• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, August 12, 2020

Oral-B has introduced the first electric toothbrush that features the voice integration of Amazon’s Alexa, so it can accommodate your song requests or deliver a newscast to you while you brush.

While the new Oral-B Guide is “designed to bring a bit of fun to consumers’ bathroom routines,” the base of the toothbrush recharger also keeps track of how long you brush per session,  with a lighting display that prompts you to move on to a new area of your mouth at 30-second intervals, and tells if you’re brushing too hard.

Users can set the brush to six cleaning modes for personalized brushing: daily clean, whitening, pro-clean, sensitive, gum care, and tongue cleaning.

With its smart capabilities, the Guide keeps a record of your brushing and then offers personalized tips through an app from Oral-B, a unit of Procter & Gamble.

“Oral-B Guide works like a fitness tracker for your mouth, coaching while you brush and providing intelligent, real-time feedback on brushing frequency, duration, coverage and optimal pressure,” said Carlos De Jesus, senior vice president, North America Oral Care for P&G, in a statement. Otherwise, the Guide with Alexa acts just like the Amazon Echo units millions of people have in their homes.

But the Oral-B Guide retails for $229.99, quite a steep climb from the price of Amazon’s Dot or Echo units, which run $49.99 to around $200.

Last year, Oral-B introduced its Genius X toothbrush that has most of the same features as the Guide, and retails for $279.99. And the market has cheaper smart toothbrushes branded by Colgate and others. Oral-B itself has been offering the smartest then-current version of a smart toothbrush since at least 2014.

There’s a lot of competition to create the next cool thing. ReportLinker.com, which analyzes company research in specific industries, says that worldwide, the electric toothbrush market is expected to grow at a 7.8% compounded annual rate through 2025.