I've switched to a plant-based electric toothbrush and will never look back
Suri's sustainability
While the heads are plant-based, the body of the Suri electric toothbrush is made from aluminium and is designed to be easily opened, recycled, repaired and reused by the brand when it reaches the end of its life. The green credentials are a little less clear cut here – aluminium and batteries still come with an environmental cost – but Suri's choice of materials is undoubtedly better for the world than an endless parade of plastic, not least because the body of the brush will last many years before it needs replacing.
It's also worth noting the neat and recycled cardboard packaging the Suri electric toothbrush comes in. Even the freepost envelope to send your expired brush heads back to them is recyclable. There's a real thoughtfulness to every stage of the design process – and even though you might not fully reverse climate change and unmelt the ice caps, you can at least feel smug enough to tut at anyone still using a regular plastic brush.
Of course, Suri's efforts to make the planet a bit less rubbish would be pointless if the electric toothbrush wasn't up to scratch. Thankfully, it is. The Suri electric toothbrush appears in my round-up of the best electric toothbrushes, not just for its noble mission to reduce plastic waste or its looks, but for its practicality, sleek accessories, simple operation and great all-round cleaning power. The Suri is such an appealing electric toothbrush beyond its feel-good sustainability credentials, that I might still have included it if manufacturing one brush required burning down an acre of the Amazon rainforest.
Suri toothbrush design and accessories
The Suri electric toothbrush is a handsome-looking thing. While the choice of plant-based materials like corn starch suggests that it might melt in your mouth, the brush heads have the tough and durable feel of regular matte plastic, and the medium-soft bristles are comfortable for sensitive teeth and gums. The material is lightly flecked to give it a stone-like finish that looks lovely, as though it's been carved from rock – a design choice that flows over into the USB pebble charger and optional travel case.
My preference is for a slightly smaller brush head to really attack those back molars. Suri's is medium-sized with a relatively chunky head, which takes a little bit more care and dexterity to ensure you're cleaning everywhere. The aluminium body is thin and has a bit of heft to it, but feels good in the hand with a soft matte finish that's easy to grip.
The optional travel case (£25, Trysuri.com) is worth the extra £25. It's the slimmest travel case I've seen and includes a UV-C light designed to destroy 99.9 per cent of bacteria on the bristles in under a minute. I'm not entirely sold on the health benefits of blasting things with weak UV rays – my Larq water bottle (£89, Amazon.co.uk) does the same – but it's a nice bonus to have on an otherwise beautiful little toothbrush case.
I also like that the case doesn't light up when charging with the USB-C cable. It's a small detail – and also means Suri gets away with not adding a light where they didn't need to – but it's something anyone who struggles to sleep in a room with an LED will appreciate.
While you can charge using the travel case, the brush comes with a neat charging stand as standard. It continues the sharp and minimalist, stone aesthetic, and uses a USB-A cable, so you'll need an adapter to connect it to a bathroom socket. The brush can stand upright without the charger, but it has a more rounded base than most other toothbrushes. If you're a klutz like me, the Suri is prone to taking a nosedive into the sink, or somewhere worse.
Included with the Suri is a mirror mount shaped like a worry stone, which sticks to a mirror or tile using adhesive and will hold the brush in place magnetically. It can only be stuck somewhere once, and I'm too much of a coward to make that kind of commitment, but the mount is a nice enough-looking object that it won't look out of place in your bathroom.
Suri's electric toothbrush learning power and features
One-button operation takes the needless complexity out of brushing your teeth, a refreshing contrast to more expensive rivals that tend to light up like Piccadilly Circus to advertise their 20+ brushing modes. The Suri brush uses just two modes: a gentler 'everyday clean' and a more intense 'polish'.
The vibration of the Suri isn't the most powerful of the brushes I've tested – which include the skull-rattling Oral-B iO9 (£239, Amazon.co.uk) and the chart-topping sonic frequencies of the Philips Sonicare 9900 (£265, Amazon.co.uk) – but the cleaning performance is faultless, delivering a classic, dentist-fresh mouthfeel every time. You get 33,000 vibes per minute, if you're keeping score, which is comfortably above the sweet spot where sonic cleaning science starts to kick in. It's quieter than most brushes, too.
Perhaps the biggest drawback of Suri's electric toothbrush is the lack of a pressure sensor. While other brushes might protect you from gum damage by flashing a light or dialling down the motor when too much pressure is applied, the Suri brush won't. This isn't too much of a problem if you've previously used a brush with a sensor and are familiar with how much pressure to apply, but for electric newbies it could mean you're going too hard without realising it.
Battery life is where the Suri really pulls away from the competition, lasting 40 days between charges. A full recharge takes just four hours too, so you can easily juice it up overnight or between your morning and evening routines. Compare that to the entry-level Oral-B iO2 (£40, Boots.com), which takes a full 24 hours to charge from empty. The Oral-B brush is designed to be left on its charging stand whenever you're not using it – which you can do with the Suri brush too – but constantly topping up the battery degrades it more quickly, leading to the kind of electronic waste that Suri is trying to avoid.
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