Oral-B Pro 1000 Review: The Best Electric Toothbrush For Routine Brushing (2024)

The Oral-B Pro 1000 Rechargeable Electric Toothbrush does all the most important things the best electric toothbrush needs to do, and does them extremely well. It was the across-the-board winner in my best electric toothbrushes review because it had the best combination of ease-of-use, effectiveness, and value. Other brushes offer multiple brushing modes and high-tech bells and whistles, but you may not need these extras if you’re just looking for a standard electric toothbrush.

Compared to the eight other toothbrushes I tested, the Pro 1000 stood out as the clear choice for most people. It was the easiest to grip, use and clean, and it was quieter than most other models, too. If you’re looking for a top-of-the-line brush with features like app compatibility, however, you may prefer our best smart electric toothbrush pick, the Oral-B iO Series 7G. Here’s why the Oral-B Pro 1000 won our top pick.

Oral-B Pro 1000 Features

The Best Brush For Maintaining A Daily Routine

The Oral-B Pro 1000 provides just the basic features that an electric toothbrush needs, but what it does, it does incredibly well. All of the dental professionals I spoke to emphasized that the best electric toothbrush is the one that gets you to brush twice a day for two minutes, every single day. The ease of use, comfortable grip, pressure sensor, quadrant timer and great value that the Pro 1000 offers does a superlative job of removing barriers to establishing that routine.

There’s no guesswork involved with setting up this toothbrush: Take it out of the box, attach the brush head to the handle, press the “on” button, and you’re done. Everything is set up already to provide a great brushing experience, making it a breeze to get into a regular routine and to develop your technique. With some of the more expensive, higher-tech brushes I tried, learning to use them felt overwhelming, similar to reading a car manual. In contrast, the Pro-1000 worked perfectly with minimal setup. This streamlined brush might work for you if you’re someone who has struggled with daily brushing in the past, or if you’re a parent trying to motivate kids or teens to brush their teeth more consistently.

A Great Pressure Sensor And Basic Timer

While the Oral-B Pro 1000 only offers one brushing mode (as opposed to the 2, 3 or 5 offered by more advanced models I tested), that one mode is extremely effective. Crucially, the brushing pressure isn’t so aggressive as to cause pain to those of us with sensitive or receding gums. In my tests, I tried several brushes that offered multiple brushing modes, including ones specifically for “sensitive” brushing. The Oral-B Pro 1000 was just as comfortable, and left my teeth feeling just as clean, as other more expensive models.

Similarly, the Pro 1000 has just a few extras, but they’re enough to get the job done if you’re looking for the best electric toothbrush overall. The two features it offers, a timer and a pressure sensor, function well and are easy to understand. The timer works by pulsing twice every thirty seconds to indicate that it’s time to change your brushing quadrant (one of four sections of your mouth), and then four times when two minutes has elapsed. The pressure sensor automatically shuts off the brush’s pulsations if you press too hard while brushing. While the pressure sensor isn’t the most noticeable or intuitive out of all the brushes I tested, it still stopped me from over-brushing. These functions are effective and easy to understand and use, contributing to the Oral-B Pro 1000’s overall highest score in our twice-daily brushing tests.

Effective Cleaning For The Price

I tested how well electric toothbrushes could remove plaque in two ways, and the Oral-B Pro 1000 aced both tests. First, I coated a set of dentures in a combination of flour, salt, and water, sprayed the mixture with food dye so that the “plaque” was clearly visible. Then, I noted which brush made the biggest dent in build-up over two daily brushings. For another test, I chewed plaque detection tablets, then used each brush once for two minutes to see which made the most difference in removing the purple residue. The Oral-B Pro 1000 returned results equal to, and in some cases better than, much more expensive toothbrushes I tested.

It’s worth pointing out that all of the other toothbrushes that scored as high as (or in some cases slightly higher than) the Pro 1000 in plaque removal, ease of use, cleaning, portability and timer feature tests are between three and five times as expensive ($90 - $200, compared to the Oral-B Pro 1000’s $30 price tag at time of publication). All the toothbrushes we tested except one have the ADA Seal of Acceptance, meaning that they’ve already passed rigorous tests administered by dental scientists to confirm their teeth-cleaning capabilities. While some brushes performed slightly better in some of my tests, the differences were minimal and certainly not commensurate with the differences in price. This was by far the best-value option I tested.

A Superior Design

One issue with many electric toothbrushes I tested is that they can get slippery during two minutes of brushing, and become different to grip or maneuver. The Pro-1000’s handle has a ridged, indented back that made it one of the easiest and most comfortable to hold. While two other Oral-B brushes we tested–the Genius 8000 and the Genius 9600–have a gummy, rubberized back on the handle to increase graspability, I found that this feature actually made it more difficult to reposition the brush. In contrast, the Oral-B Pro 1000 was equally graspable but easy to move around.

It was also one of the easiest to clean compared to the other brushes I tested, which got gunked up with toothpaste residue. I was able to fully clean the Oral-B Pro 1000 with one slapdash rinse. Once again, it proved to be a perfect option for making something many of us do while still half-asleep feel easy.

Since you’ll reach for a brush many times a day, it’s ideal to get one you like the looks of. This brush also scored well in aesthetics; both color options (black and white) are glossy, clean, and unobtrusive, and sit nicely on a bathroom shelf or counter. (You can also find the brush in pastel green or pink at some third-party retailers).

How Does The Oral-B Pro 1000 Compare?

The Oral-B Pro 1000 won the best electric toothbrush overall because it offers the best combination of value and cleaning power. The best electric toothbrush with an automatic shut-off, the Philips Sonicare 4100, is priced comparably, and has a clear timer function, shutting off automatically at two minutes. It didn’t score as well on the other tests, however, including ease of use and plaque removal. The Oral-B iO Series 7G Electric Toothbrush, which won best smart electric toothbrush, costs roughly five times more for its high-tech features. The Pro-Sys VarioSonic won best for sensitive gums, but isn’t as intuitive or effective for basic brushing.

How I Tested The Best Electric Toothbrushes

In testing a wide variety of electric toothbrushes for this review, I focused on several criteria: Ease of use, effectiveness, portability, ease of cleaning, battery life, timer, pressure sensor, extra features and aesthetics. In each area, I compared each feature or quality against that of the other brushes.

I spent two consecutive days brushing twice daily with each toothbrush to determine ease of use, and made copious notes on each feature. I compared how intuitive the brush was to use, how much set-up was required, how comfortable it was to brush with and how easy it was to hold while brushing. Additionally, I tested all special features offered on each brush and made note of how easy they were to use and understand. I tried each brush’s timer setting and pressure sensor (when applicable).

To determine each brush’s effect on plaque build-up, I designed a test on a set of dentures. I coated a pair of dentures in a mixture of flour, salt and water to mimic plaque, left it overnight, sprayed it with colored marking spray to make the build-up and changes in it more visible. Then, I used each brush twice on it, noting the change in color, saturation and texture of the mixture after two brushings.

I also tested each brush using plaque detection tablets on my own teeth. These tablets turn plaque residue purple when chewed, and I noted how much of the color each brush removed. I also cleaned each brush with the simple rinse cleaning method recommended by Dr. Sonya Krasilnikov at Dental House in New York to see which trapped gunk, and tested out each travel case for portability.

My Expertise

For this piece, I spoke to several dental professionals to learn how and why dentists recommend electric toothbrushes, including Dr. Ada Cooper, a National Spokesperson for the American Dental Association, and Dr. Sonya Krasilnikov of Dental House in New York I also researched the benefits of an electric toothbrush and what features to look for in the best electric toothbrush. In addition, I read numerous articles from sources including the American Dental Association and the International Journal of Dental Hygiene to learn as much as I could about electric toothbrushes and oral hygiene.

I’m an obsessive daily brusher myself, in part due to trying to make up for some early years of dental hygiene negligence. I know how hard it can be to turn a simple thing like dental hygiene into a daily routine, so I was especially tuned in to how well these brushes worked into my day-to-day brushing.

What Is The Most Important Feature in An Electric Toothbrush?

The most important feature in an electric toothbrush is, quite simply, the one that will make you use it most often. Whether that’s a timer that does the work of measuring out two minutes for you, the softest possible brush head for sensitive gums or high-tech options that you can control through your smartphone depends entirely on your preferences.

The features I consistently found most useful while testing was a timer, especially one with an automatic shut-off. I also valued the feel of the brush head, the option for multiple brushing modes and the brushing feedback offered by some smart toothbrushes. Of these, the timer was far and away the most important, and the only one that made a genuine difference to my brushing habits. I’ve often struggled with brushing for the full two minutes with a manual toothbrush, and with equally covering different areas and surfaces of teeth, rather than rushing through and only cleaning the front side of the easiest to reach teeth. Every brush I tried not only had a timer, but the timer signaled at thirty seconds when it was time to switch to a new quadrant of the mouth, breaking the two minutes up into quarters so that it didn’t seem as tedious, and so that I had to really concentrate on getting every surface and hard to reach area in each quadrant while I was there for those thirty seconds. By taking the thinking and guesswork out of brushing for two minutes, the timer changed my approach to dental hygiene.

The next most important feature is the brush head itself. There are many different types of brush heads, and different people will have different preferences for harder or softer bristles, round or oblong brush heads and side-to-side versus spinning motion. Dr Krasilnikov stressed that, although brands that make brushes with rotating heads or sonic heads might have different marketing, neither is recommended over the other by dentists or by the ADA. Both do an equally good job cleaning when combined with good brushing technique and a consistent routine. Whether I found the brush head to feel pleasant and comfortable made a huge difference about which toothbrushes I was more eager to use.

The options to try different brushing modes, and the smart toothbrush’s feedback on brushing technique were both more fun than important. Neither was technically crucial to brushing well, but both motivated me to brush more consistently and enthusiastically quite simply because they were fun. Figuring out what types of features will motivate you to use a toothbrush consistently is among the most important things to consider when choosing a toothbrush.

Do I Need An Electric Toothbrush With Multiple Brushing Modes Or A Smart Brush?

The short answer here? No. A toothbrush like the Oral-B Pro 1000 will do everything you need a toothbrush to do, and does those things as well or better than brushes that have high-tech features and multiple brushing modes. A great electric toothbrush should be easy to hold, easy to clean and have a good timer feature. Beyond that, everything else is extra. If reminders and feedback from a smart toothbrush’s connected app are what will make sure you brush twice a day, then you may want a smart brush.

But if none of these concerns speak to you and you just want to establish and maintain good dental hygiene habits, the Oral-B Pro 1000 is the best electric toothbrush I found.

How Do I Clean My Electric Toothbrush?

Detach the brush head from the handle, which shouldn’t take much effort. Run the brush head under the tap in the sink, making sure to rinse between the bristles until all toothpaste residue is gone. Wipe down the brush head and set it to the side to dry. Wipe down the handle carefully with a wet washcloth, making sure to carefully clean around the inner edge where the brush head connects and where toothpaste residue can tend to get stuck, then dry the handle with a dry towel. You should only need water to this, and the process should be quick and easy, Only re-attach the brush head when both pieces are dry, A good toothbrush will look essentially unused, and free of any residue, after this simple process.