Dyson Built a $500 Toothbrush With a Camera Inside It — 661 Engineers, 6 Years, 16 Million Lines of Code to Floss For You
Dyson Built a $500 Toothbrush With a Camera Inside It — 661 Engineers, 6 Years, 16 Million Lines of Code to Floss For Youbro put a 100,000-pixel spy cam in your mouth and called it oral care. and honestly? kinda works.
$500 price tag · 28 photos every SECOND · 470,000 dental images used to train it · fires a water-jet at plaque in 100 milliseconds
The Dyson CameraJet dropped Sept 1. Same company that made hairdryers a status symbol now wants to livestream your gums. (Fast Company · official page)
so the vacuum company looked at your bathroom and went “what if the toothbrush had eyes.” deadass. and instead of laughing them out of the room, 661 engineers spent six years making it real. this is peak “we have money and audacity” energy and i am here for it.
🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary
| Fancy Word | What It Actually Means |
|---|---|
| Gap Optical Targeting | tiny camera spots the space between your teeth |
| Macro-lens camera | a lens that can film super close-up stuff (like inside your mouth) |
| Endoscope | the snake-cam doctors shove places to look inside you |
| Machine learning | software that got shown 470,000 pics of teeth till it “knows” a plaque gap |
| Water flosser | shoots a thin jet of water instead of using string floss |
| Razor-and-blades | sell the gadget cheap-ish, then milk you forever on refills |
🦷 What this thing actually does
- Films your mouth 28 times a second with a 100,000-pixel macro camera stuck in the brush head.
- Software called Gap Optical Targeting watches the footage live, spots a gap between two teeth, and fires a burst of mouthrinse into it within ~100 milliseconds — basically flossing you mid-brush.
- Comes with Dyson’s own non-foaming toothpaste and low-foam rinse (so the camera can actually see).
- The camera is a legit endoscope — the MyDyson app shows you a live feed of “what your dentist sees.”
- Colors: Ceramic Pink and Ceramic Ultra Blue. Because of course.
📊 The receipts (the numbers are unhinged)
| Stat | Number |
|---|---|
| Price | ~$500 |
| Engineers on it | 661 |
| Years in development | 6 |
| Dental images used to train it | 470,000+ |
| Lines of code | 16,000,000 |
| Photos captured per second | 28 |
| Reaction time to hit a gap | ~100 ms |
Sixteen million lines of code. To brush your teeth. The Apollo moon landing ran on way less. (PR Newswire announcement)
🗣️ What the timeline's saying
- Half the internet: “a camera. in my MOUTH. so my toothbrush can be hacked now too??”
- Dentists: quietly interested because the live-view could catch problems early.
- Broke people: “cool, i’ll keep using my $4 brush and dental string, thanks.”
- Everyone: $500 is a phone. It’s a used car down payment. It’s rent in some places.
- The real question nobody’s asking — where does all that footage of your face-hole actually go? (Dyson oral care hub doesn’t scream about it.)
💡 The part that actually matters
Strip away the meme and here’s the move: Dyson didn’t sell you a toothbrush. They sold you a razor-and-blades trap. Proprietary toothpaste. Proprietary rinse. Proprietary brush heads. The $500 is the hook — the refills are the bill for the rest of your life.
And they built a mini medical camera cheap enough to bolt onto a bathroom gadget. That last part? That’s the door somebody’s gonna walk through and make money on. Not Dyson. Somebody like you.
Cool. A Robot Now Watches You Brush… Now What the Hell Do We Do? (⊙_⊙)
Dyson just proved regular people will drop $500 to see inside their own mouth. That’s a signal, not a toothbrush. Here’s where the quiet money is 
🪥 The Refill Bootlegger
Razor-and-blades gadgets always have one weakness: the blades cost different amounts in different countries. Dyson’s non-foaming toothpaste and rinse are locked to this brush — you literally can’t use normal paste. That’s a captive customer with no options. Find the region where refills launch cheapest, buy in bulk, resell where they’re “out of stock” or overpriced.
Example: A 24-year-old reseller in Malaysia notices the CameraJet rinse ships to Singapore weeks before it hits smaller markets. He buys 6-packs at local price, lists single packs on Shopee and regional Facebook groups at a 40% markup to desperate early-adopters. Clears ~$700/month on the gap.
Timeline: First sales in ~2 weeks. Dies in 4-6 months once Dyson evens out global distribution — grab it while the shelves are uneven.
🖨️ The Accessory Land-Grab
Every hyped gadget launches naked — no cases, no wall mounts, no travel covers. The camera lens on this thing needs a hygienic cap nobody’s selling yet. First person to design and 3D-print CameraJet accessories owns the search results before the big brands wake up.
Example: A design student in Poland models a magnetic wall-holder + lens cap for the CameraJet in Tinkercad (free), prints them on a cheap Ender-3, and lists them on Etsy the same week reviews drop. “dyson camerajet stand” has near-zero competition — she rides page one for 3 months.
🦷 The Screenshot Second-Opinion
Here’s the sneaky part: this brush is a working mouth-endoscope with a live feed. Owners will screen-record footage they don’t understand. Meanwhile there are thousands of licensed dental hygienists worldwide who’d read a 30-second clip for pocket money. Bridge them. You’re the middleman charging a finder’s fee on async “is this gum thing normal?” checks.
Example: A 22-year-old in the Philippines sets up a simple intake form (Tally, free) where CameraJet owners upload footage. She routes clips to a small pool of remote hygienists, who reply within a day. She charges the user $9, pays the reviewer $5, keeps $4. 60 clips a week = real money.
📸 The Pre-Visit Funnel
Flip the last hustle B2B. Local dentists constantly hunt for new patients and hate wasted chair time. Offer them a done-for-you “send us your at-home camera footage before your appointment” system. Now the dentist walks in already knowing the problem, and you charge them a setup fee plus per-lead. You’re selling shovels to the gold miners.
Example: A hustler in Brazil pitches 5 neighborhood clinics a simple booking page (Calendly + a footage-upload link). Clinics pay ~$120 setup + $15 per new patient who books through it. Three clinics say yes = a few hundred a month for a system you built once.
🎰 The Launch-Scarcity Flip
Dyson does limited colors and launch shortages on purpose — the “Ceramic Pink” will sell out first. Classic scarcity play. Grab launch stock in a market where it’s available, resell into markets where it’s “coming soon” and people are impatient and rich.
Example: A 23-year-old in the UAE pre-orders 4 units at retail the day they list, then flips them on local marketplace apps to buyers in countries with no launch date yet, at a $120-per-unit premium. Four units = a weekend’s beer money for basically clicking “buy.”
🛠️ Follow-Up Actions
Quick Hits
| You Want | Do This |
|---|---|
 See the real specs |
Read the Fast Company breakdown |
 Print accessories free |
Design in Tinkercad |
 Spot the refill arbitrage |
Check Dyson oral care prices by region |
 Start a review desk |
Free form on Tally |
 Read the official claims |
PR Newswire release |
they spent 16 million lines of code so you don’t have to hold a string. the future isn’t flying cars — it’s a camera watching you brush and a subscription for the privilege.
!