Spotlight Oral Care Sonic toothbrush review: finally a premium electric toothbrush that doesn’t break the bank

The Spotlight Oral Care Sonic toothbrush is my latest greatest find, boasting decent specs but without the price tag to match, and available to buy now at a discount. It's a refreshing discovery since electric toothbrush recommended retail prices can be outrageous at times, often leaving those of us looking for a new brush on hold until the sales season. 

The Spotlight Oral Care Sonic Pro toothbrush offers features and styling you’d expect from the premium models that sit among the best electric toothbrushes. It even comes with a nice travel case. But putting looks aside for a moment, I set out to see whether it cleaned teeth just as well…which is the acid test for a toothbrush, no matter what it looks like. 

As someone who’s had teeth for half a century and has been testing gadgets for most of that time, I feel qualified to judge. After using the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic Pro twice a day for several weeks, I compared it with other leading brushes like the much-pricier Philips Sonicare DiamondClean Prestige, and against a regular ‘manual’ toothbrush and other affordable options. Is it better for your pearly whites than a regular toothbrush - or just another gadget you don’t need?

Spotlight Oral Care Sonic toothbrush: Specifications 

• Modes: 4
• Colours: White, black, and pink
• Timer function: Yes
• Pressure sensor: Yes
• Tongue cleaner: Yes
• Battery life: Up to 70 days
• Charging: USB
• Accessories: Travel case
• RRP: £150 (but often available for under £100)

Spotlight Oral Care Sonic Pro toothbrush: £150 at Beauty Bay

On sale (at the time of writing) for £127.50, there's no better time to buy. The Spotlight Oral Care Sonic Pro toothbrush is a premium brush at a budget-friendly price, offering up to 50,000 strokes per minute for buffing your pearly whites. 

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First impressions of the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic Pro 

When the toothbrush arrived from Beauty Bay, it looked great. Unboxing, it’s hard to discern between this £150 and a £500 electric toothbrush. I tested the white one. The toothbrush is good-looking, as is the box, with two slide-out sections.

The toothbrush is fairly large at 25cm long, as is the travel case. The latter looks like a glasses case but wider, and it's made of a hard plastic that’s easy to clean but would crack if dropped. The case has space for two brush heads as well as the body.

Also included in the box is a simple, magnetic USB charging base and three brush heads. This is enough for nine months if you follow their recommendation of changing the head every three months.

The electric toothbrush feels comfortable in my hand and has a matt finish that doesn’t show fingerprints. It does feel a bit long but it isn’t heavy.

User experience of the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic Pro

If you’re not used to a sonic toothbrush then your first impression will be…tickly. I found it to be a very different type of brushing from some of the other devices I've tried. You don’t scrub and nor does the brush. Instead, the Spotlight Oral Care Pro makes thousands of tiny movements a second and you hold the brush against your teeth, slowly moving it around.

There’s a single button, under your thumb, that cycles between four brushing modes. These are Gentle (30,000 brush strokes a minute), Clean (40,000), Whiten (45,000), Polish (50,000). They cycle in order but unlike premium brushes, such as the Oral-B iO10, the brush doesn't have a screen so I wasn't sure which setting did which. I just chose whichever felt right.

Like many electric toothbrushes, it features a tongue cleaner on the back of the brush head. It also boasts a timer and a pressure sensor. The timer does the standard quick pause every 30 seconds (so you focus on a quarter of your teeth each time) and then stops after two minutes. It also indicates this by lighting different quadrants of the ring at the base of the brush head – much like the above pick of the best Oral-B electric toothbrushes. It's a nice touch, but it makes less sense and I found I never looked as it while using the brush. 

The 4 x 30-second timer is for good reason. Two minutes is how long we should brush our teeth, whether with a manual or electric toothbrush.

It’s hard to see the light ring when brushing full-stop, unless you’re staring in a mirror, which means the pressure sensor (the ring lights up red) is hard to see and sadly it doesn’t make a sound or vibration. Maybe most people stare at a bathroom mirror. I don’t as I have a window above my basin.

A short press of the central button cycles between modes and a long press turns the toothbrush off (though you’re supposed to do the full two minutes and have it turn off automatically). Thankfully, when you turn it back on it remembers which mode you prefer.

I found it annoying there was no sound to tell me when I was brushing too hard, but the brushing itself was pretty good. It delivers the tickly cleanness you can expect from a sonic toothbrush. Most of all, I liked the tiny brush head. It’s small - more the size of a child’s toothbrush than an adult’s - and this makes it easier to get back to tight spots, like behind your wisdom teeth, so everything is clean.

I also liked the clean design of the brush head, with no funny holes or crevices. The flat surface where it meets the toothbrush body is another advantage over rotary brushes: fewer places for gunk to build up. You don’t need to wipe everything after each use.

How does the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic toothbrush compare?

Sonic cleaning feels infinitely better than a scrub, as offered by many other electric and manual brushes. It’s gentler on the teeth and gums while cleaning thoroughly. It doesn’t hurt. 

When comparing the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic toothbrush against brushes with rotary heads, I'd choose sonic power any time. Just remember to devote the full two minutes, don't press too hard, and get out of the habit of scrubbing, and you’ll have brilliantly clean teeth.

The battery life is also among the most impressive, with up to 70 days of use between charges. While it's not the be-all-and-end-all of a good electric toothbrush, battery life is a feature to consider when looking at what you need to know before buying an electric toothbrush.

But even though the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic Pro is fairly affordable, there are cheaper options. For example, the Waken Sonic electric toothbrush is a lot cheaper - but has its downsides. The Suri electric toothbrush, which I benchmarked the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic Pro against during the testing process, is smaller and a bit cheaper, but it doesn’t come with a travel case. 

Should you buy the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic electric toothbrush?

Yes, the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic electric toothbrush is a good option. Sonic brushing is a great way to clean your teeth properly without damaging them by over-brushing - and you get that fresh-from-the-hygienist clean every time. I’d have no qualms about recommending this toothbrush to a friend but it depends on the price at the time of purchase.

I’ve awarded it 4 stars because you can often find it for under £100 which, from my experience, is a very good deal for a brush that offers premium features to match significantly more-expensive models. It's a steal for a decent sonic electric toothbrush with a travel case. And, while it’s a bit large overall, the brush head itself is nice and small, good for getting to hard-to-reach places. 

But at the recommended retail price of £150, there’s more competition so it would be more of a 3.5-star product. My advice then (as ever) is to shop around!