Dyson CameraJet

Dyson has built a toothbrush with a camera in it. A 100,000 pixel macro lens looks at the gaps between your teeth while you brush, a machine learning model decides where the plaque is, and a jet of water is aimed at it. Dyson calls the system Gap Optical Targeting. It went on sale on 1 September at $499.

The joke is obvious and it is also wrong. Plaque hardens first in the interdental gaps. Those gaps are the part of your mouth you can least see. Flossing is the step almost everyone skips or does badly. A device that finds the gap and fires at it answers a real problem, and Dyson has spent thirty years finding chores people perform incompetently, applying a motor and a sensor, and charging four times the going rate.

The going rate is about $50 for an excellent electric toothbrush. What Dyson is actually selling is the Dyson Dental System, which is the brush, a dock, a travel case, Dyson Toothpaste and Dyson Mouthrinse, engineered to work together. A toothbrush is a durable good you buy once a decade. Toothpaste is a consumable you buy forever.

It comes in Ceramic Ultra Blue and Ceramic Pink, because a $499 toothbrush is a thing you leave out where it can be seen. That is the honest reason for the colourways, and it is the honest reason for a good deal of the price.