Hacker News Reader

Comment by vidanay | Hacker News Reader

Why an electric toothbrush and electric shaver? Both of those have well established and functional antecedents that are both smaller and lighter.

View on HN

I thought electric toothbrushes were silly until I tried a modern one.

A manual toothbrush is not a replacement. A half-assed job with an electric toothbrush will get your teeth cleaner than an extremely thorough effort with a manual toothbrush. I wish I'd tried one sooner. First time I used one it felt like I'd been in for a full dental cleaning.

Bonus: their failure mode is that they become a manual toothbrush. Which, if you're used to electric, does suck a lot, but it's no worse of than you'd have been if you started with a manual to begin with.

Agree about the shaver, though, but I gather some folks have a lot harder time with facial hair than I do (some ordinary soap in the shower and very cheap disposable razors do better for me than the electric razor I had years ago) so maybe it's important for them.

I think a while ago my dentist suggested that a quick brush with a manual toothbrush would likely clear more out than an equivalently quick brushing with an electric toothbrush (rough theory: you can move it faster and cover more surface area). But he claimed that electric is better if you use it more thoroughly. I also disagree that an electric toothbrush converts to a manual one. I think it converts to an unusable bad manual brush because the electric toothbrush is too heavy to move quickly.

Another toothbrush tip: toothpaste is mildly abrasive and can be used as an emergency polish if e.g. you’re in a hotel getting dressed for a wedding and realise your silver cufflinks / novelty Texas-shaped belt buckle / whatever have become tarnished since you last looked at them. An electric toothbrush can help a lot here.

Electric toothbrushes are fantastic. I own and use one twice a day at home. I was strictly speaking in the context of the blog post with regards to being as small and as light as possible.

Oh, sure, if you're really optimizing for as light as possible I guess you could ditch the toothbrush entirely and just count on buying a manual brush for a couple dollars at your destination. Personally, I'd favor cutting space/weight in a lot of other areas before giving up the electric toothbrush, though.

Electric is heavier but they’re also much bigger. I could fit 4+ manual toothbrushes in the space that my electric toothbrush travel case takes up. I think it doesn’t include the charger either. And the shape is quite inconvenient too which constrains packing

Fun fact: Many electric toothbrushes that use a wireless charging base will charge from a wireless phone charger if you position it right. In a pinch I've even charged mine straight off my phone using the "wireless power share" function (Galaxy Note 10, not sure how common a feature that is).

I use a safety razor. delivers a great shave but the blades are hard to find. stores are filled with the standard one time use cartridge crap that fills landfills because you can't recycle any of the plastics used in it. unfortunately, you'll be hard pressed to take a back of double edge razors in your check-in luggage unless you want a free trip to gitmo.

In this context, a electric razor is your best bet for the environment

Depends on the destination perhaps, but even here in the affluent Netherlands I can buy safety razors at the chemist. And the lower the GDP, the better the availability of no-nonsense safety razor blades.

you'd be surprised. I'm in Colombia right now and I'm not sure what I'm going to do when my razor supply runs out because I haven't been able to find them in any of the drug stores here. even in the states I cant find them most places but they are easy enough to order in bulk online.

> A half-assed job with an electric toothbrush will get your teeth cleaner than an extremely thorough effort with a manual toothbrush.

I've had 2 electrics, one Philips SoniCare and one Oral-B with the rotating head. Once broke within a year and the other lasted longer but got flimsy really quick.

It used to take me at least twice as long to get my teeth clean with either of them than it does with a manual brush. I usually ran 3 cycles of the electric before I was more or less satisfied with the job.

> Bonus: their failure mode is that they become a manual toothbrush.

Yes but a horrible one. Small and oddly shaped brush heads are not ideal for manually brushing.

I'm not dismissing your experience, just saying that it's not universally true.

>A manual toothbrush is not a replacement.

While I agree, carrying a manual toothbrush when traveling has been one of my compromises. That said, my newish one comes with a travel case so I may give that a try. Not sure how long it will go without recharging but may be worth experimenting.

The electric toothbrush "failure mode" is annoying mostly because the heads I use are tiny and round - definitely a pain to handle precisely without knocking a tooth from time to time.

Can you point me to a study that shows that electric toothbrushes work better than manual ones? Last time i looked (a long time ago), they were still equal.

Two positive:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3652371/

> The subject group using the powered toothbrush demonstrated clinical and statistical improvement in overall plaque scores.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jcpe.13126

> In the long-term, powered toothbrush seems to be effective in reducing mean PD and mean CAL progressions, besides increasing the number of teeth retained.

One negative:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002065392...

> The results of this study shows no evidence of statistically significant difference in respect to plaque control, between Jordan Power electric toothbrush and either of Oral-B Advantage or Panbehriz Classic manual brushes in a group of dental students after 2 weeks.

I'm sure you can find many more of both

It's not a study, but the last time I was at the dentist, he asked me what I used to clean my teeth since I had pretty much zero plaque. Philips Sonicare.

Our dentist definitely noticed (in a good way) when my partner and I switched to electric. For a holiday trip there's little point in bringing an electric tooth brush along though, unless you are going for months rather than days or weeks.

I think whether you have plaque is more of a function of what you eat and that you brush consistently at all. I don't have plaque either.

The electric shaver "antecedent" isn't nearly as efficient as the electric version...

(1) Those require some kind of lubricant like shaving cream (= extra space cost) or shaving in a shower/with water (= significantly reduced convenience). The modern electric ones do not require anything and can be used dry.

(2) Modern disposable razors also dull quite quickly meaning you need to carry many extra blades (= more space) or only travel to places where you can easily buy more blades/razors (= less convenience). The electric ones can last years on a single set of blades and still be effective.

(3) The older kind of "knife-like" or "safety" razors can largely get around (2) with sharpening, but as they are not allowed on flights, it largely excludes them as an option.

I think having access to a sink or shower is not out of the question for someone living a digital nomad lifestyle — not so much if you're hiking or camping, though. But if you live in hotels or AirBNBs, there's a pretty good chance you've got a shower stall to shave in.

In terms of dullness, I shave my head and face with a cheap Amazon razor every day or two, and one blade lasts for weeks. A 4-blade package easily lasts me over a month, and if you remove them from the carrying case it's about the size of, I dunno, a couple AA batteries.

One downside of an electric razor is power. I suppose a USB-C based razor exists, but you probably wouldn't have very many options in that format, and probably not many nice ones to choose from. Perhaps that will change. In the meantime, I love the Braun electric razor I use for the back of my neck but it does need a little power brick and cord which, together with the razor itself, are probably more than the volume of several years worth of razor blade cartridges.

Just providing a little counterpoint to your comment, I do like my electric razor and think it's probably a better option for many travelers.

> But if you live in hotels or AirBNBs, there's a pretty good chance you've got a shower stall to shave in.

A lot of these also provide disposable razors, shaving cream etc (either by default or if you ask the front desk), so definitely a good option when it is available.

> one blade lasts for weeks

I shave every day and have used random (not name brand) disposable ones during travel. In my experience it usually stays usable for 3-4 days and could stretch to about a week. Still, being able to just set-and-forget an electric one without worrying about getting more blades has been quite nice.

> One downside of an electric razor is power

Definitely agree, though, USB-C ones aside, there are also compact ones made specifically for travel that have integrated universal plugs & support all voltages (if you have access to that).

I usually keep one of these in my travel bag rather than bringing along my regular one which is very nice but also needs an external power brick and cord to charge.

I find an electric toothbrush is much better for busting plaque. I have a Goby.

so sorry to hear that...

If it breaks or the battery dies they send you a new handle for free. I may switch to another brand in the future. Not sure.

To me, this is just the difference between packing for an occasional trip versus going full road warrior. For the former, yep why not just use something disposable. But for the latter, anything that avoids a visit to the dentist has to be prioritized. That little difference between manual and electric seems a very false economy indeed (begging the question that electric toothbrushes are genuinely better of course).

Xiaomi's Mijia line up has super light and directly USB-C/MicroUSB pluggable tooth brushes.

I use a super cheap T100 two years old now, which is almost the same size as a regular toothbrush, and needs no charging puck.

Electric razors never really worked great for me, but my teeth DEFINITELY feel nicer when I use a modern electric toothbrush. If I were traveling as much as OP, I'd absolutely take one with me.

The electric shaver is one of the last things I'll remove from my pack. Shaving manually is a pain in the butt.

Most people use them to shave their faces.

You can't trim with the functional antecedent.

Trim what? Do you mean maintaining a 2mm fashion length beard? (You can't trim with the pictured shaver either - it's only for smooth shaving)

I'll admit I hadn't clicked on the article.

I don't know what you mean by "fashion length" - as opposed to the fashion length of 0mm? or am I missing a term of art?

I was trying to figure out what you mean by trimming. On one end of the spectrum is smooth shaved. On the other end is completely un-managed. Somewhere in the middle is where "trimming" would come into play.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com