Review (5/5): Makes Your Mouth Sparkle
I bought the Oral-B Sonic Complete purely on a "gut" feeling and I'm glad I did. This toothbrush is a winner. It delivers as promised and makes your teeth and gums feel radiant. I'm generally skeptical of advertising hype, but this brush is amazingly effective. In only a few minutes, it makes your mouth feel fresh and healthy. You can see and feel whiter teeth after only a few uses. The unit is well-designed, easy to use, and effective.
There are three modes and each is useful in its own way. The "clean" mode is the strongest and is used on your teeth. It creates a pleasant tickling feeling in your mouth but some people may need to get used to it. The "soft" mode is for your use on your tongue. And finally, the "massage" mode produces an intriguing, pulsating pattern to clean your gums.
The brush gives a tactile pulsing signal every thirty seconds to remind you to switch quadrants in your mouth. It signals you again at two minutes to remind you to stop.
The Sonic Complete comes charged right out of the box so you can use it immediately. I like the whole design of the brush/charger assembly. A full charge takes roughly 16 hours and a pleasant-looking blue light blinks until the brush is fully charged. Then the light stays steady. According to the manual, the unit can last 2 weeks on one charge. The travel case with the S-320 is also a plus. The cord folds into the charger unit. Braun recommends changing the brush head every 3 months.
It's not often that I buy something and feel so completely happy about my purchase. But once you start using the Sonic Complete, you won't ever want to go back to only using a regular brush.
One improvement I would suggest is in the packaging. My unit came in a plastic blister-pack which is hard to open and environmentally wasteful. How about plain cardboard packaging like that used with Philip's Sonicare? However, the replacement brushes do come in a small cardboard package. And it will be nice someday when manufacturers don't use toxic cadmium-based batteries. But these are small complaints compared to the benefits of the Sonic Complete. Overall, this brush is a good buy and keeps your teeth very clean.
(Dr. Simeon Hein is the author of Opening Minds: A Journey of Extraordinary Encounters, Crop Circles, and Resonance (Mount Baldy Press, Inc., 2002).)