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More than half of all children in the US will develop a dental cavity by roughly the third grade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vertical Standing Suction Cup Kids
Although using an electric toothbrush is not guaranteed to reduce dental issues, experts say a powered brush can make it easier for some kids to achieve good oral health habits.
For children using an electric toothbrush for the first time—or for anyone who prefers gentler vibrations and is okay with doing some manual brushing to achieve a complete cleaning—the Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush is a great choice.
The Philips Sonicare for Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush and the Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush are more powerful (and louder and heavier) rechargeable brushes that do more of the brushing work than the Quip brush. The Philips Sonicare brush can sync wirelessly with an interactive app, which some brushers may find motivating.
This non-rechargeable toothbrush has a two-minute timer and a streamlined brush head and handle. It’s lightweight, quiet, and gentle.
This rechargeable brush has a fun app that could encourage brushers to develop good habits. But it’s louder, bigger, and twice the price of our pick.
This rechargeable brush has a small rotating brush head. It’s also a bit larger than our pick, but our kid testers still found it easy to manipulate. However, it is significantly noisier.
An onboard timer helps to ensure that children brush for the amount of time experts recommend.
A proper-size brush head can help kids more effectively brush all of their teeth—including the rear molars.
This non-rechargeable toothbrush has a two-minute timer and a streamlined brush head and handle. It’s lightweight, quiet, and gentle.
The AAA-battery-operated, vibrating Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush has the primary features our experts said a children’s brush needs: a smaller brush head and handle. These make it easier for young kids (or the adult helping) to manipulate the brush and reach small spaces in the back of the mouth. The Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush is the quietest, lightest, and—most important—gentlest brush we’ve tested, and it impressed our kid testers, who had various levels of experience with using an electric toothbrush. The built-in two-minute timer helps with encouraging kids to brush for the amount of time recommended by leading dental associations.
This rechargeable brush has a fun app that could encourage brushers to develop good habits. But it’s louder, bigger, and twice the price of our pick.
If you want a kids electric toothbrush that recharges by plugging into a base (rather than relying on replaceable batteries), the Philips Sonicare for Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush is a good option. Like the Quip brush, it vibrates, and it has a built-in two-minute timer. Unlike the Quip brush, its vibrations do much of the brushing action. This model pairs via Bluetooth with a fun and robust interactive app, which could be helpful for kids who need encouragement to brush. The Philips Sonicare brush has a much longer, heavier brush handle than the Quip brush (it’s effectively adult-size) and larger brush heads (though you can buy compact-size replacement heads), so it may be too big for younger kids.
This rechargeable brush has a small rotating brush head. It’s also a bit larger than our pick, but our kid testers still found it easy to manipulate. However, it is significantly noisier.
If your child doesn’t like the sensations produced by a vibrating toothbrush (which can feel unpleasant or ticklish to some), they may like the rotating Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush, which spins instead of vibrates—though it is noisier than the Quip and the Philips Sonicare brushes. This brush is a bit larger than the Quip brush, but it’s smaller than the Philips Sonicare brush. Like the Philips Sonicare model, the Oral-B Kids brush recharges by plugging into a base. Like our other picks, it has a two-minute timer. It doesn’t have an option to sync wirelessly to an app, which may be a pro or a con, depending on your needs and preferences.
To learn about pediatric oral health and using electric toothbrushes with children, we spoke to three experts: Mary Hayes, DDS, a Chicago-based pediatric dentist and spokesperson for the American Dental Association (ADA); Joe Castellano, DDS, a pediatric dentist in Laredo, Texas and president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) at the time of our interview; and Jessica Lee, DDS, MPH, PhD, a pediatric dentist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and president-elect of the AAPD at the time of our interview.
I’m a senior staff writer at Wirecutter, where I cover health and grooming. I’m the author of Wirecutter’s guides to adult electric toothbrushes and water flossers, and I have two children, now ages 9 and 11, who, bizarrely, love to brush their teeth. Senior editor Courtney Schley, who wrote the previous version of this guide, tested brushes with three of her kids, then aged 5, 3, and 1½.
Kids don’t need an electric toothbrush to brush well. “The proper application of either [a manual or electric toothbrush] is fine for kids,” dentist Mary Hayes said.
But Hayes and dentist Joe Castellano told us that electric toothbrushes can make it easier for some kids to achieve good brushing habits. An electric toothbrush can also take some of the work out of moving the brush over the teeth and gums. In studies with adults, electric toothbrushes have been shown to remove more plaque and reduce gingivitis compared with manual brushes.
Most electric toothbrushes for kids, including most of those we tested, have fun or cute designs—cartoon characters or animal themes as well as (sometimes) musical timers or flashing lights—which may help motivate young brushers. Some can pair with apps that track and reward good brushing. No data supports the idea that the use of apps or interactive games helps kids maintain better brushing habits, so whether or not you want to introduce an app into the brushing routine depends on you and your kid (you may well not; we had to wipe a lot of toothpaste spray off of an iPhone screen during testing).
Hayes cautioned that no matter the toothbrush type, most kids don’t have the dexterity or maturity to properly brush their teeth by themselves until around age 8. Using an electric toothbrush doesn’t take away the need for adult supervision and instruction in proper techniques. Some parents may worry that the rapid rotations or vibrations of an electric toothbrush could hurt their child’s gums, but Hayes and Castellano said this shouldn’t be a concern with a brush from a well-known company.
Electric toothbrushes are more expensive than manual brushes. The brush itself may cost at least $25, and replacement heads generally cost $5 or more apiece (we do not recommend buying knockoffs). You need to change brush heads at least every three months, and in our experience, more often, depending on how rough your kid is on the brush head.
As long as a child can hold and manipulate it comfortably, they can use an adult-size toothbrush handle. The Oral-B Pro 1000 and the Philips Sonicare 4100, the picks from our main electric toothbrush guide, are compatible with those brands’ kid-size replacement brush heads, and Oral-B and Philips Sonicare confirmed that an entire family could use one handle with four different brush heads.
After more than 100 hours of research and considering nearly every model available, we think the Oral-B Pro 1000 is the best rechargeable electric toothbrush.
Like those on adult brushes, the bristles on kids’ electric toothbrushes can move by oscillating, rotating, or vibrating (sonic) motions. There’s no consensus that one type of movement works better than the other at removing plaque or preventing gingivitis.
In selecting brushes to test, we looked for:
We’ve been testing kids electric toothbrushes with our own families since 2018, and we’ve tested about a dozen brushes with eight children since then.
During each round of testing, we noted how easily the child was able to move the brush around their mouth and if the handle was easy to grip. We paid attention to how the brushes endured being chewed on, twisted, dropped, and occasionally thrown around the bathroom. We also noted if the brush heads could detach easily during use.
Each of the brushes had a two-minute timer, which the kids used during each session. We noted how easy it was for the kids to time themselves and know when the brushing session was complete.
Three of the brushes we tested wirelessly pair with apps meant to track and incentivize brushing. We tested them on an iPhone.
This non-rechargeable toothbrush has a two-minute timer and a streamlined brush head and handle. It’s lightweight, quiet, and gentle.
The AAA-battery-powered Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush is a great starter brush for kids who are new to powered toothbrushing.
It’s small and slim. Compared with most electric toothbrushes for kids, the Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush’s shorter handle and lighter weight was more appropriate for our little testers’ hands and fine motor skills. It has a smooth handle made of grippy plastic that seemed to help small hands better control the brush. Testers were able to move the Quip kids brush around their mouths with more dexterity than they could with longer or heavier brushes, such as the Philips Sonicare for Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush and the Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush.
It’s quiet and gentle. The Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush is by far the quietest and gentlest of the brushes we’ve tested, with a near-silent vibrating hum during use. It has the same handle and vibrating bristles as the Quip Electric Toothbrush for adults—which we tested for our main guide to the best electric toothbrushes—paired with a scaled-down brush head. We dismissed the adult Quip toothbrush in our main guide because it has weaker vibrations compared with other toothbrushes, but we found the Quip kids brush’s weaker vibrations to be a benefit for younger users and smaller mouths. Compared with our kids’ picks from Philips Sonicare and Oral-B, the Quip kids brush requires more manual brushing action in order to achieve a complete cleaning. (Plus, tamer vibrations help keep the bathroom mirror free of toothpaste spray.)
It’s comfortable and durable. The brush head is made up of 1,200 soft nylon bristles surrounded by a perimeter of thicker rubberized plastic nubs. The back of the brush head is constructed of rubberized plastic, which is far more comfortable against teeth and gums than the hard plastic of our other picks’ brush heads. In our testing, the Quip kids brush held up well to wear and tear: After a year of being used twice daily, the brushes still looked almost brand new.
It has a built-in timer. Every 30 seconds, it pauses briefly (and silently) to alert the brusher to move to a new quadrant of their mouth. This can be helpful when teaching some kids how to pace their brushing over two minutes, but the silent pause may be too subtle for younger kids to notice. After two minutes, the brush pulses to signal that the cycle is over and then shuts itself off, a wonderful feature for any parent who has entered the bathroom after a busy morning only to find a toothbrush noisily crawling around on the tile floor.
The Quip kids brush is available in four pastel colors. It’s the only kids brush we’ve tested that does not have a default character or cartoon theme, and this makes the brush more broadly appealing to kids of different ages (and to their parents). Our 5- and 8-year-old testers appreciated that it looks like a “grown-up toothbrush.” For households with more than one kid, the multiple color options also make it easier to identify whose brush belongs to whom.
Replacement heads are available only on the Quip website and cost $7 apiece if you subscribe to a refill plan, which sends you a replacement head every three months.
Rather than plugging into a rechargeable base, the Quip kids brush runs on a single AAA battery, which needs to be replaced approximately every three months. Though rechargeable models are arguably less wasteful, this routine might be preferred by those who want to avoid multiple chargers on an already overcrowded bathroom countertop.
While adult-size replacement heads are now available in some stores, the only way to obtain replacement heads for the Quip kids brush is by ordering from the company’s website. Quip incentivizes signing up for a “refill plan” to automatically receive a new brush head (and a battery).
The Quip kids brush also doesn’t come with a brush-head cover, but in our experience, those tend to go missing after about a week anyway.
This rechargeable brush has a fun app that could encourage brushers to develop good habits. But it’s louder, bigger, and twice the price of our pick.
The rechargeable Philips Sonicare for Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush is almost as quiet as the Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush, and like that model, its bristles vibrate instead of spin. However, the body and the brush head are bigger than those of the Quip brush—and not as durable—so it may not be as good a choice for younger kids.
The Philips Sonicare brush is the only brush we recommend that can connect via Bluetooth to an interactive app designed to help children improve their brushing habits. But this brush costs twice as much as the Quip kids brush, and the replacement brush heads are more expensive too.
It’s a larger brush overall. The body of the Philips Sonicare for Kids brush is basically the same size as the company’s adult-size models, and it was a bit unwieldy for our preschool-age testers (but plenty manageable for older kids). Also, the Philips Sonicare for Kids brush comes with a standard-size brush head—the same size as the brush head you’d get with the company’s adult brushes. Again, this may work fine for some kids, but as our experts noted, other kids, especially younger ones, will need to use a smaller brush head to clean their teeth effectively. Philips Sonicare’s kid-size brush heads cost about $10 each, nearly double the price of Quip’s replacement heads (when you sign up for the refill plan).
It has less-durable brush heads. The Philips Sonicare brush heads are encased in a rubber-like skin, which we found quickly showed teeth marks and began ripping off, wearing out after less than a month of regular use by some of our younger testers. If your child tends to be rough on brushes or bite down on the brush head, you may need to replace the brush head more frequently.
It has a built-in timer. Like our other picks, the Philips Sonicare brush has a built-in two-minute quadrant timer. Every 30 seconds, it briefly pauses and beeps to let the brusher know that it’s time to switch to a different quadrant of their mouth. The beep is audible, but so quick that a kid may not notice it unless they are paying close attention.
It pairs with a fun, interactive app. This brush is meant to pair with the Philips Sonicare for Kids app (iOS, Android), but can be used without it. The app may help motivate reluctant brushers to follow proper brushing techniques.
You start by adopting Sparkly, a creature that hatches from an egg and looks like a saucer-eyed Koosh ball with big teeth (the brush also comes with Sparkly-themed stickers to decorate the handle). After syncing the brush via Bluetooth and turning the brush on, a two-minute countdown clock automatically starts on the app, along with an animation showing a toothbrush methodically brushing the quadrants of Sparkly’s mouth, with music and verbal cues for when to change from top to bottom, left to right.
The app doesn’t track the brusher’s actual movements, but the animation will pause if you turn off the brush mid-session. Brushing by quadrant isn’t a necessary technique for oral hygiene; still, some kids may find it instructive to watch a visualization of the brushing process, and we noticed that one of our 5-year-old testers attentively followed the prompts when using the app.
Once you finish brushing, your Sparkly earns a gift—food, accessories, or a new background—and you can interact with your pet by feeding them, dressing them up, or making them do tricks.
When you connect to the app, Philips Sonicare collects data about users’ brushing habits as well as the information you provide, such as email addresses and social media profiles. According to the company’s privacy policy, it reserves the right to disclose some information it collects to outside service providers, business partners, and other third parties.
Unlike the Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush, the Philips Sonicare brush comes in only two colors (light blue and pink), though kids can customize the brush with included sticker panels. The brush is under replacement warranty for two years after purchase.
This rechargeable brush has a small rotating brush head. It’s also a bit larger than our pick, but our kid testers still found it easy to manipulate. However, it is significantly noisier.
The sturdy Oral-B Kids Electric Toothbrush has bristles that spin, instead of vibrate like those on our other picks.
It may feel less tickly. As we note in our guide to electric toothbrushes for adults, there’s no evidence that one motor type works better than the other, but if your child finds the sensations produced by vibrating brushes to be unpleasant or too tickly, they may have a better experience with a rotating brush like the this one from Oral-B.
It’s louder, though. The Oral-B kids brush makes more noise than our other picks.
It’s similar to our top pick for adults. The Oral-B kids brush is basically a scaled-down version of our electric toothbrush pick for adults, the Oral-B Pro 1000. It’s between the Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush and the Philips Sonicare for Kids Sonic Electric Toothbrush in size, and it worked well for our 3- and 5-year-old testers’ hands and fine motor skills. They were able to move the brush around their mouths with more dexterity than they could with longer brushes like our also-great pick from Philips Sonicare. We also liked the texturized handle, which can help prevent the brush from slipping out of young kids’ hands.
The Oral-B kids brush head is made of hard plastic with soft nylon bristles, and it held up better to the wear and tear of our testers than that of the Philips Sonicare brush after a couple of weeks of brushing. Oral-B’s kid-size brush heads cost about $4 to $5 apiece, depending on the theme, and they were among the cheapest we tested.
It has a built-in timer. Like our other picks, it has a built-in timer: Every 30 seconds, the brush pauses briefly to alert the brusher to move to a new section of the mouth. After two minutes, it pulses to signal that the cycle is over (but keeps running).
The brush comes in a variety of colors with different licensed character stickers, and it is under replacement warranty for two years after purchase.
The Quip Kids Smart Electric Toothbrush is the smart version of our main pick and costs about $20 more. The bright yellow, Bluetooth-enabled brush (which is otherwise the same as the Quip Kids Electric Toothbrush) pairs with an app (available for Android and iOS) to track kids’ brushing technique and duration, with the aim of motivating and rewarding good habits. The accompanying app feels more grown up and therefore is more likely to appeal to a tween or teen than the Philips Sonicare for Kids app. It didn’t offer enough novelty or excitement to motivate our nine-year-old tester to keep using it. We also frequently had issues pairing the app with the brush.
The inexpensive BriteBrush Interactive Smart Kids Toothbrush is actually a manual toothbrush (the brush head doesn’t vibrate or rotate) that uses sensors (to track brushing motions), voice commands, music (beware, one version is “Baby Shark”), and games to encourage kids to brush in a proper manner and for the correct amount of time. We tested this BriteBrush model with 3-, 5- and 7-year-old testers, and although the games and music caught their attention, the brushing commands prompted by the sensors were often confusing (the brush would repeatedly exhort, “Brush up and down!” when the kids were brushing in a normal side-to-side manner).
The Brusheez Kids’ Electric Toothbrush Set, which runs on two AA batteries, hit many of the marks: It’s smaller than an adult brush and comes with a kid-size rotating brush head that worked well for our young testers. But our 3-year-old tester managed to break the brush head completely during normal use (it’s likely she bit down slightly on the head, which is “normal use” for that age). The Brusheez brush head can also pop off easily. The brush comes with a bulky brush stand and attached sand timer, but the brush itself doesn’t have a built-in timer.
The 5-inch battery-powered Brush Buddies My First Soniclean is the smallest brush we tested: The packaging states that it’s meant for ages 6 months to 3 years. The brush head vibrates, but the bristles themselves don’t appear to vibrate or move, so we doubt that it offers as much cleaning power as the other brushes we tested. The brush head attaches with a quarter turn, and we found that it detached easily.
We didn’t test the BURSTkids Sonic Toothbrush because of poor customer reviews citing, for example, unstable brush heads and charging concerns.
We didn’t test the Foreo ISSA Mikro or ISSA Mini 2 silicone brushes because they’re expensive and have poor customer reviews. A Wirecutter editor who previously used the Mikro with her toddler doesn’t recommend it for kids who still bite or chew their brushes, as they can easily bite through the silicone skin on the brush head—and the brush head isn’t replaceable. The Mini 2’s replacement heads cost about $35 apiece. The company claims that the all-silicone bristles and brush head are gentler on the gums, but the experts we spoke to said standard nylon-bristle electric toothbrushes shouldn’t damage gums, so we don’t see an advantage to using a silicone brush.
The AutoBrush Sonic Pro Kids is a mouthguard-shape toothbrush that claims to be capable of brushing a child’s entire mouth in 30 seconds or less. To use the AutoBrush Sonic Pro Kids, the child inserts the entire brush into their mouth, closes their jaw, and presses a button that causes the bristles to simultaneously vibrate over all of their teeth while a musical tune plays for 30 seconds, without requiring any active brushing on the child’s part. But we found the AutoBrush Sonic Pro Kids’s bristles incapable of reaching our testers’ gums or back molars, and the teeth it did reach were not fully cleaned, with food specks still visible even after two rounds of use. It’s also difficult to clean thoroughly, and it inconveniently requires a special foam toothpaste made by AutoBrush, which doesn’t contain fluoride. At about $10 apiece, the replacement brush heads are among the most expensive that we tested.
Willo, a mouthguard-style automatic toothbrush attached to a heavy, cumbersome base, is equally as ineffective at cleaning teeth as the Autobrush. The silicone mouthguard, even after multiple washings, had a strange aftertaste, and the uncomfortable machine-made sucking motions did not adequately remove plaque or food specks from teeth. It’s also difficult to clean and requires a lot of space on a bathroom counter. The version of Willo we tested was marketed as a $250 family-friendly toothbrush for up to five people. But since then, the price dropped to about $150 and the company rebranded to be specifically kid-centric (though this model still comes with five mouth guards for family usage). Replacement brush heads are roughly $10 each, which is much more expensive than that of our picks.
This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson.
Mary Hayes, DDS, pediatric dentist and spokesperson for the American Dental Association, phone interview, May 31, 2018
Joe Castellano, DDS, president of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, phone interview, June 6, 2018
Jessica Lee, DDS, MPH, PhD, president-elect of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, phone interview, October 16, 2019
Nancy Redd is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering everything from Santa hats to bath bombs. She is also a GLAAD Award–nominated on-air host and a New York Times best-selling author. Her latest picture book, The Real Santa, follows a determined little Black boy's journey to discover what the jolly icon truly looks like.
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Toothbrush For Adult Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).