LONDON — For James Dyson, oral care is deeply personal before it becomes technological.
“Every time I go to the hygienist, she gets the pickax out and starts hitting away at all the plaque that’s hardened up and says, ‘You must floss, you must floss.’ I bought one of those jet flosses, and my mouth filled with water very quickly and I kept spitting it out. It was painful, and I don’t think I was hitting the spot,” recalled the British inventor, who also tried plastic floss tools as hard and as often as he could, but they also yielded little results.
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That frustration became the brief for Dyson’s first foray into oral care, a device that would get to plaque while it is still “soft and sticky, like melted toffee,” before it turns rock hard.
“I’ve thought for the last few years that we must do something where you floss as you brush. So it’s not a separate thing that you do afterward that takes another five minutes. It’s as easy as brushing your teeth with an electric toothbrush,” said Dyson, whose lifestyle brand is today synonymous with game-changing technology and standout aesthetics across floor care, hair care, air treatment, headphones, lighting and now oral care.
The answer is the Dyson CameraJet, a camera‑equipped electric toothbrush six years in the making, involving 661 Dyson engineers and 38 patents. It uses artificial intelligence to detect gaps and fire a micro‑jet of mouth rinse exactly where plaque forms, all while brushing.
After using the prototype for six months, Dyson returned to the hygienist. This time, she had nothing to do but a little bit of polishing.
“Of course, I didn’t tell her how I had achieved this,” he quipped.
The secret to that achievement has been packaged as Gap Optical Targeting.
In the toothbrush head, roughly the size of a pencil tip, sit an intraoral 100k pixel micro camera, a light and a jet. The camera analyzes 28 images per second and has been trained on nearly 500,000 dental images, therefore it can distinguish a tooth from the gap beside it.
The system also has to predict where the next gap will be, because there is a slight delay while the jet fires and the user is constantly moving the brush. All of this has to work while the brush head vibrates at 58,000 revs per minute.
“If you shake your iPhone like that, you won’t do a very good film. We’ve got to do a film operating in slurry in your mouth, a perfect film to be clear enough to find the gap and cope with that shaking. It is a highly intelligent product, and through the development we’ve realized it had to be like that,” Dyson said.
Another breakthrough of the CameraJet is how fluid is delivered.
Traditional flossers use what Dyson’s engineers dub a “needle jet” — a narrow, piercing stream of water that can feel aggressive and still miss much of the plaque in the gap. Dyson’s conical jet instead sends out a blast of microdroplets in a fan‑like spray, covering a wider area between teeth while softening the perceived pressure on gums.
In lab tests using a proxy plaque developed with the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Dentistry, the conical jet proved more effective at breaking down the sticky biofilm and washing it away than conventional needle jets, said a Dyson engineer during a remote demo of the product.
To keep that jet firing regardless of angle, Dyson built an “anti‑gravity tank” into the handle. A 12.5‑milliliter reservoir, matching the recommended dose of mouth rinse, surrounds a silicone bladder. As the pump draws fluid, the bladder expands to occupy the space, pushing out air pockets and ensuring a consistent jet whether the brush is upright, horizontal, or upside down.
In parallel, Dyson’s team tackled the rest of the routine, formulating nonfoaming toothpaste and mouth rinse to work with both the camera and the jet.
Some might worry that a camera in a toothbrush could raise privacy concerns. Dyson insisted there are “no privacy issues,” since the data is entirely private to the user.
The brand added that the toothbrush’s camera feed is strictly live and optional, with no images or video stored on the app or the phone, and no access for the company at any point. Users also get a clear visual cue when the camera is active since there is a light at the top of the handle.
“If you want to show it, if you’re bold enough to show it to your dentist, you can share it with your dentist or your hygienist. But it’s entirely private to you. And if you’re really, really worried, don’t do that. But the app is really good because it monitors how well you’re doing this and helps you improve your performance, and I think it’s quite fun seeing your teeth and seeing what it’s doing,” said Dyson.
Beyond the hero device, Dyson is positioning the CameraJet as the first piece of a larger Dyson Dental System that includes formulation bundles and, eventually, subscriptions for refills.
In the U.S., the product will roll out through Dyson’s own channels as well as Amazon, Sephora, Best Buy and Costco, priced at $499 and available in two colorways: ceramic ultra blue and ceramic pink.
“I hope that people agree with me that flossing twice a day as you brush, without it taking any more time, and doing it very easily and not painfully, is something that people will like,” Dyson said.
When asked about how far the category could stretch, from sensitive gums to discoloration, Dyson kept his lips sealed about the road map, but agreed with the suggestion that his company could come up with a product to get rid of tea or coffee stains at home eventually.
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” Dyson commented with a smile on his face.