5. Oral-B Vitality – Best price
If your budget is tight but you want to upgrade from a manual brush, this is probably the best cheap brush you can buy. However, you’ll have to make a couple of compromises.
On the plus side, it has quadrant alerts and a two-minute brushing timer, as well as three brushing settings: Sensitive Plus, Sensitive, and Daily. It gives teeth a good clean as well, although it’s not quite as effective as iO models, which vibrate as well as oscillate for improved plaque removal.
In terms of the brush itself, it has a thick, grippy handle and you can buy generic replacement heads very cheaply. But it’s lacking a pressure sensor. It’s fairly quiet in use, although its motor noise is rattly, with a high-pitched buzz on the highest setting.
On the minus side, it doesn’t feature any kind of battery lights. This means that it’ll just stop working when the battery runs out, without any warning. Then, when it’s on the charger, there’s no indicator to show that it’s charging properly, or when it’s fully charged.
But it’s the battery life that’s the real compromise. The Vitality Pro has a maximum battery life of 8 days – and that’s if you brush twice daily for two minutes and stop precisely at that point. If you run over a few times, you’ll get around a week of use. If two people are sharing, that gives you only 4 days before you need to recharge. It also needs 22 hours to charge from flat to full.
If you’re happy to keep it on its stand so it can continuously charge, then it won’t be a problem and we’d recommend it as a budget-friendly step-up from a manual brush.
