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43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Makes Your Mouth Sparkle, November 30, 2004
This review is from: Oral-B S-340 Sonic Complete Rechargeable Power Toothbrush (Health and Beauty)
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).)
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Toothbrush Available, December 23, 2004
This review is from: Oral-B S-340 Sonic Complete Rechargeable Power Toothbrush (Health and Beauty)
I have been using the Braun Oral B 3D toothbrush for some time now, and although that unit does a much better job cleaning your teeth and gums than a traditional manual brush, my dentist kept recommending a sonic toothbrush. Unfortunately, the only sonic brush available at that time was the Sonicare, which in my opinion was large and ungainly, not easy to handle. At last, here comes a sonic toothbrush from Braun/Oral B with a nice design and a compact body no larger than the 3D model. I'm happy to say that it works every bit as good as it looks! It makes my mouth feel even cleaner than the 3D model did, and it's so much fun to use, it even seems to make the two minutes spent brushing fly by. As another user has noted, the only downside is the packaging: that hard plastic blister pack was all but impossible to open, and removing it exposed sharp plastic edges that could easily cut someone. It's just about the most consumer-unfriendly packaging I've ever encountered, so bad in fact that I got on Braun's toll-free consumer hotline before I had even finished opening the box and told them to eliminate the blister pack. Otherwise I can't wait until my next dental checkup, when I'm guessing the hygienist will ask what I did to improve my dental care regimen. Assuming that you can remove the blister pack without hurting yourself, this toothbrush must be the most effective and easy-to-use on the market. Highly recommended!
An addendum, written a few weeks later: one feature this toothbrush could use is a low charge indicator. Twice now it has run out of power when I've been brushing, and when it quits, it just quits -- no slowing down to alert you to a low-battery condition. I notice the instructions acknowledge this problem by advising you to keep the brush in the charger base at all times, but this is also a sure way to make the nicad battery lazy. So Braun -- how about making the speed indicator LEDs flash when the battery is running low?
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing clean feeling right out of the box!, March 12, 2005
This review is from: Oral-B S-340 Sonic Complete Rechargeable Power Toothbrush (Health and Beauty)
I'll be the first to admit that I really don't like going to the dentist all that much, so any upper hand I can get in the oral hygiene arena I'll be sure to take. After years of all the different types of cross action / criss cross / gum massaging varities out there I decided to take the plunge and go electric. I'd rather test the waters before plunging head on into pool though, so I started with a Crest Spinbrush Pro, probably the most ho-hum electric brush on the market. After getting comfortable and then quickly tired with it, in addition to reading some articles about how it can actually be worse than a regular toothbrush if not used properly, I decided my feet were wet enough so I jumped in an bought the Oral B Sonic Complete toothbrush.
I really could not be happier with my purchase, not only does the thing work right out of the box, they've included three seperate brusheads (9 months worth!), a travel case, the rechargeable base station with built-in storage, Rembrandt Whitening toothpaste, and the Oral-B Hummingbird flosser to try out as well!
On to the cleaning though, right? That is the most important part after all. Well I must admit that the first time you set it to "Clean", the strongest of the 3 settings, it's a bit of shock to your teeth. Your whole mouth is literally humming as the brush does it's work. The medium setting, "Soft", is probably the best choice for those who need to get used to the toothbrush and is also recommended for using on your tongue. There's a "Massage" setting to use on your gums as well. You're warned in the instructions that the brush may cause your gums to bleed the first couple times you use it, but as the Crest electric brush always seemed to have a habit of making my gums bleed I was pretty pleasantly surprised when this one didn't make them bleed much at all. After my first brushing my mouth did feel more vibrant although that could've been because my teeth were still vibrating from the sonic pulses. Seriously though I did enjoy the feeling and it was much more refreshing a feeling of clean than I've experienced with other toothbrushes that I've used.
Apparently Oral-B has taken notice to some of the user's complaints as well as the toothbrush now comes in an easy to open cardboard box. I had the whole thing unpacked and setup in under 5 minutes easily. I will probably end up leaving the brush on the charging station, although as one other reviewer pointed out, NiCad batteries like the one used in the toothbrush can lose capacity over time if exposed to a constant charge. But I'm guessing that the difference should be pretty neglible over the life of the device and I would assume that a replacement battery for the unit itself could be purchased if necessary.
Oral-B also recommends removing the brush head from the device, running the brush head under water while wiping dry the device itself. Although this seems a little tedious and it's hard to imagine everyone doing this, I made it a habit fresh out of the box and store the brush head that I'm using in one of the three compartments in the charger/storage unit.
All in all it's an extremely pleasant brushing experience, you get a feeling of a wonderfully clean mouth, and to tell you the truth I almost feel like brushing my teeth four or five times a day just to get to play with my toothbrush. Also, if you can purchase it in time to get the rebate like I did, it drops the price down to a very respectable $80 for the starting kit. A 5* purchase from Amazon without a doubt!
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