I couldn’t stop myself from giggling. A sudsy giggle. I was brushing my teeth, but this was no ordinary toothbrush I was using.
It was the Feno Smartbrush — and with its 18,000 bristles, it was navigating all of my teeth, top and bottom, at the same time. The vibration was startlingly different.
The entire lower part of my face was shaking, from my gumline to the base of my jaw. It felt like a massage for my teeth, cheeks and the craniofacial muscles surrounding my mouth. Foamy residue escaped onto my chin and chest.
The Feno Smartbrush is a mouthful.
It was a mouthful. In a good way.
For an anxious, teeth-grinding adult like me, the silly visual in the mirror of my mouth vibrating for 20 seconds was worth the feeling that came along with it. Plus, it removed all those tricky goji berry remnants that always seem to evade my regular electric toothbrush.
The Smartbrush is a U-shaped device, with top and bottom sections like the mouthguards that athletes use, attached to a fist-sized handle that holds the power source and a camera. It’s the flagship product of Feno, a 3-year-old company driven by the belief that “transformative oral health technology” is on the cusp of a breakthrough moment.
It was created by Dr. Kenny Brown, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon who’s also Feno’s CEO and a co-founder. He designed it to address problems he saw firsthand with his patients.
“We believe oral health is your overall health,” Brown tells me when we meet at BioscienceLA, which for Feno doubles as a nonprofit organization for health tech companies and its brick-and-mortar. “When it comes to oral hygiene, patients tend to fail in two aspects: time and technique.”
How many of us really put in the 2-plus minutes of brushing that dentists recommend? And are we really putting brush to tooth as effectively as we should? Feno cuts the time to just 20 seconds, and its Smartbrush does the work for you.
It’s a radically different approach from the normal options available for oral care at home, and retails at a breathtaking $299 for a three-month starter kit. There are other high-end, high-tech devices, including Curaprox’s U-shaped Samba robotic toothbrush and the Philips Sonicare Prestige 9900, which packs some AI into a more standard-looking electric toothbrush.
But neither of those devices has Feno’s customization features, like six variations of its U-shaped, top-and-bottom mouthpiece. Feno also stands apart in tracking and analyzing your brushing habits and your mouth as a whole, with reports through a $10 monthly Feno Plus membership intended to support long-term preventive care.
Brown’s training and experience is another differentiating factor.
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What you get with the Feno Smartbrush
I did my trial with the $299 Founder’s Edition bundle, which contains the Smartbrush (comprising the Feno Smarthandle and SnapCharger), a TrueFit Mouthpiece, three tubes of mint-flavored XyFoam toothpaste, a tongue scraper and three months of Feno Plus for access to personalized health insights and virtual oral health coaching.
First, I sent in selfies of my mouth through Feno’s FitKit, an app that allows the Feno team to map, size and pair it with one of six mouthpieces, and waited for my images to be analyzed and approved. The kit arrived in the mail a week later, in a large, well-designed box.
After the unboxing, I downloaded the Feno app and connected it to my newly charged Smartbrush. (The Apple MagSafe-like charger attaches to the back of Feno’s Smarthandle, looking rather like a stethoscope.)
Here, I was able to customize my Feno experience. I could change the speed and time of the brush while the AI tracked my brushing cadence. The vibration of the brush allowed me to maneuver it around the sides of my mouth, which provided a pleasant jaw massage in the process.
You use the Smarthandle to take a scan of your mouth.
Over the next two weeks, I used the Smartbrush twice a day for 20 seconds at a time. Once connected to Feno’s Wi-Fi network (this will not affect your home’s internet connection), I could also connect my Smartbrush to Feno’s app, which monitored my brushing and scanning cadence.
After brushing, I positioned the Smartbrush 10 inches from my face and pressed a button to capture and send data concerning my oral health to Feno’s team for feedback. With regular use, the reports come back every two weeks with insights about the condition of your teeth, gums, tongue and soft tissue, plus a digital health score, summary analysis of your mouth and feedback to improve or adjust your mouth scans. With consistency, the embedded scanner will learn your mouth and note any changes that occur.
“[Over time] you’re going to have the biggest longitudinal data set on the mouth, actionable data made as effortless as possible, so that it can be done as easily as once a day,” Brown said. “You can then get insight into what’s happening in your mouth.”
Feno will send you regular reports on the state of your oral health.
Feno’s evolution
After my trial run with the Smartbrush, I visited Feno’s facilities, where the product is tested, packaged and shipped out, to speak with Brown about the device, its AI integration and the state of oral health care.
Feno’s prototyping space, fulfillment center and company office all sit within the health tech hub’s long, single-story brick exterior; blue and green letters read “BioscienceLA” across its windows.
Inside, shiny white plaster walls and squeaky-clean floors make up the building’s sleek, modern interior.
Dr. Kenny Brown is the creator of the Feno Smartbrush.
This is where members of the equally passionate core team — eight people, including three dentists — can be found. (It’s also where Brown can be found chatting on the phone with customers about postpurchase feedback.)
Our conversation took place in Feno’s prototyping office, the largest of the three spaces I toured. Nearby, 3D printers for prototyping emit a soothing hum and ambient orange glow. Physical evolutions of Feno’s TrueFit Mouthpiece lie to my right.
As an oral surgeon and entrepreneur, Brown is an anomaly, a Black oral surgeon in an industry where just under 4% of dentists, dental specialists and oral surgeons are Black. With his creation of the AI-powered Smartbrush, he’s also a pioneer. He radiates a passion for oral care — and humanity.
(We’ll take a moment here to acknowledge another pioneer, Dr. Bobbi Peterson, the Shark Tank-famous orthodontist who invented the Big Mouth electric toothbrush.)
Brown estimates that nearly 50% of American adults have some form of gum disease and chronic inflammation. Feno, he says, could address this challenge with “full mouth,” U-shaped products.
“The idea is better, faster, easier — but it also levels a playing field,” Brown said. “Doing this on a technology front shows, ‘Look, these solutions are for everyone.’ At the end of the day, it’s to serve others.”
The TrueFit Mouthpiece design
The TrueFit Mouthpiece began with over 20,000 patient digital impressions to inform a mouth-sizing algorithm, which translated into over 100,000 designs of various shapes, widths, heights and bristle configurations.
“It can be extremely risky and expensive to make thousands of prototypes. We used a combination of clinical knowledge, digital impressions, generative AI technology and 3D printing to help us create [ours],” Brown said. “Efficacy is the number one thing. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter.”
The design of Feno’s mouthpiece went through many iterations.
Brown and his team used generative AI — custom algorithms written with design software Rhino 3D and Grasshopper — to test and optimize for the most effective mouthpiece, including features like “bristle contact with tooth surfaces and your gum line.” Those iterations became several hundred 3D-printed prototypes, tested again on patients to ensure clinical standards.
Today, Feno has six TrueFit Mouthpiece variations that differentiate in dental arch, jawline and oral cavity dimensions, depending on customers’ needs. Whether that’s arch width or depth, a crooked tooth or gum recession, the goal is that all 18,000 bristles on your Feno TrueFit Mouthpiece touch all of your teeth — 250 strokes per tooth — so you can brush your teeth within 20 seconds. The Smarthandle will pause and alert you to soften your brushing pressure if need be.
The TrueFit Mouthpiece connects to Feno’s Smarthandle, which uses camera vision, artificial intelligence that can analyze visual data. Each time you scan your mouth with the Smarthandle’s embedded scanner, it tracks signs of poor oral health or abnormalities that need attention and compiles it into a data report.
While these insights are not considered diagnostic, Feno has a dentist quality-checking information for precision and accuracy.
“We really try to be intentional about what we’re giving customers,” Brown said. “Seeing people and meeting them where they’re at is the best form of care, something you cannot capture with any tech. That’s humanity.”
My experience with the Feno Smartbrush
For me, in that two-week trial run, the Smartbrush worked.
My gums were initially sore (Feno notes this might happen) but my teeth felt… purified, as if all 18,000 bristles, vibrating in various directions, had extracted all the plaque in my mouth.
As new to the market as Feno is, there’s a lot yet to unfold about how well the Smartbrush performs and what the oral analytics reveal over time. At $299 upfront plus $10 a month, this system is asking you to make a significant investment. Still, I’m intrigued by this innovative approach.
After my trial, I decided to keep my Smartbrush. For the last three years, I’ve been told by two different dentists that I will need veneers before I’m 40. (An alarming statement for a 29-year-old who’s had braces twice.) Every six months, I leave my checkup increasingly anxious about what’s happening inside my mouth — or, to Brown’s point, my body — with no solution or long-term plan. Maybe this is the start of one.
As always, as a savvy consumer, you should do your research, talk to your dentist and consider your comfort level with spending on a pricey cutting-edge device.
Alongside brushing your teeth, twice a day.
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