Laifen Wave Electric Toothbrush Review: Ups and Downs

Price When Reviewed

$69.99

Best Prices Today: Laifen Wave

When we reviewed the Swift hair dryer from innovative Chinese brand Laifen, we awarded it a relatively rare five stars. Now we’re looking at the Laifen Wave, the company’s first electric toothbrush.

It comes beautifully packaged, in eco-friendly, recycled materials, and Laifen isn’t shy about making claims for its innovative design and brushing technology. But what’s it like to use?

Design & Build

• Comes with three specialist toothbrush heads
• Vibrating and oscillating action
• All settings changes must be made in the app

The Laifen Wave is an electric toothbrush that both sonically vibrates at 66,000 vibrations per minute – more than a Philips Sonicare, and much more than the number of vibrations need to class it as sonically effective – and oscillates as well.

However, switch it on and you’ll see a huge difference in its motion from rival brushes. With a wide, 60^o degree range, its oscillation is clearly visible, and you can adjust it to your liking.

The Wave is a compact brush with a chunky, glossy handle. It’s wider and shorter than competing models. The handle is just 12cm long, compared to the Oral-B iO’s 16cm, and it doesn’t taper.

Its dimensions mean it can feel a bit odd in the hand and its finish means it can get slippery when wet. Still, its compact size means it’s a good option for travel.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

In the box, you’ll get the brush handle, a magnetic charging cable and three toothbrush heads with different bristle formations. The charging cable doesn’t come with a plug, so you’ll need your own type C power adapter to be able to charge it.

The brush heads are labelled as ‘gum care’ (fine, soft bristles), ‘super-clean’ (with a concave formation) and ‘ultra-whitening’ (a ‘W’ shaped design). Providing all three options is a nice touch but it does mean that if you favour one design, you’ll need to restock after just three months.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

The bigger problem is that the brush heads don’t seem to be of the highest quality. First off, their shiny finish starts to show scratches after a period of use, and they don’t fit particularly well onto the brush handle.

Laifen says that there should be a small gap between brush head and handle (according to the user manual, “a gap of <1mm is necessary for operation”, which seems unlikely) but in practice, the heads are difficult to attach. Only one of the three provided was easy to put into place and remove. Another jammed, and when I finally wrenched it off, the central fixing was still attached. That was even more difficult to remove, and I didn’t manage it without tearing the skin on my finger.

Emma Rowley / Foundry

This alone makes me slightly nervous about recommending the Wave. I typically don’t like to suggests products that may injure our readers.

Brush head replacements cost $9.99 for a three-pack and $16.99 for a six-pack (we can’t yet see UK prices). Again, these are mixed packs, which isn’t ideal.

However, if you really like the Wave, there’s a workaround. It does seem to be perfectly compatible with Philips Sonicare brush heads. These are well made and have the substantial advantage of not slicing bits from people’s fingers.

The Wave charges in just 2.5 hours, which is very fast for an electric toothbrush and, according to Laifen, its battery will last for an impressive thirty days. This was borne out in our testing.  

On the brush handle, there are two sets of indicator lights and a single button. Oddly, Laifen considers this one of the brush’s selling points. According to the blurb on its website, it’s a “pressure-sensitive button”. To my mind, that’s what any old common or garden button does: it responds to pressure. I did repeatedly press it to try to detect some kind of special engineering – but sometimes a button is just a button.

Long pressing the extra special button takes you into and out of flight mode.

The top indicator light lets you know which of four brushing modes you’re in – but there’s a catch. You can only switch between modes and adjust brushing power and oscillation in the app, which means that you won’t be able to abandon the app altogether, even if you’re not keen on connected devices.

At the base of the handle is a battery indicator light which will glow green for 50%-100% battery life, yellow for 20%-50% battery life, red for 10%-20% and will blink red for less than that. It glows blue when the brush is connected to the app, which it does via Bluetooth.

The only key feature that the Wave doesn’t have is a pressure sensor and this is something I missed while testing it. If you tend to press too hard when you brush – and you’ll know if you do, as the bristles on your brush will part in the middle, palm-tree style, after a period of use – this is not the brush for you.

Performance, Features & App

• Vibration speed, oscillation range and speed adjustable
• App lacks advanced features
• Higher brush settings too powerful to use

If you buy the Wave, the app is non-negotiable. You’ll need it to use it to do anything except switch the brush on and off, and turn on flight mode.

The Laifen app is free to download and use, and available for both Android and iOS. Once it’s on your phone, you’ll need to make an account and then pair your brush, which you do by switching it on and holding it nearby.

Design-wise, the app is free of frills. Nor are there any secondary features, such as monitoring your brushing performance or sessions or suggesting ways to improve your brushing technique. Instead, it’s really just a way to get around having a mode button on the brush handle, and shunt the associated settings into the app. On the plus side, the handle has a clean, minimalist form but there’s no getting away from the app if you want to adjust anything.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

When you first switch on the brush, the timer will be set to the dentist-recommended two-minute brushing time, after which the brush will turn itself off. In the app, you can change this, in increments of thirty seconds up to 5 minutes (which seems like overkill, unless you want to flay the skin from your gums every time you brush), and turn on a 30-second vibration alert that’ll let you know when to move on to the next quadrant of your mouth.

You can also choose from one of four brushing settings and within these settings, adjust vibration strength, oscillation range and oscillation speed. This allows you to create four customised brushing modes. We just wish that you could switch between them on the handle, as this would make life much simpler.

It’s always difficult to analyse exactly how well an electric toothbrush performs but the Wave definitely leaves teeth feeling clean and smooth. There are suggested settings and this is where you should start before making adjustments. What I found is that the higher settings – especially the higher vibration strength – are almost unusable as the brush just bounces off your teeth. Even the third setting of ten is powerful in comparison to rivals.

Using the Wave for a month, I felt that it delivered very good brushing performance but as I tend to press too hard when I brush, I missed having the safety net of a pressure sensor and probably wouldn’t use it long-term for that reason.

Price & Availability

The Wave will be available from 5 March in the US, UK and Europe. In the US, you can buy it from Amazon and direct from Laifen, where you can save 10% if you buy in March. There are three options to choose from, with different price points. It costs $69 for the plastic version, $79 for aluminium alloy and $99 for the stainless steel model.

In the UK and Europe, the plastic model is available for €79.99, the aluminium alloy for €89.99 and the stainless steel model for €99.99, direct from Laifen. Again, you can currently save 10% if you buy this month.

Although this isn’t a flawless electric toothbrush, it’s very good value at this price

Should you buy the Laifen Wave?

The Wave has a lot going for it, especially its long, 30-day battery life. I also liked the fact that its settings are so adjustable that you can precisely tailor the brush’s performance to your liking. But the fact that you’ll need to use the app to make these adjustments is an unnecessary complication.

I also have concerns about the quality of the brush heads and the fact that three different types are packaged together, which could get expensive if you want to stick to one type.

But for its price, the Wave is definitely a contender, especially if you’re looking for a brush to take while travelling.

For more buying advice and recommendations, have a look at our round-up of the best electric toothbrushes, the best cheap electric toothbrushes and the best Oral-B brushes we’ve tested.