I have seen a lot of Dyson products before they hit the shelves.

Hair tools, vacuums, air purifiers, headphones, you name it.

But when I travelled to Dyson’s global headquarters in Singapore in June to get an early look at what the company had been doing in oral care, I was not prepared for what happened next.

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My jaw was on the floor.

I watched the Dyson CameraJet in action, and for once, the phrase ‘revolutionary’ did not feel like an overstatement.

The toothbrush has a camera and it uses machine learning to find the gaps between your teeth. Then, while you are brushing, it fires a precision jet of mouthrinse directly into those spaces.

Dyson’s CameraJet toothbrush has a camera, AI and a precision jet: Here’s what I saw in Singapore. Credit: Dyson

It sounds slightly futuristic because it is.

And now, after months of having to keep what I saw under wraps, I can finally talk about it.

Meet the toothbrush that can see where you brush

Launching in Australia tonight, the Dyson CameraJet is being positioned as an entirely new approach to oral care.

Rather than asking us to brush, floss and rinse as three separate jobs, Dyson has attempted to combine them into one connected system.

Inside the toothbrush is a 100,000-pixel macro lens camera powered by what Dyson calls Gap Optical Targeting.

It scans 28 live images every second, using machine learning to identify, track and predict the gaps between your teeth in real time.

Once it spots one, the system can trigger a precision burst of mouthrinse within 100 milliseconds.

In other words, it is looking for the places you are most likely to miss.

The gap between brushing and actually flossing

According to Dyson’s research, nine in 10 people do not floss as regularly as they should.

People also spend an average of just 45 seconds brushing, significantly less than the recommended two minutes.

The spaces between our teeth are particularly easy to neglect. They are also exactly where plaque can begin to build up.

Dyson’s answer is not simply to make a more powerful toothbrush. It has spent six years developing an entire dental system around the problem, involving 661 engineers, 30 dental professionals and 38 patents.

The numbers get slightly bonkers from there.

The CameraJet runs on 16 million lines of code, while the machine learning system was trained using 470,000 dental images collected during development.

The Dyson CameraJet pairs with the MyDyson app for live viewing, guided cleaning, coverage mapping and personalised brushing insights. Credit: Dyson

Then comes the jet

Traditional water flossers tend to use a narrow, needle-like stream. Dyson says its engineers found that this could pierce a hole through plaque without necessarily removing everything around it.

So the company developed a conical jet, designed to cover a broader area and sweep plaque away while operating at a lower pressure intended to be gentler on gums and enamel.

During development, Dyson even worked with the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Dentistry to create its own proxy plaque so engineers could repeatedly test and refine the technology.

This is the kind of detail that became apparent during my visit to Singapore. Dyson has not simply added a camera to a toothbrush and called it innovation. It has taken the entire ritual apart and questioned almost every step.

The 100,000-pixel macro camera scans the mouth in real time to identify and target gaps between teeth. Credit: Dyson

Even the water tank has been rethought

The CameraJet uses a 12.5ml mouthrinse tank with an anti-gravity system designed to keep the liquid flowing whether you are brushing upright, angled or horizontally.

That is particularly useful when you are trying to reach the backs of your teeth, where a conventional liquid system could struggle.

Then there is the brushing itself.

Dyson says its bristles are designed not to stall

Dyson says its engineers studied slow-motion footage of existing sonic toothbrushes and found that bristles can stall when they press against the tooth surface.

The CameraJet instead uses variable sonic oscillation, changing the angle of movement as you brush to help keep the bristles moving.

The brush head is also contoured rather than flat because, as Dyson puts it, teeth are not flat.

It combines firmer inner bristles for surface stains with softer outer bristles designed to clean along the gumline.

Each head contains an RFID tag, so the toothbrush can recognise which head is attached, track usage and tell you when it needs replacing.

There is also a sensitive version for those who prefer a gentler clean.

Dyson’s conical precision jet delivers a burst of mouthrinse directly into the spaces between teeth while you brush. Credit: Dyson

The part that really blew my mind

But perhaps the most surreal part of the whole experience is being able to see what the toothbrush sees.

The integrated camera can work with the MyDyson app, giving users a live view as they brush. Dyson describes it as similar to seeing what your dentist sees through an endoscope.

The app can also provide guided cleaning, coverage mapping, brushing and flossing insights and feedback on technique, while giving users the option to switch between automatic and manual jetting modes.

Importantly, Dyson says the camera is only active during live viewing or auto-jetting. Images are not recorded or stored on the toothbrush or in the cloud.

This is very, very Dyson

For a company that built its reputation on rethinking the humble vacuum cleaner, this feels like a very Dyson move.

Take an everyday object we have stopped questioning, identify the part of the experience that is not working particularly well, then throw an extraordinary amount of engineering at it.

The result is not exactly a toothbrush in the traditional sense.

It is a camera, a toothbrush, a liquid flosser, a mouthrinse dispenser and a connected coaching system rolled into one.

I travelled to Dyson’s headquarters in Singapore in June for an early look at the CameraJet, and seeing the technology in action was seriously impressive. Credit: Dyson

The $799 question

Of course, it is expensive.

The Dyson CameraJet toothbrush launches in Australia from 9pm on September 1 for $799.

It includes the Dyson CameraJet toothbrush, charging dock, travel case and a Starter Kit with Dyson Toothpaste and Dyson Mouthrinse.

The system comes in Ceramic Ultra Blue and Ceramic Pink, both of which look every bit as polished as you would expect from Dyson.

The toothpaste and mouthrinse have also been formulated specifically for the system.

The toothpaste is non-foaming and does not contain SLS, which Dyson says helps keep the camera’s view clear. The low-foaming mouthrinse is designed to work with the precision jet and contains sodium fluoride, alongside phosphates and xylitol.

After seeing it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it

After getting an early glimpse of the CameraJet in Singapore, I have been waiting for this moment for months.

The strangest thing about seeing new technology is that, once you have seen it work, the old way suddenly feels rather primitive.

The Dyson CameraJet is a new kind of electric toothbrush that uses a camera, machine learning and a precision mouthrinse jet to find and target the gaps between your teeth while you brush. Credit: Dyson

That was my reaction watching the CameraJet find a gap, track it and deliver a tiny burst of mouthrinse exactly where it was needed.

My toothbrush had never done anything remotely like that before.

And now it’s yours.