Suri Sustainable Electric Toothbrush review

We tested the Suri Sustainable Electric Toothbrush over the course of a month, brushing twice daily and ensuring we used it as part of our daily routine.

We assessed how easy it was to use, how well it cleaned, and what it was like to hold, charge and clean. 

Suri’s sustainable credentials are evident from the moment the brush arrives, with cardboard packaging ensuring almost everything that isn’t the brush – the head, the charger and the cleaning case – can be recycled once opened, rather than sent to landfill. 

Our review unit included the optional self-cleaning case (an additional £25, or £20 if you opt for the brush + charger bundle at point of purchase), and it was all neatly packaged in one box, with easy-to-follow unpacking and setup instructions. 

You’ll need to retrieve the charger from the bottom of the box, and Suri recommends you charge the toothbrush for four hours before first use. Our brush did arrive with some battery life – we couldn’t help ourselves pressing the button to see what happened – but we then dutifully sat it on the charger.  

Suri is keeping things simple here. There aren’t any gimmicks or smartphone apps that need setting up. Just charge up the brush, slide on the fully-recyclable head (you get one included in the box) and you’re ready to start your brushing adventure. 

The Suri electric toothbrush is sleek and minimalist. The aluminium body feels premium, but its surprisingly slender frame is not heavy (78g/2.8oz, 84g/3oz with head), meaning it’s easy to wield and lighter than some rivals. It’s quiet, too, at just 54 decibels – much quieter than our current oscillating brush. 

You get a one-year warranty with the brush, and it’s been designed in a modular fashion, making it easy for Suri to repair if your unit does develop a fault in the first 12 months of use. Even after the warranty is up, Suri can still repair your brush for what it says is a “reasonable fee” – which according to its website is around £15-£25. 

It’s the plant-based heads that are the most interesting part of the design, however. The heads are made from corn starch, while the bristles are crafted from castor oil – both renewable materials, and easily recyclable.

What’s more, Suri will recycle your used heads for you. You’ll need to slip these (Suri asks you to wait until you have three ready to return, to help reduce the carbon footprint) into an envelope with “Freepost Suri” written in capitals on the front and pop it in the post. Suri then handles the rest. The firm recommends you refresh heads every two to three months, depending on the wear on the bristles. The heads feel solid and well-made, and you wouldn’t know they are plant-based in their construction. 

You get a choice of four colours: Morning Waves (Blue), Sea Mist (White), Midnight Black and Winter Fern (Green), the last of which we received. It’s a subtle, smart colour that blends nicely into the bathroom aesthetic.  

It also has a waterproof rating of IPX7, which means the entire toothbrush can be submerged in water up to a depth of one metre for 30 minutes – handy if you need to give it a quick rinse under the tap, or you find yourself brushing your teeth in the bath.

The large button is easy to find and feels satisfying to press, with a soft recoil adding to the premium finish of the brush. However, its large size means it can be accidentally pressed, depending on how you hold your toothbrush. A closed fist wrapped around the body will increase the chance of an accidental press – but thanks to the lightweight build of this brush, it can be comfortably held between middle finger, forefinger and thumb. 

With the body of the brush being up to two times slimmer than its rivals, it fits nicely in the hand. However, the slim frame does make it a touch trickier to balance upright on the side of the sink when you’ve finished brushing, so you’ll want to take an extra split second to ensure it doesn’t topple. 

A nifty bit of kit that can alleviate this balancing act is the magnetic mirror mount. This is a pad that attaches to your bathroom mirror or tiles, with the Suri electric toothbrush then magnetically clinging to the mount. There’s enough force to ensure you don’t accidentally knock it off, but it’s also easy to remove when it comes time to clean your teeth. 

Simplicity is the name of the game with the Suri brush. There are just two modes (everyday clean and polish), no app connectivity and no confusing controls. Press the button and you’re away.  

The Suri Sustainable Electric Toothbrush will provide haptic feedback (a pause in sonic vibration) every 30 seconds to let you know to move on to the next quadrant of your mouth. The NHS recommends brushing your teeth twice a day, with each teeth-cleaning session lasting two minutes. 

Splitting your mouth into four quadrants allows you to focus 30 seconds of cleaning on each area, making sure every inch is given some attention. 

Suri advises massaging, rather than brushing, your teeth. You’re instructed to hold the brush at a 45-degree angle to your teeth and gently rotate on each tooth, letting the brush do the majority of the work. 

Applying too much pressure can damage your teeth and gums, but this brush doesn’t come with a pressure sensor, so you won’t be alerted if you are pressing too hard. Many electric toothbrushes have this feature, so it’s disappointing that it’s not present here, and for us it’s the only major omission. 

If you’ve used an electric toothbrush before, you’ll likely be familiar with this technique, but for those transitioning from a manual brush, there is a small learning curve to adjust your muscle memory. 

While sliding a new head on to the brush body is relatively easy, removing it when it’s time to swap it out for a new head is much tricker. There’s significant friction between head and the metal rod it connects to, requiring a surprising amount of force to remove it. 

The increased number of vibrations per minute (versus my oscillating brush) meant debris between my wonkier teeth was agitated and removed with more ease. 

Everyday Cleaning mode is denoted by a white light on the brush body, while quickly pressing the power button twice when turning on the brush takes you to Polish mode (shown by the LED light going blue), which is more intense, yet the brush produces the same 33,000 sonic vibrations per minute in both modes. 

Polish mode delivers a deeper clean, but if you have areas of sensitivity in your teeth or gums, we’d recommend steering clear of it as it is more vigorous. 

The corn starch and castor oil brush heads are listed as medium/soft, so for those who prefer a firmer bristle for cleaning their teeth, the Suri may not be the right electric toothbrush for you. 

It does switch off after two minutes though, which is a touch frustrating if you want to continue brushing for a little longer – especially if you want to use the tongue cleaner on the rear of the brush head. It’s not difficult to quickly turn it back on, it just feels unnecessary. 

Speaking of the tongue cleaner, it consists of a textured rear to the brush head, although we didn’t find it overly effective, as the embossed pattern wasn’t raised all that much, and it left us feeling like it didn’t do all that much cleaning. 

We also received the UV-C LED clean and charge case with our review unit, which Suri says can kill 99.9% of bacteria in one minute. Plug the case into a power outlet with the supplied USB-C cable, pop the brush (with head attached) in, close the lid and press the circular button on the front to cleanse the bristles with UV light. 

The case is also handy to transport your brush when you go away, and it doubles as a charger so you can leave the charging pad at home. 

While the UV light will remove almost all bacteria, the advice is still not to share brush heads, as a Suri spokesperson explained to Saga Exceptional: “We wouldn’t recommend sharing a toothbrush head. UV light doesn’t kill 100% of bacteria and viruses, so there’s still a risk of transmitting disease by sharing a toothbrush head.” 

You’ll also want to rinse the brush head after use, before popping it into the case, as the spokesperson continued: “The light can’t remove physical debris nor pieces of food, and toothbrushes can harbour bacteria and viruses in microscopic grooves and crevices that may not be fully exposed to the UV light.”

Suri claims its sustainable electric toothbrush offers up to 40 days of battery life, which assumes you’ll be brushing twice a day, in two-minute sessions. We can confirm we achieved more than 30 days of use from a single charge before needed to find the charger – which is a very good performance. 

We’ll continue to use the brush and update this review once we hit the 40-day mark, or when it runs out of battery, to give you a better idea of what to expect. 

Forty days is a good offering though, and while it’s not at the top of the pile (the Spotlight Oral Care Sonic boasts 70 days, while the Foreo Issa 3 claims 365 days), it’s a strong showing which means you should only need to sit it on the charging pad once a month at a maximum. 

When it does come time to recharge, you’ll be able to go from flat to fully charged in four hours using the charging pad that comes as part of the package. The small, relatively flat pad is finished in a stone effect, giving it a natural look, and has a USB connection at the other end of the cable. You’ll need to supply the plug adaptor to connect it to power – this isn’t included in the box, to cut down on the number of plastic parts being shipped around the world. 

You do need to be precise when lining up the Suri electric brush with the charge, as these connect via a shallow indent. It’s not as easy to slide on as, say, Oral-B’s chargers, which have a prong protruding from the charger, allowing you to easily slide your brush on. 

Again, the slender nature of the brush makes it a little trickier to dock than some other brushes, and you’ll need a quick second or two of concentration to get it right. Once successfully docked, the LED on the brush blinks blue to show it’s charging and switches to steady white once fully charged. 

As we’ve mentioned, if you also pick up the optional UV cleaning case, you can use this to charge your brush as well, which is especially handy if you’re away from home.

With a RRP of £75, the Suri finds itself competitively priced, coming in cheaper than rival sonic brushes from Foreo and Spotlight, but more expensive than the budget Ordo Sonic+.  

But what value can you put on sustainability? Only the Suri Sustainable Electric Toothbrush can offer recyclable heads and a modular build for easy repairs, giving this brush more life and landfill less plastic. 

A pack of three heads will cost you £14.40, which is £4.80 per head. That’s cheaper than the non-recyclable heads for the top-of-the-line Oral-B iO series 10 and Spotlight Oral Care’s brush, and on a par with Foreo. And there’s no additional cost to send your used heads back to Suri for recycling – it’s all done via Freepost. 

There are cheaper brush-and-head combos out there – but almost all of them are not recyclable and will likely end up in landfill or the ocean, unlike Suri’s. 

This brush is slightly more expensive, but we’ve seen it discounted to cheaper than the Suri in the past – however, its replacement heads are more expensive and they’re not recyclable, giving Suri the edge when it comes to sustainability and ongoing costs. 

You do get three heads included in the box though, and the Spotlight brush provides excellent cleaning performance, with three modes to choose from – we found its whitening mode was a particular highlight. 

If you’re looking for a great budget sonic toothbrush, the Ordo Sonic+ fits the bill with its sub-£50 price tag and £5 heads. It doesn’t boast Suri’s sustainability credentials, but for those on a budget it offers a solid clean with several brushing modes. 

It’s not as powerful as the Suri, and thus won’t give you quite the same level of clean, and it too doesn’t offer a pressure sensor. 

The Philips Sonicare 3100 starts at £89.99 and offers a pressure sensor (which the Suri doesn’t have), two-week battery and 31,000 brush movements per minute. 

Again, like the Ordo, you won’t get quite such a powerful clean with the Sonicare 3100, the heads are not recyclable, and it comes in a little more expensive than the Suri.

The Suri Sustainable Electric Toothbrush is a bit of a triumph. It pushes sustainability more than any of the big players in the market, and it does so with a product that is premium and polished, both in the way it’s designed and operates, and in quality when it comes to actually cleaning your teeth. 

Its lightweight, quiet operation makes it a breeze to use, and the plant-based, recyclable heads work just as well as the plastic ones that are clogging up landfill. 

The lack of a pressure sensor will be irksome for some, and the power of the sonic vibrations may be too aggressive for those with more sensitive teeth. 

For those looking for a powerful clean from a premium electric toothbrush, which focuses on simply cleaning your teeth and helping the environment rather than a myriad of gimmicks and applications, the Suri is certainly worthy of your consideration.