Realme, a popular smartphone brand in India, ventured into the personal care segment back in 2020 with the launch of its M1 Sonic Electric Toothbrush. The toothbrush offered a premium look and feel, outstanding performance, and a long battery life. It also featured four cleaning modes, DuPont antibacterial bristles, and a high-frequency sonic motor. The toothbrush was priced at Rs. 1,999 and was available on Realme’s official website and Flipkart. Despite it being a decent product, it seems like the company has given up on toothbrushes.
For those unaware, electric toothbrushes have a motor, and they can create vibrations or rotations based on the brush you opt for, which helps you maintain your oral hygiene better than a regular toothbrush. While the whole toothbrush is replaced with a new one in case of regular ones, electric toothbrushes require a brush head replacement every 3 to 6 months, based on your usage.
Realme confirmed in reply to a user that the Realme M1 Regular & Sensitive Electric Toothbrush Head had been discontinued and removed from the official website. Without a brush head, an electric toothbrush is of no use. In Realme’s case, while the brand is still selling its M1 Sonic Electric Toothbrush via its website and other retailers for Rs 1,999, it has stopped providing replacement brush heads for a while now. Such an amount for a toothbrush is quite high, and with no brush heads available, the money is as good as wasted.
If Realme has discontinued the brush heads, then it should ideally stop selling the toothbrushes, too. However, it continues to sell the product on multiple platforms with no proper intimation regarding the discontinuation of the brush head.
Realme isn’t promoting its toothbrushes on its website either, which means the company could have stopped allocating resources to producing such healthcare products. Also, the last launch for its oral healthcare products took place in 2020, which is another reason to suspect that the brand isn’t interested in the segment anymore and has given up on supporting the existing products.
Moreover, the toothbrush appears to be using a Proprietary mechanism for the brush head, which makes it unlikely to find a compatible replacement from a third-party seller. In other words, Realme forces you to buy the brush head from them, yet they aren’t selling it anymore. There’s one more model called the Realme N1 Sonic toothbrush, which is, again, out of stock on all the e-commerce platforms.
Read More: Realme C67: The First 5G Realme C-Series Phone Could Debut Soon
Reasons behind the discontinuation of Realme Health Care products
Realme hasn’t specialised in making any healthcare products since its inception and has always been a smartphone brand. Considering the current situation, one can say that the brand was experimenting or perhaps it had a plan, both of which failed due to unforeseen circumstances, such as lowering demand and stronger competition.
As a result, we would always suggest you buy healthcare products from brands that specialise in that particular domain. As of now, Realme may be waiting for the stock to clear and could remove all product traces completely from its website once that’s done. It could very well be a vendor issue or the low popularity of the product that LED the company to stop selling the brush heads, the most important component in an electric toothbrush.
One should also consider the structural changes inside the company that could have been the driving motive behind this shift in strategy. Earlier this year, Madhav Sheth, who led Realme India and Europe, called it quits. Let alone toothbrushes, Realme’s smartphone launches have also slowed down ever since. In October, reports on the company’s exit from TV business surfaced.
Also, DIZO, Realme’s sub-brand, also unexpectedly disappeared back in May, leaving customers in suspense. DIZO’s CEO Abhilash Panda, had stepped down from his role. Users faced a similar situation in that case as well, where many users of DIZO products took to Twitter to complain that the brand’s companion app was not working on their devices. They were facing glitches and errors with the app not showing any information. Some users also reported that the DIZO app had been delisted from the Google Play Store. Additionally, DIZO’s customer support remained non-existent. Customer queries and complaints went unanswered by the support team.
All the instances above point towards the brand’s uncertain actions in India, making it difficult for the customers to build trust in the company.
Customers’ complaints
Customers have also been complaining about the poor after-sales support from the brand for the toothbrush. Many of them have been disappointed in how badly the brand has been treating its customers. One of the users said, “Using Realme N1 toothbrush and now can’t find brush head. Now the toothbrush is absolute loss and neither Realme is caring to list the same. Total waste of money and service”. The company has been replying to to users with a standard response telling them that it has discontinued the brush heads.
Realme Toothbrush Alternatives
As we mentioned, buying products from brands that specialise in them is always a better choice. With that in mind, you should definitely consider the Spark Infinity Electric Toothbrush from Caresmith. Priced at Rs 1,299 on Amazon and available via the brand’s website, this toothbrush offers three brush heads inside the box and has USB-C charging along with a travel case.
From our experience, we can confirm that the brush from Caresmith is a decent performer. After regularly monitoring the availability of the brush heads for a year, we can further confirm that they have been available on Amazon and the company’s own website regularly.
Brands like Oral B and Perfora also have impressive value-for-money products under their portfolio that can be trusted to provide consistent after-sales products.
Final Thoughts
While the brush heads have been discontinued, there’s still no word on when the brand will stop selling the toothbrush. Whatever the case, we would advise the readers not to buy any electric toothbrush from Realme until the brand clarifies the situation and confirms that it will offer better after-sales support for such products in the future. As of now, Realme has taken customers for a ride!