One of the big advantages of Oral-B electric toothbrushes is the large choice of Brush heads, lets take I look at what’s available.

• Cross Action
• Floss Action
• Precision Clean
• 3D White
• Sensitive Clean
• Ortho Care
• Interspace head
• Dual Clean
• Deep Sweep

Cross Action

The Bristles of the cross action head are set at a 16 degree angle. Apparently 16 degrees is the optimum angle for enabling the bristles to reach and sweep away the plaque in those hard to reach places in between each tooth.

When brushing with all cross action head toothbrushes, you have to modify the way you would normally brush with a manual toothbrush. It’s dead simple to get used to it; you just hold the brush against each surface of each tooth and systematically move from one tooth to the next.

The small toothbrush head surrounds each tooth and the dynamic movement of the 3D cleaning action adapts to your teeth as it oscillates, rotates and pulsates to break up and remove plaque.

The Oral-B Pro 2000 is pretty straight forward device to operate and it’s easy to understand anyone not bothering with reading the instructions, but here’s some advice. This is a powerful little devil with 8,800 rotations and 40,000 pulsations a minute; so don’t make the mistake of switching the Pro 2000 on before the toothbrush is in your mouth.

It you do hit the on-button before it’s in your mouth you will decorate your bathroom with toothpaste. You wouldn’t believe how often I hear about it happening.

The marketing hype claims that this type of brush head and cleaning action can remove 100% more plaque than a manual toothbrush. Well, we all hear this type of exaggerated claim everyday and wisely ignore it.

However, an independent study did find that rotating brushes removed over 10% more plaque than manual brushes.

That 10% of extra plaque removal reduces your chance of gum disease by 20%!

The Pro 2000 toothbrush is compatible with a variety of Oral-B Brush Heads, including Precision Clean, Floss Action, Dual Action, Sensitive Clean and 3D White. The only exceptions are the Pulsonic and Sonic brush heads.

This brush head compatibility is very useful in a couple of respects. Firstly you have a wide choice for you own needs and secondly, if you share a brush, others can use their own favourite brush head type.

Floss Action

This is an oval, rotary-style brush head and comes as standard with the Oral-B Pro 2000. Despite the name, this is does not mean you should not floss regularly.

Precision Clean

This is a smaller, rounder brush head than the Floss Action. The size and shape allows for a more precise clean of each tooth surface.

This is the Oral-B’s best selling replacement brush head, despite the fact the Floss Action brush heads are reported to be the most effective at plaque removal.

3D White

Although this is the same size and shape as the Floss Action, it’s unique in that it has a rubber polishing cup at its centre; rather than bristles. The idea has been taken from the equipment used by your dentist to polish your teeth.

This brush head is only intended for use by those over 12 year-old.

Sensitive Clean

This is a round and small brush head that has extra-soft bristles. It’s aimed at those who have sensitive teeth and gums. You don’t need a lot of pressure or hard bristles to remove plaque everyday with regular brushing.

Ortho Care

This brush head has been designed for those with dental braces, as it’s suitable for cleaning around orthodontic wires and brackets.

It has the smaller, round design shape and size as the Precision Clean. The big difference is that this brush head has fewer tufts of bristles that are smaller and more widely spread out. This gives the bristles more room to fully splay out and reach under the orthodontic wires and between the brackets and gums.

Interspace head

The Interspace electric toothbrush head is specially designed to clean around bridges, crowns and other dental work.

This is Oral-B’s smallest brush head, the small size makes it easier to clean between teeth and those hard-to-reach places in our mouth.

Dual Clean

The dual clean has two moving brush heads. The top brush head has Oral-B’s standard rotary action, the lower head swivels back and forth.

The sales pitch claims that the dual clean gives a thorough clean of teeth and gums, even in difficult to reach areas of your mouth.

It’s so big, I’m not sure about how effective can be, so it’s a thumbs down from me. If used on a daily basis, it also needs charging about every 5 days as the motor has to work harder than with all other brush heads.

Deep Sweep

Different than all of the other brush heads in this list, this one has a shape and size that’s similar to a normal toothbrush.

The 3 white rows of bristles and the dark blue top tuft sweeps up and down your teeth vertically while lighter blue bristles in between the white bristle rows behave like manual brush bristles.

Oral-B claim that Deep Sweet brush heads remove 100% more plaque than a manual brush and 76% more than the Sonicare Flexcare.