The Dyson CameraJet electric toothbrush launched on 1 September, priced at $499 and promising to do something no toothbrush has managed before: film the inside of your mouth while simultaneously brushing and flossing your teeth. It is, by any measure, a long way from a stick of floss and a manual brush, and the engineering behind it is proportionally extraordinary.
What the Dyson CameraJet electric toothbrush actually does
The CameraJet carries a camera the size of a pencil tip beneath its brush head, fitted with a 100mm pixel macro lens that captures 28 images per second. According to WWD, that camera has been trained on nearly 500,000 dental images in order to distinguish a tooth from the gap beside it. As you brush, it reads ahead, identifies each gap, and triggers a fan-shaped jet of mouthwash timed to sweep through the space. The jet does not fire continuously; it fires precisely. That targeted approach is why the handle reservoir holds less than half an ounce of fluid, compared with the seven or eight ounces held by conventional water flossers.
An LED light accompanies the camera, because mouths are dark. The system is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled, so the Dyson app can display footage in real time or store it for later. Dyson states the videos are not stored on the app or in the cloud. You can also use the camera in isolation, without activating the brush, to inspect a suspicious crown or a patch of gum.
Sir James Dyson described the engineering challenge plainly: ‘The camera is on a brush head that’s moving about a thousand movements a second. So the camera’s moving and you’re taking a film. Never mind the fact there’s a lot of water in the way.’ Solving that, and the question of image quality in a foamy, dark oral cavity, occupied Dyson’s engineers for six years after the idea first arose nine years ago.
Nine years in development, 38 patents and a lab-built plaque
The scale of the effort is considerable. WWD reports the CameraJet involved 661 Dyson engineers and 38 patents in its development. To test prototype brush heads repeatedly without waiting on human mouths to generate enough plaque, the team developed their own proxy plaque over five years in collaboration with the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Dentistry. That material allowed hundreds of iterations to be tested and optimised without the need for a clinical in-mouth trial at every stage.
Dyson engineer Niamh Turney, who worked on the project, put it directly: ‘We could do hundreds of iterations of a brush head and test them all on fake plaque and optimise without having to do a clinical in-mouth trial every time.’
The plaque-removal numbers are worth examining carefully. A four-week study of 60 subjects compared the CameraJet against a manual toothbrush. After four weeks, 74% of CameraJet users transitioned to healthy gums, versus 6% of manual brushers. Reductions in gum bleeding were 65% versus 37%; reduced gum inflammation affected 17% of CameraJet users versus 9% of manual brushers. Plaque reduction figures were closer: 19% less buildup in the CameraJet group, 12% less among manual brushers. Dyson’s own external testing claims the CameraJet removes up to 69% more plaque than market-leading premium electric toothbrushes in hard-to-reach areas, though independent clinical data comparing it directly to other electric toothbrushes has not yet been provided.
The jet itself is engineered differently from conventional water flossers. Dyson’s team describes most water-flosser jets as ‘needle jets’, a thin pressurised stream that punches through plaque rather than sweeping it away. The CameraJet emits a fan-shaped spray intended to cover more surface area with lower concentrated pressure, which Sir James Dyson contrasted with the Waterpik experience: ‘Waterpik is not a pleasant sensation.’ Anyone who has used a conventional water flosser under full pressure will recognise the problem he is describing.
A toothbrush or a Dyson-shaped question about oral care?
Two Allure editors tested the CameraJet ahead of launch and reported the brushing experience as lighter and quieter than expected, at just over eight ounces in the hand. The jet’s spray produced what they described as a slight pfft sound at each gap, with no discomfort. One noted an issue cleaning lower inside teeth where reduced light caused the camera to stop firing; opening the mouth wider resolved it.
Honest caveats stand: roughly 300 seconds of combined testing cannot confirm whether this beats a standard electric toothbrush paired with string floss. Dyson’s own clinical comparison used a manual brush as its baseline, not a premium electric, which is a significant limitation for a $499 product pitched at people who already own a decent brush.
The Dyson CameraJet is available now in Ceramic Ultra Blue and Ceramic Pink, and includes a docking and charging station, two brush heads, a charging cable and a travel case. A full clinical deep-dive review, with input from dental professionals, is forthcoming from Allure.
