The most high-tech toothbrush? Precision-floss your teeth while brushing with Dyson’s $699 CameraJet

Per dental guidelines, we should all be brushing our teeth for two minutes, twice daily, and also flossing the gaps between teeth at least once.

And if you are so inclined, you can round up the ordeal with mouth rinse. 

Consumer appliances brand Dyson looks to combine and simplify that multi-step process into a single, short routine with its new CameraJet ($699), which will precision-floss your teeth even while you brush. 

The device is now available for purchase in Singapore, having been unveiled in Paris, France, on Sept 1 by James Dyson, founder and chief engineer of the British-founded, Singapore-headquartered engineering firm. 

“We’ve been developing this for many years, so this is an exciting day for me,” Dyson, 79, said.

He described the device as the first toothbrush to have a camera and a jet, both of which allows users to floss while they brush.

It might just be the most high-tech toothbrush in the market – its specs include a 100,000-pixel (0.1 megapixel) macro lens camera that is programmed to detect and track gaps between your teeth.

Data and imagery from this camera are crunched by Dyson’s proprietary Gap Optical Targeting algorithm, which then powers a jet located below the toothbrush’s bristles to spray water or mouth rinse into the aforementioned inter-dental gaps.

Because the CameraJet has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (2.4GHz) connectivity, you can watch all this happen live while brushing your teeth, via a live-viewing feature on the MyDyson smart app.

This feature is designed to provide a close-up view of your teeth and gums, offering an experience similar to that of a medical endoscopy.

For those concerned about privacy, Dyson says that no images are recorded or stored either on the device or in the cloud.

Dyson’s CameraJet: the world’s most innovative smart toothbrush?

Users can pair the CameraJet with their own preferred toothpaste and mouth rinse, but Dyson has also engineered its own proprietary non-foaming toothpaste and low-foaming mouth rinse. 

The low and non-foaming formulations of these two products allow users to have a clearer view of what is happening in their mouth when using the device’s live-viewing feature.

Just as the CameraJet comes in two colourways – Ceramic Pink and Ceramic Ultra Blue – the toothpaste and mouth rinse ($15 each) also come in two flavours, spearmint and ginger mint.

There is also a peppermint-flavoured toothpaste formulated for sensitive teeth ($18).

Even the consumable part of the device – namely, the brush head – is souped-up: It comes with its own radio-frequency identification tag, which keeps track of when it was installed, how many cleans it has completed and when it needs to be replaced ($49 for a twin pack).

While traditional water flossers can be bulky devices – equipped with water reservoirs that hold anywhere between 200ml and 600ml of liquid – the CameraJet is a notably more compact device. 

It looks like most other electric toothbrushes on the market, with just one obvious difference: the 12.5ml “anti-gravity” tank located beneath the brush head.

This tank can be refilled automatically while the toothbrush charges in its docking station.  

Many commercial water flossers struggle to function properly when tilted because they use gravity and suction to work. 

But Dyson says the CameraJet’s tank is designed specifically to avoid this problem, even when the user is reaching for those awkwardly located back molars.

This is thanks to a specially designed diaphragm pump and pressure chamber that adapt to eliminate air pockets within the tank, no matter what angle or orientation the toothbrush is held in. 

Traditional water flossers can also feel overwhelming on the gums. A quick search on social media shows that many people even use the devices as “mini pressure washers” to spot-clean bathroom grout and other small areas around the home.

Dyson says the sharpness of the water stream on these conventional flossers is due to a “needle-type” design, which releases water in sharp, needle-like bursts. 

The CameraJet, on the other hand, uses a “conical jet”, which is gentler on the gums and provides wider coverage in the mouth.

The brand claims it is also more effective at removing plaque than the needle-type jets of regular water flossers.

How Singapore played a role in developing Dyson’s advanced CameraJet toothbrush

Dyson does not make such claims lightly. Its engineers partnered the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Dentistry to develop “proxy plaque”.

With this proxy plaque, it was possible to test and iterate the CameraJet’s plaque-blasting capabilities without the hassle of running multiple clinical trials on real human mouths. 

In fact, much of the development for the device – which was six years in the making – happened right here in Singapore, at Dyson’s St James Power Station global headquarters. 

Out of 661 Dyson engineers who worked on the CameraJet, some 300 were based in Singapore. Additionally, 43 Singapore-based inventors are named on 25 of the 38 patents filed for the product. 

The work done in Singapore included – but was not limited to – technology development; design engineering; rapid prototyping; colours, materials and finishes engineering; acoustics testing; product testing and user trials.

Steven Ong, head of design engineering and a Singaporean who has been with the company since 2011, was part of the team based here. 

The 40-year-old has also worked on Dyson products such as the Supersonic hairdryer and the Airwrap multi-styler range. 

“I’m really proud to see this product finally go out, and the huge work done by the Singapore team, together with the global team (to make it happen),” he tells The Straits Times during a visit to Dyson’s Singapore headquarters in late August. 

“I think people will be amazed to see how much we’ve managed to pack into such a compact, ergonomic device,” he adds. 

“It condenses a whole (dental) routine that normally takes 10 to 15 minutes into a two- to three-minute session, where everything is done for you automatically (by the device).”