Oral-B iO7 vs Oral-B iO9: Which smart electric toothbrush is best?

Out of the box, you’ll get the iO7, one refill brush head, a sleek but robust travel case, a travel brush head holder and a magnetic “click” charger.  The iO7 gives you access to five cleaning modes – daily clean, whitening, gum care, sensitive and intense – which is probably three more than you really need, but it does allow you to play about with the oscillation angle of the brush and the frequency to find the one you are most comfortable with.

Once you get beyond more than three modes, it’s handy to have a screen to tell you which you’re in, as this means you don’t need to cycle through the different options. The crisp black-and-white OLED display does this with a graphic and text. You only have one choice of handle colour (white alabaster), but this was fine with us as it will match most bathroom décor – if coordinating your toothbrush handle with your towel rail is something that’s important to you.

Opening up the app and establishing a connection with the iO7 will mean that you can monitor how well you are covering the six zones of your mouth in real-time. Well, it should be real-time, but we occasionally noticed some lag between where the brush was in our mouth and the tooth map, although this could have been down to a bad Bluetooth connection. We liked how the app showed the teeth turning from dark blue to light blue and then white as we did a thorough job.  

Leaving the brush to charge overnight in the minimal charger (although it only needs three hours), took it up to 100 per cent, which was enough for over two weeks of dutiful brushing. It does, however, remain to be seen how that charging load is affected as we spend more time with the brush.

Out of the iO9 box, you get the toothbrush and one refill head, as well as a “Power2Go” charging case, travel brush head holder and magnetic “click” charger. You’ll have two more cleaning modes at your fingertips compared to the iO7 (super sensitive and tongue clean), and the iO9 comes in black onyx and rose quartz colours , which we think can make it look like a mor exciting present than just the white alabaster. The OLED display is full colour, although the monochrome screen of the iO7 didn’t bother us at all as – we don’t see the purpose other than to justify a slightly stiffer price point.

The travel case is a nice touch if you’re away from home a lot and, like Apple AirPods, you charge the case and that will then charge the iO9 when it’s inside – although you’ll need a mains charger to recharge the case, rather than a more portable USB cable. Again, the brush charged in under three hours and powered a fortnight’s worth of brushing before it had to go back on the magnetic charger.  

It seems that the price jump between the two brushes comes down to the more sophisticated AI. The “3D teeth tracking” takes the position detection data from the brush and presents it within the app in an even more detailed form, so that you can see which surfaces of your teeth (outside, inside and chewing) are being missed the most. It means the iO9 makes visualising which areas of your mouth you are neglecting much easier.