors and found white still showing $59. After few moments after I bought it, it was up to $99. I guess the price adjustments had not been completed, otherwise I would not have bought it although it’s probably worth it. Obviously, I’m cancelling the deep cleaning and will likely find a new dentist for the exact same reason why I left the other office. I’m not accusing her trying to cheat me, but had I not bought this toothbrush, I’d be paying out of pocket for another deep cleaning I did not need.
Great powerful toothbrush… No, you don’t need all these fancy modes that are just marketing spin to get you to pay a higher price. Oral B’s lower priced models are probably just as powerful.

YMMV

YMMV

This is honestly my first Amazon review and I’ve used Amazon religiously. I felt compelled to review this because it’s an amazing toothbrush! It gets my teeth super clean. The last two times I’ve gone to the dentist my hygienist had to use the water powered scaler to break up plaque on my bottom teeth. After using this toothbrush I see no plaque build up. I was just brushing manually prior to this toothbrush so that may also have something to do with it. But I’ve used other electric toothbrushes in the past and none of the compare to getting my teeth feeling so clean! It has a lot of nice touches such as a timer for each quadrant of brushing your mouth and a light sensor letting you know the proper amount of pressure to be using. It can be synced up to an app on your phone to tell you your average brushing time, the amount of pressure you use overall and more! I bought it when it was on sale and it’s one of the best purchases I’ve made. Just get the toothbrush!

I bought this to upgrade from my basic Oral-B electric brush. This brush is fantastic! The pressure sensor makes for the most amazing, clean feeling afterwards that lasts the whole day. I take the brush head off after using it and soak it with polident retainer cleaning tablets. I find that prevents any nasty build up from left over toothpaste. I haven’t bothered setting it up with my phone, the light up sensor works fine on its own. I highly recommend this brush. The price is right, and it works really well.

We’ve owned quite a few Oral B electric toothbrushes over the years and they always worked well. This one had terrible battery life between charges. We are usually a week or two between charges, this one lasted three days at the most but sometimes needed to be charged once a day.

By the time we realized this was a pattern the return period had expired and were just going to throw it out and chalk it up to a lemon. That is when we learned there was a software update that can be done through the app that helped many folks with the same problem and it didi help us too. The toothbrush now functions as all of our other Oral B brushes do with good battery life.

There are two appa we found. The first one we tried did not work and required you to create an Orab B user account. The second one did not require an Oral B user account and did work.

Though our problem was fixed and the brush now works fine I would not buy again. The other brushes we have allow you to adjust settings right on the brush, this one does it through an app. I’d prefer to just adjust on the toothbrush and not needing to be paired to a device to adjust my toothbrush.

The toothbrush does work well with the correct software updates but I think the use of an app for a simple device like tis makes adds a layer that I don’t want or need.