Temperatures are dropping, leaves are turning, and the romance I jumped into just before Labor Day weekend is already over. I thought this fast, bright-burning new love was going to set the tone for my fall, my winter—early mornings together, late nights, intimate one-on-one time at home and, if I was lucky, maybe it would last forever.
There were some red flags early on, but of course, I ignored them, too enraptured by the idea of what could be to realize what was. Our trust dissipated almost all at once: My partner’s diaphragm pump started to slow. The conical jet began misfiring. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t vibrating at 245 times per second anymore. Then, it simply wouldn’t turn on, effectively ghosting me.
I’m not talking about a human, or a sex toy (I’m not Charlotte York in that one episode of Sex and the City) or an object repurposed as one (I’m not Samantha Jones, either). I’m talking about the Dyson CameraJet.
What I thought was the Rolls-Royce of toothbrushes arrived at the beginning of the month to much fanfare—a launch event in Paris heralded the arrival of the world’s first toothbrush-water-flosser hybrid that relied on a camera the size of a pencil tip to fire mouthwash in between teeth while you brush, effectively folding three dental hygiene steps into one. Last spring, Allure’s executive beauty director Jenny Bailly had traveled to Dyson’s UK labs to get a top-secret sneak peek of the new innovation. She wasn’t allowed to test it, but was certainly impressed with the rigor that had gone into bringing the concept to life: “The idea first arose nine years ago, and they spent six years working on the CameraJet—that’s one more than the bagless vacuum cleaner that debuted in 1983 or the hair-dryer that blew us away in 2016.”
The CameraJet sticker shock was gobsmacking. $499 for a toothbrush is a tall order, but one I didn’t find unreasonable once I used the device. On the day of the launch, I was sent a toothbrush gratis from Dyson to test, and after a couple of blissful days with it determined I would gladly fork over the full price if the device were ever to need replacement, many years in the future of course. (And I went on camera to say so.) I mean, remember when Dyson launched the Supersonic hair dryer a decade ago? The $400 price tag for a hair dryer was obscene at first, but the tool’s performance changed our minds (plus, it just looked so cool). The CameraJet is sleek, elegant, and the cobalt blue oral-hygiene monolith looked great on my bathroom counter. Its charging and refill dock barely squeezed under my medicine cabinet, but that was something I easily overlooked… until it died.
My experience isn’t happening in a vacuum. I’ve seen complaints across social media from people who shelled out $500 for Dyson’s latest innovation, only to find themselves with a lemon. One editor at Consumer Reports said the toothbrush Dyson sent her to test died “less than 24 hours” after she opened the box (and before she ever had a chance to try it). I might actually be one of the lucky ones who had a working device for almost three weeks. (My colleague has also been testing a CameraJet and hers is still turning on, but the automatic firing of the jet has slowed dramatically.) As of today, the CameraJet is out of stock on both dyson.com and sephora.com.
