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STRUCTURED COMPARISON
Choose two categories from the same family. The same properties, equal visual weight, sources next to the claims they support.
Household chemicals & care
All the caveats of the review apply to the manual brush too: in these trials it is the comparator. The abrasion experiment, where it looks gentler, is a machine simulation on samples — it answers a different question from the trials in people.
In the trials the manual brush is the comparator, not the measured side: the 11% and 21% express the difference relative to it. These works give no figure of its own for plaque removal by the manual brush.
Counted for this table only, not for the whole site.
There are two scales here, and the sides rank oppositely on them. On plaque removal, a meta-analysis of 51 trials in 4,624 participants gives the powered brush an 11% advantage in the short term and 21% in the long term, along with less gingival inflammation; the manual brush is the reference point in those trials. On dentin abrasion, a machine experiment at equal force and with one paste showed the reverse: over a simulated eight and a half years the manual brush removed 6.13 micrometres of surface against 15.71 and 21.03 for the powered ones. The limits differ for each scale: the plaque review calls its own quality moderate, its heterogeneity high, and the risk of bias unclear in forty-six of fifty-six trials; the abrasion experiment runs on samples from extracted teeth in a machine, not in the mouth.
FREQUENTLY EXPLORED
The review names its own limits: moderate quality of evidence, high heterogeneity between trials (I² of 83% and 86%), five of fifty-six trials at low risk of bias and forty-six at unclear risk. The review is from 2014 and the platform marks it stale; the 2019 work measures a single brushing rather than a habit.
A meta-analysis of 51 trials in 4,624 participants: plaque reduced by 11% short term and 21% long term on the Quigley-Hein index, standardised mean differences of -0.50 and -0.47. For gingivitis the differences are -0.43 and -0.21. A 2019 review confirms the direction on a single brushing: a mean difference of -0.14.
The flat-trim manual brush produced the smallest surface loss of the four tested: 6.13 µm against 15.71 and 21.03 for the powered ones. So the ordering on plaque removal is one way and the ordering on dentin abrasion the other, and the platform shows both without collapsing them into a verdict.
At an equal force of 2 N and with one paste, over a simulated eight and a half years of brushing, a sonic brush removed 21.03 µm of dentin, an oscillating-rotating one 15.71 µm, and a flat-trim manual brush 6.13 µm. The experiment is a machine simulation on samples from extracted teeth, and carries across to real brushing only with that caveat.
Evidence reviewed: September 3, 2026
Sources are reviewed by the CONTRAST editorial team. External links open in a new tab.