I regret that I haven't been on the electric toothbrush beat over the last few years. While I was out of the loop, major oral health brands were adding clever tech to their products – along with heftier price tags.

Philips' latest offering, the Next-Generation DiamondClean 9900 Prestige, uses AI to identify which parts of your mouth you've covered, and where you've missed a couple of teeth.

The brush features a display on the handle that shows a 12-segments mouth map as you brush. The idea, of course, is help you clean your teeth completely every time you use it without needing to pull out your smartphone, as was the case with the original DiamondClean 9900 Prestige.

Here's a promo clip (in German) showing it in action:

The brush retains Philips' signature SenseIQ tech to detect when you're brushing too hard or too soft, and guide you to adjust your pressure with a light ring at the end of the handle. The brush's sensors can also dial back the intensity if you press too hard.

That's all pretty cool, but Philips is playing a bit of catch-up here. Oral-B launched AI-powered mouth mapping tech back in 2022. However, with the Oral-B unit, you'll have to whip out your phone to see your brushing coverage – so in that sense, this new model from Philips has a bit of an edge with its hardware.

Now for the bad news: expect this to cost a pretty penny. Philips' current top-of-the-line toothbrush comes in at $US430, while Oral-B isn't far behind at $400 (currently discounted to $351 on Amazon). So the Next-Generation DiamondClean 9900 Prestige model will likely be priced higher than those, making it likely be the most expensive brush on the market when it arrives in the US and Europe this fall.

If you don't want to wait – and don't mind using an app to review your mouth map – this brush we reviewed from Oclean covers all the bases for a lot less money.

Source: Philips