If one of the goals of your dental regime is to have brighter-looking teeth and reduce levels of staining, you’ve probably already heard of the Spotlight Oral Care brand – its USP is that it’s “created by dentists”.

Sisters Lisa and Vanessa Creavan are the dentists in question, who began the Spotlight brand purely as a response to regulations around cosmetic teeth whitening that had been enforced in their home country of Ireland.

The range began with whitening pens, strips and toothpaste; however, these have since been supplemented with a sonic product that isn’t purely a teeth-whitening brush, but has a whitening mode, along with its sensitive and clean modes.

If you already use the Spotlight Oral Care range for teeth whitening, it’s likely you’ll be interested in how well this brush fits into the programme. If you don’t, the cost of the brush is something that will probably catch your eye.

Generally, the cost of sonically brushing your teeth has reduced dramatically in the last few years, with plenty of fuss-free alternatives to the Philips Sonicare range – including Suri, Ordo + and Spotlight, the latter sits in between those other brushes, in terms of pricing.

As whitening is the brand’s speciality, we were particularly interested in the product’s white mode, to see how effective it was in gradually glossing teeth and bringing about a healthy grin.

How we tested

Our tester was familiar with the Spotlight Oral Care brand and had been using their products to whiten their teeth. They tested over a three-month period, which also allowed them to fully test the 70-day battery life claims of the manufacturer.

Spotlight Oral Care sonic

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Modes: Three

Battery type: Li-ion

Accessories included: Protective travel case

Battery life: Two months

Returns: 28 days, if unopened

Travel case: Included

App connectivity: None

Spotlight Oral Care sonic toothbrush design and ergonomics

The brush offers an uncomplicated and uncluttered design, with a single, large power button, so it’s easy to find and turn the product off mid-routine (if you need to) without pebble-dashing the bathroom mirror with toothpaste.

The power button also enables you to cycle through the modes, with whatever intensity you settle on being the one that the brush remembers the next time you fire it up. The fact it’s not app-enabled and isn’t packed with gizmos, such as accelerometers, means it feels light in hand and is easy to move around the mouth quadrants without feeling too intrusive.

Spotlight Oral Care sonic toothbrush cleaning and whitening

This is a powerful toothbrush, compared with some of the other sonics out there. The sensitive mode delivers 31,000 repetitions per minute, while ‘clean’ is 41,000rpm and ‘white’ turns the intensity up to 48,000rpm. This compares with the Suri brush, which delivers 33,000rpm, and the Ordo + which maxes out at 40,000rpm.

We found, whether you have a whitening goal or not, white mode gives a satisfactory and thorough clean, without feeling overly harsh on gums. However, if you do have sensitive gums, it might be a bit too much, combined with the fact the brush doesn’t come with any kind of pressure indicator.

Sonic brushes tend to produce a higher-pitched noise than their oscillating rivals, but this brush is particularly noisy on white mode, which might be something to take into consideration if you’re often in the bathroom early, while everyone else is sleeping.

The calibration of the oval-shaped brush head with the motor really makes the most of the bristle pattern, so it was clearly going to be able to break apart the biofilm that can lead to cavities, while delivering a deep clean without damaging teeth and gums. The brush also has a quadrant timer, to ensure you give your mouth complete coverage.

However, it was its quality as a whitening tool, over time, that really impressed, and we noticed a significant reduction in the amount of staining to the teeth and, in the end, we only used white mode in the morning, combining it with the clean mode before bed, which still delivers a powerful clean.

Spotlight Oral Care sonic toothbrush battery life

The battery light on the handle will flash when the product needs charging, but you won’t need to worry about this very often because the Spotlight brush’s ability to hold charge is impressive. After 14 hours on charge, we didn’t have to revisit the charger for over two months (brushing twice daily), which is particularly useful if you’re going away and don’t want to bother taking the charger too.

The only slight drawback here is that you will have to charge the brush somewhere other than the bathroom, as its dock comes with a three-pin plug attached, rather than one that will fit the standard shaver socket

Spotlight Oral Care sonic toothbrush value for money

Overall, the brush has a very robust feel and we would expect it to be able to withstand multiple sink drops and journeys rattling around in an overnight bag. It comes with a travel case and three replacement heads as standard, so represents excellent value.

Each head should last three months and this was borne out during testing, as the bristles began to lose rigidity and effectiveness during the third month of use. A set of three replacement heads costs £29.

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The verdict: Spotlight Oral Care sonic

Are gleaming smiles guaranteed now the teeth-whitening brand is offering up its own sonic brush? It would certainly appear so. Teeth whitening won’t happen overnight, but daily use of the Spotlight brush will gradually have an effect on teeth that have become dulled over time. Even if this isn’t your goal, the brush is an effective sonic tool for maintaining oral hygiene at an excellent price.

Looking for more recommendations for achieving gleaming gnashers? Read our review of the best teeth whitening kits

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The Spotlight Oral Care sonic might be the best teeth-whitening toothbrush on the shelves

An effective sonic tool for maintaining oral hygiene at an excellent price