Sonicare vs. Oral-b: Whose toothbrushes are more reliable/have greater longevity?

Product dependability: Sonicare vs. Oral-b.

We’ve been reporting about electric toothbrushes on our pages for over 15 years. And during that time frame, we’ve developed a fairly firm opinion about how good we think these products are. And that’s not just in terms of general use but also reliability and longevity.

What have we concluded?

As we discuss on this page, right now we’re inclined to feel that mid-priced Oral-b models make the safest bet in terms of dependability. Following behind that are mid-priced Sonicares and higher-end Oral-b’s. And then of these two brands, our analysis suggests that higher-end Sonicares suffer the most with reliability issues.

FYI: If you’re looking for information about the comparative effectiveness of these two brands (as opposed to reliability), we cover that subject here. Sonicare vs Oral-b brushing effectiveness.

Are electric toothbrushes generally reliable products?

Our opinion would be no, not especially.

Our rationale.

We think it’s rather obvious that nowadays the primary focus of consumer product manufacturing seems to be one of planned obsolescence and absolute-lowest-cost manufacturing. And a symptom of this trend seems to be the creation of products that are designed and built without superior reliability and longevity in mind.

What we feel we notice.

It seems to us that nowadays even relatively expensive consumer products are created primarily as disposable items. They’re produced with a minimally acceptable lifespan in mind. And force the situation where their need for almost any type of repair equates with product death.

As evidence, think of all the products that you own where no design emphasis has been placed on your being able to service and maintain them over the long-term or make repairs when they break down.

With rechargeable electric toothbrushes, the quintessential example of this phenomenon is that battery replacement is not possible. (Links to Oral-b’s and Sonicare’s statements confirming this fact.) So, when your otherwise perfectly functional toothbrush’s battery dies, it becomes trash.

FYI: That’s why with power toothbrushes, we feel “less (cost) is more.” And why on our pages we always place emphasis on buying lower-cost, just-essential-features models.

If you’d like more information about this approach in choosing a brush, check out these pages.

► Which are the best Sonicares – In terms of features, function and price?

► Which are the best Oral-b rechargeables – In terms of features, function and price?

Are Sonicare and Oral-b rechargeable toothbrushes dependable products? – Our investigation into this subject.

Our initial evaluation.

When we published the original version of this page some years ago (you’re currently reading an updated version), admittedly, we held some initial bias. We anticipated that we wouldn’t find much evidence that either brand was substantially more reliable than the other. And that collectively as a group, electric toothbrushes were generally mid-to-lower quality devices.

However, back then, when we started to look around for evidence that we could base those opinions on, we felt that we did find some differences between the two brands. It seemed to us then that Oral-b electrics held a reliability edge over Sonicare toothbrushes. However, it was still our opinion that rechargeable toothbrushes in general are fairly troublesome products.

What about nowadays?

Although we’ve tweaked our method of analysis over the years (outlined below), we still seem to come to the same general conclusions.

Sonicare Electric Brush

What evaluation method do we use?

What about information from manufacturers?

Almost certainly, Sonicare and Oral-b must perform this type of testing on their respective products, and possibly their competitors too.

But if they do, they seem to be keeping quiet about it because we’re totally unfamiliar with having seen any advertising copy from either of them that boasts about their products’ level of dependability. (Of course, their silence on that issue speaks volumes too.)

So, we settled on a proxy for reliability data – Written one-star reviews on retailer websites.

Anyone reading this page no doubt shops online. And probably all of us pay at least a little attention to the number-of-stars system that web retailers use in conjunction with purchaser feedback.

Star ratings that include a review.

You may not realize it but on retailer websites like Amazon.com, you can either leave just a “star” rating for the product. Or you can rate the product and leave a written review too.

What we noticed.

We’ve always realized that the type of information found in reviews tends to vary according to the number of stars the writer has associated with it.

Glowing 5-star reviews are frequently suspect. 3 and 4-star reviews often seem to contain some objective information or insight about the product. And, of course, 1-star reviews are the catch-all for all of the bad stuff (slow shipping, used items sold as new, poor customer service, and, of course, product reliability/dependability complaints).

But what we didn’t know (until we started evaluating things) is that the distribution of star ratings for reviews that do include text does not correlate with the overall star ratings shown for that product (which is a combination of all just-rated and written-plus-rated feedback).

And in the case of electric toothbrushes, it’s the written reviews that contain the greatest wealth of information. And they tend to trend much more negatively than the product’s overall star-rating tally.

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Our affiliate links can be used to shop for Sonicare products. We participate with both Amazon.com  and  Walmart.com programs.

Disclosure:  Sales stemming from our affiliate links earn a commission for our website, although without any additional cost to you.

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The number-one complaint found in powered toothbrush 1-star reviews is …

As it turns out, if you look at written 1-star reviews for electric toothbrushes you’ll discover that the single most common type of complaint, by far, tends to be one associated with product reliability/dependability/longevity issues.

Oral-B Pro 3000

What’s our statement based on?

• What we found was that substantially over half of the 1-star reviews specifically commented about problem issues associated with toothbrush reliability/longevity.
• As a side note, we’ll mention that with both brands, battery issues seemed to predominate as the chief reliability complaint.

So, as a proxy for reliability data, we decided to use the number of one-star written reviews.

Since we felt we found a strong correlation between the content of 1-star written reviews and complaints about toothbrush dependability, we decided to do an evaluation with that as the underlying data. Here’s an outline of our process.

• Since it does such a large volume of sales of power toothbrushes, we chose Amazon.com as our source of online reviews.
• We then identified Oral-b and Sonicare rechargeable toothbrush models that had MSRP’s right at $100 (we consider these mid-priced toothbrushes) and also in the area of $200 (higher-end models).
• For these models, we then selected listings on Amazon for them that had generated the largest total number of reviews. We then selected three from each brand in each category, for a total of 12 toothbrush models.

• We then looked at the most recent 100 reviews for each model (an attempt to focus in on relatively recent data) and counted the total number of written 1-star reviews that brush had accumulated.

  (Any review labeled “customer review for free product” was not included in any way in our evaluation.)

• In making our final tabulations, we combined the data for same-brand models in the same-price categories.

  (For example, the data from all three Sonicare models that sold in the price range of $100 were combined. We felt that doing so was a way of homogenizing our data so it wasn’t unduly biased by just one specific model.)

Now, by no means are we trying to suggest that our analysis meets strict scientific standards. We know it doesn’t. But we absolutely do feel it is a valid way (and easily duplicated by anyone) to get a general feel for what brush owners actually experience.

What did our evaluation about the reliability of Sonicare and Oral-b models suggest?

Here’s what we concluded from the data we collected …

a) Does Oral-b make reliable toothbrushes?

• Our findings were that mid-range Oral-b models (MSRP $100 or so) tend to accumulate 1-star written reviews at the rate of 10% of all written reviews. (That’s quite a bit higher (more negative) than what you would interpret from Amazon’s standard star-ratings graphic.)
• And the 1-star written review rate for higher-end Oral-b’s (MSRP $200 or so) seems to lie in the range of 18%.

  (Could it be that if you’ve paid more for a toothbrush that you’re more likely to make a point of leaving a bad review if you’ve experienced a reliability issue? We don’t know.)

Keep in mind that …

Accumulating 10 to 18% 1-star written reviews should not be interpreted as saying that 10 to 18% of all Oral-b owners experience a problem with their brushes. There’s no way to extrapolate any sort of precise number from the first issue to the second.

But, as explained above, based on the most common subjects typically mentioned in 1-star written reviews, it seems reasonable to us to assume that garnering a higher percentage of them does correlate with a greater number of consumers experiencing reliability or longevity issues.

So, what does that say about Oral-b dependability?

• We interpret that as suggesting that mid-priced Oral-b electrics tend to experience problems less frequently than higher-end ones, possibly significantly so.

  (This just reinforces our recommendation stated above that we feel consumers do better purchasing mid-range, minimal-frills electric toothbrush models.)

• And as you’ll discover below, these numbers also suggest that Oral-b rechargeables seem to provide equal or better reliability than Sonicare electrics.

b) Does Sonicare make reliable toothbrushes?

Here are the numbers we derived when evaluating Sonicare toothbrushes.

• Mid-priced Sonicare models (MSRP $100 or so) tended to accumulate 1-star written reviews at the rate of 19% of all written reviews.
• And the 1-star written review rate for higher-end Sonicares (MSRP $200 or so) seemed to lie in the area of 29% of all written reviews.

c) Does this mean that Oral-b is a more reliable toothbrush brand than Sonicare?

It would be our opinion from our analysis that …

• Purchasing a mid-price Oral-b model probably makes the safest choice in terms of reliability/longevity.
• A second-tier choice might be a higher-end Oral-b rechargeable or else a mid-priced Sonicare model.
• Of the four categories, owners of higher-end Sonicares seem to experience the greatest number of reliability issues.

But remember, when selecting a brush there’s more to consider than just dependability.

Longevity considerations are simply one part of the needed equation when picking out a new power toothbrush.

For example, there’s also the issue of the brushing mechanism and how Sonicare’s differs from Oral-b’s, and how that difference impacts the way you want to brush. How Sonicares work. | How Oral-b’s work.

It’s also important to understand that not all Sonicare and Oral-b models create their company’s optimal brushing action. And, in fact, that’s why we don’t even mention lower-end models of either brand on this page. Here’s more information: The best Sonicares. | The best Oral-b electrics.

And while we don’t feel that there’s a great difference in what you can accomplish with either brand of brush, there may be some research evidence that slightly favors Oral-b’s (best) brushing action as being more effective in maintaining or improving oral health.

And, of course, there’s always the issue if it’s even important for you to buy an electric toothbrush at all. It certainly is possible to brush effectively using a manual brush, if you’ll put the needed effort into the process.

What should you do if you find you have a problem with your Oral-b or Sonicare toothbrush?

Here are links that discuss warranty details for each brand. If concerns about reliability are a major concern for you, you should review this information so you maintain all of the documentation required from your purchase.

With Sonicare –

• The Philips Sonicare 90 Day Money-Back Guarantee.
• And here’s the start page for obtaining warranty information about your toothbrush.

With Oral-b –

• Here’s a start page for warranty information.
• From time to time we have noticed both 30-day and 60-day Oral-b satisfaction-guaranteed promotions but currently, we have no information about them.

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Our affiliate links can be used to shop for Sonicare products. We participate with both Amazon.com  and  Walmart.com programs.

Disclosure:  Sales stemming from our affiliate links earn a commission for our website, although without any additional cost to you.

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