Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've been a Sonicare user for a while now, and I wanted to see how the Oral-B Healthy Clean Precision 1000 stacks up against my Sonicare Healthy White Easy Clean. Both are basic rechargeable electric toothbrushes with few fancy features, but a emphasis on cleaning ability. The Sonicare is a more aggressive toothbrush, while the Oral-B is gentler. Sonicare seems to acknowledge that it's toothbrushes are aggressive because it gives them a feature called Easy-Start that ramps up power over the first 14 times you use the brush so you and your gums can get used to the punishment. No such feature is present or needed for the Oral-B. Instead of vibrating up and down against the gum line, the Oral-B's brush head oscillates rapidly. It is supposed to pulse as well, but it must be too subtle for me to see or feel. The overall feeling is a little rubbery. The other thing I noticed is that the brush head is thicker than the one on the Sonicare, meaning you'll need more room between your teeth and cheek when brushing your side teeth. The distance between the tip of the bristles to the back side of the brush head is ⅞" vs ⅝" for the Sonicare. It's not a problem for me, but I can see it might be an issue for someone with a smaller mouth. It may also be the reason Oral-B doesn't give you a cap with your brush heads. I prefer the Sonicare, but I want to point out some advantages of the Oral-B. First of all, it's cheaper. As I write this, Amazon is offering the Oral-B for around $50 as compared to $66 for the Sonicare. The replacement brush heads are cheaper too. $25 will buy you a thee pack of Sonicare brush heads, but a four pack of Oral-B heads. And while you seldom see Sonicare heads discounted, my local BJ's has six packs of Oral-B heads for under $30. That's less than $5 per head. That's a big savings over the life of the brush. I've been guilty of not replacing my Sonicare brush heads as often as I should, just because they're so darn expensive. $5 per head makes me feel better about chucking old brush heads in the trash. Speaking of brush heads, Oral-B offers a wide range of them. The owner's manual lists eight different heads you can buy. There are brush heads for people with sensitive teeth, wearers of braces, people with crowns and bridges, people who want to whiten and more. My local BJ's has floss head brushes for $32 per six pack. The Oral-B comes in an easy-to-open box. All the packaging is cardboard. No frustrating plastic clamshell that needs to be cut open with scissors. I'm all for eco-friendly, frustration-free packaging. Well done, Braun. By the way, if you take the Sonicare out of your mouth while it's running, it'll fling toothpaste and saliva all over the bathroom. That's not recommended with the Oral-B either, but it makes a lot less mess. Sounds kind-of silly, but about the third time you have to clean your bathroom because you were careless when you swapped your toothbrush from one side to the other, it starts to seem less silly. My gut feeling is that the Sonicare cleans better, but I have no evidence to back that up. Either brush will clean much, much better than a manual brush. The Oral-B is gentler, cheaper and has more options for people with sensitive teeth or dental work.