Philips Sonicare Airfloss – test

By : gastronomictravels | 0 Comments | On : June 13, 2012 | Category : General, Reviews

I was lucky enough to be chosen as one of 300 testers for the Philips Sonicare Airfloss. Here are my impressions so far.

Day 1: Picked up my airfloss at the Post Office. Once home, I read the instructions carefully. Unfortunately, it takes 2 hours or 24 hours to charge depending on which manual you read so I decided to let it charge overnight.

Day 2: First day of use. I filled the container with Listerine and away I went. Unfortunately, I was overly enthusiastic and did 3 rounds over my teeth. Afterwards, they ached a bit and my gums bled also. Not surprising I guess considering that I was misusing the airfloss and torturing my mouth at the same time. Not recommended!

I used my inter-dental brushes afterwards to test if there were food particles still stuck in between the teeth and there weren’t. Good that! It was fun using the airfloss but I kept forgetting to close my mouth which meant that the mirror was sprayed with mouthwash and food particles. I had to fill the water reservoir twice because I did several rounds, even on the other side of the teeth.

Day 3: Lesson learned and I only did 1 round -  on the outside and the inside. I found that the water container is large enough to do a whole round and I didn’t have to refill. The whole process took less than 2 minutes which was great because I’m quite lazy when it comes to dental hygiene!

Day 4: The novelty is still there! I love using the airfloss! It saves alot of time and my mouth feels fresh afterwards but that’s more because of the use of Listerine. Today I had some ribs and for once, the inter-dental brush didn’t come out clean when I used it after using the airfloss. I found that it took several puffs of the air/liquid before the food particle would dislodge itself. This was very worrying as it meant that I could no longer trust that the airfloss would do its job!

Day 5: Again I had some meat during the day and this time, I made sure to spend more time on the back teeth with several puffs at each tooth and no leftover food particle this time! There was some difficulty however of positioning the nozzle in the right place as the gap between the back teeth is narrower than at the front. This meant more time spent!

Day 6: As I wrote before, I usually do the other side of the teeth and this time, I accidentally sprayed mouthwash in one eye! It’s quite difficult to position the airfloss when you’re doing the other side of the teeth and I accidentally pressed the airfloss when the nozzle wasn’t in position and voila – my eye got cleaned at the same time! Luckily, I can now say that mouthwash is not harmful to the eye

Day 7: The novelty is starting to wear off now. I still try to use it religiously and in the long run, I think I will continue to do so as the whole process is quite fast.

Day 8: Decided to take a break!

Day 9: The problem with the airfloss is that it can only clean between your teeth if the gap between them is big enough. I’ve found that I still have to use dental floss or interdental brushes occassionally to get rid of that stubborn food particle that refuses to be blasted away!

Conclusion: The airfloss retails at around 1000 crowns so it’s quite steep. It doesn’t replace inter-dental brushes or dental floss as sometimes it’s quite ineffective against some stubborn food particles. Having said that, it does save alot of time and if you’re on a liquid diet then there’s no problem! I’d still recommend it to my friends but I’d also explain thoroughly to them the pluses and minuses of this device!

I’m very glad to have been chosen to test this product and will be happy to continue to use it as it DOES save you heaps of time.

To read what other testers have written about the airfloss (in Swedish), click on the icon below