The Beam Toothbrush
We enjoy gadgets in our house, so I was happy to try the Beam Toothbrush for a review. It is a toothbrush with Bluetooth capabilities built in so that you can sync it with your smartphone and monitor your brushing habits using a downloadable app.
Louanne received a free Beam Toothbrush in exchange for this review. All opinions given are her own and are not influenced by the company in any way. Please see Hip Homeschool Moms’ full disclosure here.
From the company’s website I knew that the retail price was $49.99 and replacement brush heads were $4 each. Therefore when the Beam Toothbrush arrived, I must admit that upon opening the box, I was completely surprised to find that the brush isn’t an electric/power toothbrush. It’s a manual toothbrush with a bulky handle that feels lightweight and a bit flimsy, and it isn’t waterproof. The instructions say not to let the brush be submerged in water and not to drop the brush. It states that if either of those two things happen, do not use the brush.
First, I put the included AA battery in the toothbrush, which started its blue LED light blinking & blinking & blinking. I pressed the single button on the brush, thinking that would stop it or that maybe it would timeout after awhile, but it didn’t. After reading the brief included instructions, I found that it would presumably blink forever until you install the app and sync the brush to your device. So I downloaded the simple-to-use Beam app onto my Android phone and went through the step-by-step instructions to get the app and account set up for my 6.5 year old daughter.
The Beam came with a stand for the bathroom counter, and I told my daughter that when she wet the brush to put the toothpaste on, the handle would light up. I told her that she needed to brush until the light went off and the brush would record all the time she spent brushing. Her favorite part was that it lit up blue, and she was excited to be the one to try out the new toothbrush.
I liked the idea that we could have a way to track her brushing and that there is a goals section of the app where you can work towards prizes. The site says that once you reach the first goal and continue using the product, more prizes will open up. We were unable to reach any goals (for reasons you’ll see later), and I couldn’t find any information online about the prizes.
The photo above shows the condition of the brush head after nine days of use. The quick degradation of the brush head surprised me considering that my daughter wasn’t using it roughly and, according to the app, she only brushed eleven times in those nine days.
The instructions say that if you are going to travel you need to remove the battery so it won’t erase your data. On our trip, we were at a place for three days with no cell phone or internet service, and I could never get it to sync with the brush. So my daughter didn’t get any credit towards her goal for that part of our vacation.
We received the brush on June 3, and it quit working completely on July 3. I was syncing the toothbrush once a week and on July 3, my daughter told me that it was flashing non-stop in the bathroom. I tried to sync it multiple times, took out the battery and tried to sync it again and it still didn’t work. I checked the troubleshooting for flashing on the website, and it just suggested that I sync the brush.
There is a lot wrong with this product. It might be great if it were a power brush, less flimsy, more reliable, and waterproof. I also think if the user could see the prizes they were working towards, they would be more motivated to brush more. Considering the poor quality and high price of the Beam toothbrush, when compared to the large number of power brushes and manual brushes with built-in timers that are available for much less, I can’t recommend it.
Unfortunately, I think the Beam toothbrush is an interesting idea that couldn’t have been more poorly executed.
