Glo Brilliant Personal Teeth Whitening Device Review
Article Updated: 04/15/2018.
Is all this worth it?? Let’s find out!
The Glo Brilliant Personal Teeth Whitening System makes some pretty spectacular claims about at home teeth whitening. As a dentist I’ve gotten a lot of marketing materials from this company pushing their products pretty heavily. I even had a couple of my staff members use this system at home and in my office to see if it actually does what it says it does.
Let’s take a look at their claims to see if this system is worth the cost ($176 for the whole system at the time of this writing).
The Claim: “Get your smile 5x whiter in 5 days”
This statement, which is currently featured broadly on the right side of their website, is quite deceiving. What they actually mean is that their studies have shown that people get 5 shades lighter with their system. As you can see from the chart, 5x lighter isn’t necessarily 5 shades lighter. Most white strips and also can easily get you 5 shades lighter.
My staff members who used this saw a slight lightening of their teeth. It wasn’t a major change and definitely not 5x whiter.
The Claim: “No trays needed”
Yes, no special trays are needed. You may think this even sounds like a positive for the system. For me, no custom made trays is actually a negative…
They claim the gel is easily applied, stays in place, and is sealed in place with the mouthpiece. Teeth whitening is dependent on the concentration of bleaching material and the amount of time it is applied to the teeth. You need both of these for effective whitening. While the gel may eventually stick to the teeth, your saliva very easily washes it away. The tray isn’t a perfect fit to your teeth and therefore can’t seal around them to keep the gel in place. The only way to get a good seal is a custom tray that fits to your teeth specifically.
The Claim: “NO Sensitivity”
They claim that all sensitivity is a result of bleaching gel getting on your gum tissues. While some gum irritation can occur with any type of bleaching material, it is not the major cause of sensitivity. Sensitivity / zingers develop in your teeth because the whitening materials literally lift some of the stain and debris out of the outer layers of the tubules in your teeth. This makes it so that your teeth are temporarily more sensitive to hot and cold. I’m skeptical of any company that claims that no one will develop sensitivity. With bleaching, some people will always develop sensitivity. Lower concentrations of bleaching agents can reduce the incidence but can’t make it go away entirely.
My staff members who tried this system actually developed some temporary sensitivity after bleaching. This is OK, but it isn’t what the marketing materials claim for this system.
The Claim: “Light and heat from the mouthpiece make it work more quickly”
Lights generally don’t make whitening materials work any more quickly, especially not at the wavelengths used by this product. It does look pretty cool though.
Heat can make bleaching materials work more quickly and the mouthpiece does deliver some heat (not enough to burn or hurt you). I’m not sure how effective this is though as compared to traditional bleaching. Based on results from my staff members, I didn’t find it to be anything special.
My Conclusion:
Don’t waste your money. Many of their claims are too good to be true. It makes for some great marketing pieces but fails to deliver the results to back it up (at least in the couple of cases that we tried). You will get whitening with this system. You won’t get enough results to justify the price. You’re going to spend a lot of money for a system that isn’t going to work appreciably better than white strips. You could buy 3-4 boxes of white strips for the same cost as this system. You’ll get far better whitening by using all the white strips than you’ll get from this system. In fact, spend just a bit more and get custom trays made at your dentist and you’ll get far better results. Custom trays and gel at my office are only $199, which guarantees good whitening results for most people.
Dr. Nicholas S. St. George, DDS
March 22, 2017 @ 5:40 pm
Thank you for the product review!