Water flossers and an example of form over substance

Water flossers are great dental hygiene product but, for what they are, they can be pretty expensive. Spending over £100 for something that sprays water through a nozzle is steep – whichever one you buy, it’s just a pump and a water container.

Normally, though, you get what you pay for in terms of better design but, recently, I’ve had an experience of, well, this not being the case.

My first water flosser, from a few years ago, was a Waterpik brand. It was mid-priced but, after my wife knocked it off a high shelf, it broke. I’d found it to be okay but, in purchasing a replacement, got sucked into the marketing to buy one from Panasonic. Specifically, their Series 800 model, with an RRP of £160 (no, don’t worry, I didn’t buy it for that – it cost me just over £83). Just like the Waterpik before it, it did what it was supposed to. I guess I was disappointed with both because, I guess, I expected more for the money. It squirts water, and I know that’s its M.O., but the money I guess I wanted the results to be better than I was getting. Maybe more settings, more nozzles, something to justify that cost.

And over time I fell out of love with the Panasonic for a much more basic reason.

Let’s roll back and remind ourselves what a water flosser is for. Oral hygiene. And the second word is important.

Now, let’s think about how these water flossers work. The top is a motor that sucks up water from a reservoir below and squirts it through a top nozzle. How does the top and bottom part marry? Normally, there’ll be a flexible pipe that connects to the motor and this dips into the water reservoir, sucking up the required water.

Nobody is going to be thoroughly rinsing out and drying that water reservoir each time they use it, so water is going to settle and algae and limescale are going to form. For this reason, it’s important that it’s easy to clean inside when this needs doing.

And that’s where the Panasonic has a big problem. It doesn’t do it the same way. Instead of a pipe it has a large, plastic extension to the motor, dipping into the water tank. It’s thicker near the motor and then thins out as it goes down.

With the bottom removed from the tank, here’s the view from underneath…

That white, plastic, round section is where the water is pulled up. It uses quite a bit of the tank too.

But the problem is that it’s impossible to clean where this meets the top, motor section, because of how thin it gets. The tank section can’t be removed – this bottom of the tank removal is all you can do, and the room gets less the closer to the motor you get. Here’s a better view of the issue…

At the furthest point of the tank, do you see that green algae? There is no room to get anything up there to clean this out. I’ve tried it.

I spoke to Panasonic, in case I’d missed anything, and then confirmed I hadn’t. They told me I had to get something up there to clean it, despite me saying that wasn’t possible. They had no other solution.

Someone designed this product without even considering how it could be cleaned.

So I bought a water flosser from Boots. It costs £25 (and that’s RRP), but there are often offers which means you can get it even cheaper. It doesn’t look as nice as the Panasonic model but, you know what? It works just as well.

But, not just that, it uses a rubber pipe into the tank – a tank that can be totally removed from the top of the flosser and thoroughly cleaned.

Sometimes you pay for a name. Sometimes that also comes with better design. Yes, the Panasonic looks nicer, but that’s the end. The RRP is also over 6 times more than the Boots model, yet it works just as well and can be fully dismantled and cleaned. Panasonic not only didn’t have a solution for my problem but didn’t seem to be actually bothered by this. They should be.