Oral-B iO5 Review: Top-Tier Smarts On A Budget
Last Updated: 28th April 2026If you’ve ever stood in the electric toothbrush aisle staring at rows of electric options, all promising brighter smiles and healthier gums, you’re not alone. With so many options and brands out there vying for your attention, it can be hard to know what’s genuinely worth the cost, what’s marketing fluff, and what’s useful for your specific needs. It’s all a rather large headache choosing a brush that you’ll be using twice a day, but throughout all my testing of tech gadgets and home grooming products, the Oral-B iO5 remains one of my favourite options.
Its mid-range cost belies a host of relevant features that make your daily routine more efficient, and my dentist is now regularly praising me on my hard work between check-ins, which is about the biggest compliment you can get. However, my teeth aren’t your teeth, and I will always champion readers who take on the experience of others to inform their own decisions, so lets go through my thoughts together to see if the iO5 is the right fit for you.
This article contains affiliate links; however, all the opinions are my genuine thoughts after trialling the toothbrush both at home and when travelling - Owen Gough
Last Updated on 28th April 2026
The Oral-B iO5
The Oral-B iO5 sits, in my opinion, within the perfect middle ground for cost, performance and overall dental cleaning capability, making it one of the most well-rounded electric toothbrushes on the market.
It offers standard top-tier features like a sturdy travel case, pressure sensor and two-minute timer, but it also comes with heaps of cleaning modes and armed with AI integration thanks to the Oral-B sync up via Bluetooth, giving you real-time, personalised guidance on how to improve your oral care.
Pair all that with a solid battery life, durable build quality and efficient cleaning method and you’ve got a great brush to tackle any dental issues you may have.
In Summary
As close as you can get to top-tier AI-integrated smart toothbrushes without paying for the overbloated price, the Oral-B iO5 is the perfect mid-price tool for managing your dental care.
★★★★★
Best for: High-end dental care for under £150
Key feature: Smart AI oral mapping and personalised coaching
Battery life: 21 days (real-world testing)
Pros
Oral-B’s durable design - will last a long time
Great battery life
2-minute timer
Pressure Sensor
AI smartphone integration to map out your cleaning in real time
Includes a travel case
Five cleaning modes
Cons
Very slow to recharge
Quite noisy while in use
AI smartphone app might be a bit too “techy” or a gimmick for some
Who Reviewed This?
Reviewed by Dr Zaeem Jafri (GDC-registered dentist) & Owen (product reviewer for major UK publications).
We combine clinical dental expertise with real-world product testing. Every toothbrush we review is used daily in a home setting for a minimum of 3 weeks by Owen, who has tested hundreds of products for some of the biggest lifestyle and health magazines in the country. In his reviews, he’s looking out for cost, cleaning power, tech features and usability, and if this lines up with Dr Jafri’s clinical opinions.
How We Tested The Oral-B iO5
We tested the Oral-B iO5 over 3 weeks, brushing twice daily with a standard Colgate cleaning toothpaste.
We assessed:
Plaque removal
Gum comfort
Battery life
Noise levels
Ease of use
App usefulness
Design and Ergonomics
Straight out of the box, the iO5 feels reassuringly premium. The handle is sleek, with a matte finish that gives it a modern look without feeling slippery when wet. It’s available in a few understated colours, which is a nice change from the overly clinical white of older models.
Oral-B’s classic brush head is great for wrapping around teeth and thoroughly cleaning bacteria and food debris, though if you’re making the switch from another brush or a manual handle, it may take you a while to get used to the slightly smaller, rounder brush head.
The handle itself is sturdy, a tad weighty, and well-designed, typical of Oral-B’s electric toothbrushes that feel like they will last a lifetime.
The toothbrush heads are made from plant-based materials (cornstarch, with bristles derived from castor oil) and match the electric toothbrush's design. The bristles are medium/soft, the perfect balance between being practical and not too rough for your teeth.
Cleaning Performance
At the end of the day, performance matters more than anything else. The iO5 uses a combination of oscillating and micro vibrating movements. In simple terms, it rotates and gently vibrates at the same time, which helps break up plaque more effectively than manual brushing. I personally prefer Oral-B’s rotating brush heads over the intense vibrations of a Philips model, as I like to take my time brushing each tooth thoroughly and individually. After two weeks of testing, I noticed a generally cleaner feel whenever I rolled my tongue along my teeth, and my gums felt much less irritated once I got used to the brush head and cleaning modes.
Speaking of which, there are five to choose from, including daily clean, whitening, sensitive, super sensitive and intense. For most users, daily clean will do the job perfectly, but it’s nice to have options if your gums are feeling a bit delicate or if you want a deeper clean after too many coffees.
Key Features
The iO5 sits in that sweet spot where you get useful smart features without feeling overwhelmed by tech. I hear many people keen to get the best brushing experience, but are turned off by AI or having to hold their smartphone while brushing, but the iO5 allows you to engage with the tech if you want to, but still works perfectly without it.
Now, you might be thinking, do I really need an app to brush my teeth? Fair question. In practice, it’s more helpful than you would expect. The app tracks where you are brushing and highlights areas you may be missing, nudging you to return to teeth you didn’t do properly, or showing you what you’ve still got to clean. It also rewards you with trackable metrics and little stickers for maintaining consistent routines, getting a 100% clean, or using the brush twice a day for multiple weeks in a row.
I won’t say that’s a prime reason to pick it up, but if you struggle with motivation to clean regularly, gamifying your brushing habits can be a fun way to stick to your routine.
The built-in timer is another standout feature. It buzzes every 30 seconds to remind you to move to a different quadrant of your mouth. It sounds simple, but it is surprisingly effective at making sure you brush for the full two minutes.
There is also a pressure sensor that lights up if you are brushing too hard. This is particularly useful because many people, me included, tend to brush with more force than necessary, which can lead to gum recession over time.
Gum Comfort
Electric toothbrushes are often viewed as better for sensitive gums, because you don’t have to physically scrub at your teeth, you just let he motorised brush head do all the work. To add to this, Oral-B uses oscillating brush heads that are small and circular, allowing you to target each tooth individually and hold the brush against them, allowing the bristles to rotate at thousands of motions per minute to clear away debris and plaque.
I’ve always preferred Oral-B’s cleaning method to Philips’ sonic pulse technology, as it gives me more time to focus on specific problem teeth, like my pesky wisdom teeth. I can simply move to each tooth, buff and clean it with the rotating bristles and ensure it gets a proper clean.
I don’t suffer from sore or sensitive gums generally, so I can’t talk to if it will solve that issue, but if you’re following proper technique and a low/sensitivity cleaning mode, I’d expect you’ll have gentle yet effective results.
Noise Level
I’m not a morning person, so I don’t enjoy suffering through droning buzzes from my toothbrush. Oral-B has a bit of a reputation for building fairly loud brushes, largely because its motor is whirring intensely to power the oscillating brush heads. Sadly, this reputation is present in the iO5, and it is quite loud.
It’s better than many other Oral-B brushes I’ve used, like the iO2, but its still noticeable, and should be considered when you’re researching.
Travel-Friendly Features
From my extensive testing, the vast majority of electric toothbrushes come with a travel case, protecting the bristles from mixing up with your other luggage and also stopping it from being accidentally turned on in-transit. The Oral-B iO5 comes with an oval-shaped case that stores the brush handle and a spare brush head. There’s no room for the charging cable, so that will have to go in your bag separately.
Battery Life
The Battery in the Oral-B iO5 is about standard to what’s expected at this price point, giving you roughly three weeks of use. I didn’t charge it once during my three-week trial, and it didn’t appear to be getting low enough to need a recharge during that time.
An annoyance I have with many modern electric toothbrushes is that they all take an age to recharge. The iO5 takes more than 24 hours to top up from flat to full, which is annoying unless you’re planning ahead and know it’s about to run out. However, there’s no battery indicator, so you’ll only know it’s empty when it doesn’t turn on.
Ease of Use
Oral-B’s dental devices are typically pretty simple to use and have been specifically designed to be ergonomic and easy to move around your mouth. The iO5 has the classic long, slender neck with the small-ish brush head that makes it easy to clean those hard-to-reach areas at the back of the mouth.
The settings are also simple to navigate, with only two buttons (the power button and the cleaning mode switch) to think about. There’s an LED ring light at the base of the neck that shows you if you’re brushing too hard, and while I usually do look in the mirror while I brush, if I was distracted and moving around the bathroom, it was sometimes hard to see the light because the brush was below my vision.
App Experience
I typically am not a big fan of using my smartphone while cleaning my teeth, as I’d rather be focusing on cleaning my teeth, but the Oral-B app is genuinely impressive. You get a real-time live look at your mouth and where the brush is while you’re cleaning. Each tooth gets a percentage of efficient cleaning based on how long you’ve been brushing them, so you can spend your time thoroughly cleaning each tooth to get it to 100%.
I found it a fun way to gamify my routine, and I found myself genuinely caring about getting a 100% score within the two-minute timer. It forces you to clean the whole tooth, even right behind it and along the gum, and I did find it to be a real motivator for cleaning properly.
You also get stats to show how well you’ve performed over time, getting small awards via digital emojis when you’ve completed so many 100% cleans or finished your two minutes 100 times. It’s a bit gimmicky and many users will probably not utilise it properly, but I think it could be a great way to keep brushing fun and engaging. If you’re curious, I got the 100% complete score regularly.
Price
The Oral B iO5 sits in the mid premium range. It is not the cheapest electric toothbrush on the market, but it is also not as expensive as the flagship models in the iO lineup.
For what you get, it feels like good value. You’re paying for noticeably better cleaning performance and genuinely useful smart features.
You’ll notice that Oral-B has a bad habit of posting a noticeably expensive RRP for its brushes generally, but you should know that, in almost every case, you’ll never have to actually spend as much as it says. From what I’ve seen, the Oral-B iO5 is retailed at £280, but on every online marketplace and even in most high street shops, it’s sold for £100.
For context, this is a third of the price of the top-end iO10 and all you’re missing out on is the LED display and a few cleaning modes, which you can definitely live without.
Who Should Buy This?
The iO5 is a great option if you want a toothbrush that’s packed full of tech and features to experiment with. I love to dig deep into all the features available, and found the app to be a well of interesting metrics and stats to play around with, but I realise that’s not for everyone.
You can, of course, use this brush without the app, but it does cost more than £100, and if you’re not going to use the app, you’re not getting the most value for money.
I’d recommend it to anyone who takes their brushing with a great amount of detail and would like guidance on how to improve.
Electric Toothbrush Alternatives
The one direct alternative in my view is the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean 9000, because it has a similar level of features, a comparable price point, and app integration, though the Philips brush doesn’t have any AI mapping software to train you into better habits.
What Makes It Different?
I’ll accept the argument that many Oral-B iO toothbrushes sound identical when stacked up against each other. If you’re unfamiliar, the iO series is Oral-B’s premium set of brushes, packed with its high-end features that range from two-minute timers, multiple brushing modes and pressure sensors, to AI smartphone integration that maps out your brushing in real time.
Whether it’s the most expensive iO10 or the iO5, almost every brush in the range has, more or less, the same features, the same battery life, the same brush heads, and will clean your teeth with accomplished ease.
The iO range boasts smartphone compatibility with an Oral-B app that provides personalised feedback based on your brushing, as well as a detailed AI-derived map that tracks your brush head in real time, highlighting teeth you’re missing or encouraging better technique. The high-end brushes also have an LED display that greets you each morning and updates you on battery life, but I honestly think that’s worth losing if your brush suddenly drops below £100, while the iO10 can cost upwards of £300.
And here is where the difference lies. Cost is, in my experience, a hard limit on where most people draw the line on gadgets they are willing to engage with. Maybe you’d love to see an LED display light up to tell you “good morning”, but that brief welcome from your toothbrush is almost certainly not worth the cost.
Instead, the iO5 offers almost identical cleaning capability and AI functionality, but is significantly cheaper.
Is It Worth The Price?
The Oral B iO5 electric toothbrush strikes a very appealing balance, offering a noticeably superior clean, thoughtful design and smart features that enhance your routine without complicating it.
If you’re looking to step up their oral care game without going all in on the most expensive model, this is an excellent choice. It feels like a small daily upgrade that pays off over time, not just in how your teeth feel, but in how confidently you smile. And I definitely felt better during testing knowing that it didn’t cost as much as some other high-end brushes.
If you have been considering making the switch or upgrading an older electric toothbrush, the iO5 is well worth a spot on your shortlist.
FAQs
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Yes, we think due to its unique cleaning method, decent battery and wealth of cleaning modes available, it makes for an excellent electric toothbrush that’s worth every penny.
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Dr Jafri, our founder and practising dentist in London has used plenty of Oral-B toothbrushes and regularly recommends them to patients.
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You are advised to change your brush head every 3 months according to Oral-B as well as general guidance from dentists
What Do You Think?
If you’ve got an Oral-B toothbrush, we would love to know what you think of it. Have you enjoyed using it, have you had any problems?
Disagree with something in our review?
Let us know in the comments below!
Curious about Oral-B’s iO5 electric toothbrush? We’ve tested it rigorously over the last few weeks to see if the brand’s mid-range smart brush is worth picking up.