Oclean X Pro Digital review: 30 seconds more

One of the things I liked about Oclean’s premium X Ultra S toothbrush was the gamification of cleaning your teeth. After you had brushed, it would give you a score out of 100 to tell you how well you had cleaned inside your mouth.

But one of the challenges with that approach was that the toothbrush didn’t give you a way to “continue” a clean after the preset time had finished. If you didn’t do a good job in a part of your mouth, you were cursed to either re-brush your whole mouth, or end up with a low score.

After I published my review, I realised I could use the electric toothbrush’s “unlimited” cleaning mode, manually pausing after I thought I had cleaned everywhere to see how well I had done. It works reasonably well, though I end up brushing for much longer than a standard 2-minute cycle.

The X Pro Digital doesn’t feature an unlimited cleaning mode. Instead, if your cleaning score is judged to be under a “90”, you can opt to add another 30 seconds to your clean.

But is 30 seconds enough? I wish it was, but often, 30 seconds just don’t cut it…

What is the X Pro Digital offering?

Oclean isn’t the biggest name in electric toothbrushes, particularly in Australia, but it has been focused on oral hygiene products since 2016.

The X Pro Digital falls into the company’s lineup of “Smart series” toothbrushes, alongside the X Ultra S. It features a touchscreen display, which lets you cycle through cleaning modes, as well as see your brushing score and missed areas.

The toothbrush uses an ultra-fast motor, which Oclean calls a maglev motor, (though I’m not sure if there’s any magnetic levitation involved), to move the brush head 1,400 times a second. That rapid vibration helps deliver a thorough clean.

There are four cleaning modes, and 32 intensity levels, so you can customise your clean as you require, with a lot of the control done via the connected Oclean app for iOS or Android.

The toothbrush has enough juice to last up to 30 days, and the toothbrush has an IPX7 rating, so you should be able to use it in the shower without any issues.

In the box, you get the toothbrush and its charger (which doubles as a wall mount, plus two different heads – a delicate care brush head as well as a plaque control head.

Notably absent in this model is the lack of a pressure sensor when you press too hard.

What does the X Pro Digital do well?

There’s a consistent level of vibration with the X Pro Digital that feels like you’re getting a good clean. Before I started testing this model, the X Ultra S toothbrush I had been using started “dropping out” during the clean, so it was nice to have a consistent level of vibration while cleaning my teeth.

Things have been simplified with this toothbrush compared to the X Ultra S as well. For a start, there’s no demon child voice announcing when to rotate the quadrant of your cleaning. Instead, you get a clear change in the vibration to indicate when you should move to another part of your mouth.

I like the premise behind quickly adding 30 seconds of cleaning time if you don’t quite manage to get it all done in two minutes. If you dive into the settings of the Oclean app, you can set it so that you don’t need to manually select to add 30 seconds – if your clean score is under 90, it automatically kicks off again.

But occasionally the extra 30 seconds weren’t enough. Maybe I’m terrible at brushing my teeth, but I found that quite often the extra 30 seconds didn’t do the job. Or perhaps the algorithm that’s designed to track your brushing isn’t as good as it should be.

I found the toothbrush to be comfortable to hold and control, with the brush heads conveniently sized and easy to get into the back corners of my mouth as well.

The charger doubles as a wall mount, which is kind of cool, though I don’t really think I would want to charge the toothbrush while it was mounted to the wall.

What could the X Pro Digital improve?

For a start, I want to be able to hit “another 30 seconds” again and again and again until my brush score says 100.

To me, it makes more sense to incentivise a perfect brush every time the toothbrush is used, rather than limiting the user’s ability to clean their teeth fully.

It’s also disappointing there’s no pressure sensor. It’s far too easy to brush with too much pressure, which can have a serious impact on gum health (or so my dentist keeps telling me, anyway), so alerting users when they go too hard is important.

I understand that you can’t include all features at all price points, but the fact is that Oclean has given this toothbrush an RRP of $229.95. Pressure sensing is in the Oral-B i02, which has a $159.99 RRP, so it’s hardly a power-user feature.

Verdict

The Oclean X Pro Digital is a good electric toothbrush. It has great battery life, cleans well, and the smart features like giving you a brushing score do help you do a better job cleaning your teeth.

But like the more premium X Ultra S, it feels like Oclean has overpriced itself in Australia. With an RRP of $229.95 in Australia, there’s a clear markup of the US$99.99 (AUD$152 approx.) RRP in the US, even when you account for sales taxes.

As I write this, you can grab the X Pro Digital for $130 at The Shaver Shop, and at this price I believe it’s an excellent deal, offering a good clean at a reasonable price.

But at full cost, the numbers just don’t stack up for a product lacking key features like a pressure sensor.

Behind the scenes

Specs comparison

Considering an Oclean toothbrush, here's what the two main options look like side by side.

Tips and tricks

• If you don’t want to manually kick off the supplementary brushing feature, you can set it to automatically kick off in the Oclean app. Just select the device and toggle the “Auto Supplementary Brushing” feature on. When you finish your regular brush, the X Pro Digital will stop for long enough to see how you scored, and if it’s under a 90, it will automatically start vibrating again for an extra 30 seconds.
• Brushing with an electric toothbrush isn’t the same as manual brushing. The X Pro Digital has an alert in the settings that can alert you when you are brushing too vigorously on the horizontal. Toggle the “Overzealous horizontal brushing reminder” setting in the app, and if you brush a bit too quick, you’ll get a longer, slower vibration to let you know.
• While it looks like the toothbrush only supports three cleaning modes, by connecting through the Oclean app you have access to 19 different preset options, or you can create your own.

One more thing

I’ve tested the X Pro Digital for a few weeks, so I can’t really speak to its longevity. But I can also say that the more premium X Ultra S model I tested last year has been my default toothbrush since I reviewed it, and for the past few months at least it has developed an extremely annoying habit of not consistently vibrating.

Every brush, it would “cut out”. I could hear the motor running, but it wasn’t vibrating on my teeth until I moved it a particular way.

As far as I know, there’s no obvious cause for this, like being dropped or water damaged. It just seems to have developed this annoying habit some six months after I started using it.

As a reviewer, this is something I normally bank in the back of my mind and pay attention to for future reviews. If there’s a trend, it becomes something I factor into my reviews moving forward.

So far, I have no reason to suspect that my X Ultra S is part of a wider trend, but it’s definitely something I’m considering as I continue to use the X Pro Digital.

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