Do I need to charge my toothbrush via my monitor?

· Maximilian Beller

I am currently charging my shaver and my toothbrush through the USB hub of my Dell display in my office, and I'm trying to understand how it came to this.

Today I bought myself a new shaver, a Philips 3000 Series. My old one broke a couple of weeks ago and I tried wet-shaving in the meantime, but it's annoying, so I needed a dry shaver again. I bought it in store because I'm about to leave on vacation and didn't want to wait for a delivery. Luckily there's a Budnikowsky (a German "Drogerie") right next to my office. It was "just" 69 EUR, so I bought it off the shelf without much thinking. Not exactly cheap, but also not a real investment that justifies two hours of googling. How bad can the product be anyway?

The Philips 3000 Series shaver
The Philips 3000 Series.

You might wonder why I'm telling you about a shaver purchase. Well, there is some kind of pattern here that I'm still trying to figure out.

When I was back in the office, I wanted to charge the shaver before my trip, and it turns out it only comes with a USB-A cable. No charger in the box, just the cable. USB-A feels like how PS/2 felt in 2006: ancient, and in this case extremely annoying, because I don't have any real chargers with a USB-A port left, neither in the office nor at home.

The Philips shaver with its USB-A charging cable
Everything that comes in the box to charge it.

And then it all made somehow sense. A few months back my toothbrush, which also happens to be a Philips, broke down for good. To be fair, it was really old, so I was fine with buying a new one, and I bought the very same model. The old one came with a charging dock that had an actual plug for an actual wall socket. The new one has the same dock, except the cable now ends in USB-A.

The Philips Sonicare toothbrush next to an old-school charger with a real wall plug
For the younger readers: this is what toothbrush chargers used to look like. A real plug. For a real wall socket.

Who wants to charge their toothbrush through their laptop? Am I missing something here? Is the USB socket actually a real data connection to some kind of toothbrush or shaver computer, and this is "the future"? Or is it just much cheaper to put a USB-A cable in the box and let the consumer buy a real charger for 20 bucks on top? Is this it? Is this really it? But maybe I'm getting it all wrong.

Anyway, the only USB-A ports left in my life are on the hub of my Dell monitor, so I am now charging my toothbrush and my shaver through my display in the office, right next to my keyboard and mouse...

Is this the future?