It is a "premium" product with a premium price, but the quality does not quite match the premium price. If you bought this product at the original price of 14,000 crowns, you probably made P&G very happy. But I guess you're not happy about your purchase now. I guess the price was set because of expensive R&D, which of course seems to have been unsuccessful. I'll start with the worst of it. One of the advertised features - Detection of regions/zones of the teeth in sixths (dentists use a word of Latin origin for this, which I don't want to use here so that the automatic detection doesn't catch it) - absolutely does not work. Dentists teach us to brush our teeth with el. brush in many ways, whether the 3 second rule on each side, or 10 seconds spent on the tooth, or one of many other ways. But all methods have one thing in common: Brushing is done thoroughly and therefore *slowly*. The region detection of this toothbrush, and "slow", is clearly an incompatible pair. If you brush your teeth the way your dentist teaches you to, the region detection will do everything but correctly identify the region you are brushing. Most often it does not detect the region any. Then the second most common is that it detects the region directly opposite to the one you are currently cleaning. This is particularly annoying because if it gets into this error mode, when you change the region you're cleaning to the one it's showing in the app or on the stand, it often gets stuck, and no longer wants to detect any region other than this one. I've read that it helps to reset the device. But that's not true in my case. The only way to make region detection work is to "brush" your teeth very quickly. Driving back and forth at such a speed that you damage your dental gums. I tried for a few weeks, but finally gave up. I recommend to accept this and switch to the "countdown" mode in the app, which is also used by the dentist who recommended this toothbrush to me. Furthermore, as I wrote in the pros and cons - you need to keep the ambient air humidity below 60%, below 50% in the long term and ideally even lower. Which in the conditions of most bathrooms is of course very difficult. Fortunately, we have ventilation and a dehumidifier in the bathroom, but Oral-B heads are notorious for "attracting" mold. I don't need to explain that brushing your teeth with mold is worse than not brushing at all. Unfortunately, that means you have to address it somehow, and of course really replace the heads every 90 days or sooner, which few people do (and I feel for you). I would also like to point out that the iO series has heads that are incompatible with other Oral-B toothbrushes. I think it's a bad move by P&G at a time when even Apple is presenting itself as a supporter of Right to Repair. There is no compelling engineering reason for this. I'll just hope that all the new el. Oral-B toothbrushes will have the same insertion mechanism as the iO series. It would be even better if they were compatible with the competition, but one can only dream. Hopefully when the patents expire things will change. What more can I say than that it would be good for customers. Next, a rather neutral thing. I was able to estimate the price of the factory production of this toothbrush at about 1000 crowns. Remember, this is the price without R&D, marketing, etc. Furthermore, healthcare is such a specific industry. For example, abroad you often have a situation where companies like Oral-B pay health professionals for promotion. Most likely, most people who bought this toothbrush for the original 13-14 thousand bought it on the recommendation of a doctor. It's possible that part of the amount was covered by their health insurance so it didn't hurt them as much. The specifics are that out of the 13-14 thousand, about 2 thousand could have been given to the doctor or rather his workplace. I mean, it's hard to estimate how much is a "fair" price for such a device. Remember also that this is a relatively small production. Anyway, I did some analysis before buying, and believe me or not, I came to the conclusion that if there was a lot of competition for customers on the market, the manufacturer could sell this toothbrush for 6k and still have a "healthy" margin (50-60%, the margin for the prosumer segment I would say is minimal). Now to my point - I did a head price analysis as well. Unlike the brush itself, the heads are now sold at a much, much lower margin. I found a package with Ultimate clean heads for sale in B2B portal for about 400 CZK for 4pcs (there is no exact price, because it depends on the size of the order and many other factors). The production and shipping of this package of heads to the Czech Republic cost me 330 CZK in the analysis! So, despite the fact that in my opinion the price of these heads is exorbitant for the "ordinary soul", I can't say that it's because they don't completely strive for an acceptable price. Nevertheless, I will pass on a recommendation from my dentist - buy the Gentle Clean heads. There is no scientific evidence that harder toothbrushes improve gum cleanliness in the long term. Yes, the perceptual difference is there, but the evidence is not. It may indeed be true that such warheads help, but if so, the effect is so small that it is hard to find evidence for it. At the same time, it is worth noting here that dentistry is one of the few sciences that has so much money pouring into research that it hardly knows what to do with it. Well, at least in the United States where most of this research is done and published today. It's a big commercial sector. So if there was evidence for it, it would be found quickly. On the contrary, we have evidence that people don't brush their teeth properly and often use too much pressure, destroying their gums. That's why the doctor's recommendation is to buy Gentle Care heads. They're softer, you won't find a real difference, and they're cheaper too. Finally, I will say that I personally am quite happy with my purchase. But I wouldn't follow my specific case in general. 99% of the people reading this review, however, do not need this toothbrush. If I were you, I'd reach for a cheaper one. For example, the Oral-B teen is a great bargain, it's a more expensive model with identical features, just a slightly different design and a brace head in the package. You lose a few quality of life features - changing the brush is more difficult for example, but otherwise your personal experience will be almost the same, and the price is much, much lower. (factor in the lifetime price) And instead of a stand you can learn to just use the timer on your phone because as I said, zone detection doesn't work, and I doubt that will change in any update. And lastly, if you're not shy about it, there's the option to buy a used toothbrush. Because of people's quite understandable concerns about hygiene, even very premium expensive models are sold cheaply. I have it confirmed by my dentist that if you wash such a toothbrush thoroughly before use (and of course use a new head), it is hygienically quite acceptable, indistinguishable from "new" because of the standards that are placed on these products.
