Did they really put an advanced camera inside a toothbrush? Of course they did
Leave it to James Dyson to look at a piece of waxed nylon thread, a technology virtually unchanged since 1819, and conclude: “What this really needs is machine learning, a high-speed macro lens, 16 million lines of code, and anti-gravity fluid dynamics.”
“It’s a camera viewing, gap finding, jet washing, liquid flossing, mouthwash dispensing, technique teaching, live streaming, plaque blasting, precision cleaning toothbrush. That’s all.”
(yes, that’s a lot of things).
Meet the Dyson CameraJet, a $500 piece of bathroom wizardry designed to replace your manual flossing routine with computer vision and pressurized liquid artillery.
There is an old, tired cultural stereotype about British dental hygiene. With the CameraJet, Britain didn’t just join the modern dental chat; they overcompensated with enough computing power to navigate a lunar lander directly into your molars.
The “Gee-Whiz” Specs: What’s Actually Happening in Your Mouth
Dyson spent six years in R&D (including a five-year stint with the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Dentistry developing synthetic “proxy plaque”) to solve a well-documented human failing: 9 out of 10 people do not floss regularly, and most of us tap out of brushing after just 45 seconds instead of the dentist-recommended two minutes.
Instead of shaming you, Dyson engineered a brush that flosses for you while you scrub:
- Gap Optical Targeting™: Mounted right next to the oscillating bristles is a tiny 100,000-pixel macro lens camera. It snaps 28 live frames per second inside your mouth.
- Trained on 470,000 Teeth: Dyson trained its computer vision model on nearly half a million dental images. Within 100 milliseconds of spotting an interdental gap, the device triggers a burst of mouthrinse.
- Conical Plaque Sweeper: Rather than the harsh “needle-like” blast of traditional water flossers that can puncture plaque without actually dislodging it, the CameraJet fires a broad, conical mist calculated to sweep plaque away at lower pressures that spare your gums.
- Anti-Gravity Fluid Tank: A transparent 12.5 ml reservoir uses a pressurized diaphragm pump, meaning it will spray with consistent pressure even if you brush upside down or tilt your head at bizarre angles. It refills in just 3 seconds when slotted into its dock.
- Proprietary Low-Foam Paste: Because a regular mouthful of foamy Colgate would immediately blind a 100k-pixel camera, Dyson naturally formulated its own non-foaming toothpaste (in Ginger Mint and Spearmint) so the optical sensors have a clear view.
- Livestreaming to Your Phone: Yes, with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, you can open the MyDyson app and watch a high-definition livestream of your own bicuspids while coverage maps score your technique.
Watch: The Making of the Dyson CameraJet
Check out Dyson’s behind-the-scenes look at the prototyping, fluid testing, and optics engineering that went into building the CameraJet:
Over-Engineered? Absolutely. Brilliant? Probably.
There is something undeniably hilarious about a morning routine that requires Wi-Fi connectivity, app diagnostics, and optical tracking algorithms just to clear out leftover breakfast.
But if it genuinely eliminates manual flossing—and keeps people from skipping interdental care altogether—it’s classic Dyson: delightfully absurd, technically fascinating, and impossible to look away from.
Oh, and when we last checked, this is entirely sold out, so maybe that $500 for a toothbrush isn’t so crazy after all.
