Instafloss vs Ontel Miracle Smile

While the mouthpieces may look similar, there are stark differences

We are very encouraging of any method or device that can improve your oral health. We’ll list the pros and cons of various methods, but ultimately we just want you to pick something that works for you. While the Ontel Miracle Smile may appear to be an equivalent to Instafloss, with its similar-looking H-shaped mouthpiece, there are a lot of details that differentiate each mouthpiece that you should be aware of before you make your purchasing decision.

Instafloss’ 12 jets vs Miracle Smile’s 4 jets. Does the number of jets matter?

For water flossing to be effective, water jets must clean all areas beneath your gumline and between your teeth. The areas you want to floss are highlighted here:

This is why manually tracing all these areas with a single jet takes so long.

Instafloss has undergone five years of research, which revealed (amongst other things), that the number of jets required to cover all these areas is twelve. That means three jets per quadrant (1.front of upper teeth, 2. back of upper teeth, 3. front of bottom teeth, 4. back of bottom teeth). The jets move in a straight line, covering these areas like so:

The instafloss provides overlapping coverage from the tip to base of every tooth.

In contrast, the Ontel Miracle Smile has only four jets, meaning only one jet per quadrant. This single jet moves in a straight line, which may miss areas that need flossing.

The Ontel Miracle Smile has only one jet which may leave parts of your teeth and gums unflossed.

Instafloss’ 90 degree jets vs Miracle Smile’s 45 degree jets. Does the angle of the jets matter?

The majority of the areas that a toothbrush cannot reach and that need to be flossed are underneath the gum line. The deeper underneath the gum line you can clean, the better. A study published by Eakle WS et al. showed that a water jet aimed at a 90-degree angle (such as the ones used by Instafloss) can reach up to 50% deeper beneath the gum line than a water jet aimed at a slant (such as the ones used by Ontel Miracle Smile), depending on pressure. The reason for this has to do with the “splash zone” and the angles at which water ricochets off a surface, but the bottom line is if you’re water flossing with a jet that isn’t at a 90-degree angle, you may be leaving areas underneath your gum line uncleaned.

Due to ricochet angles, a 90 degree jet can get deeper underneath the gum line where a toothbrush cannot reach.

A 45 degree angle, on the other hand, does not direct as much of the water underneath the gum line.

So, yes, the jet angle matters and we recommend you factor this into your decision making process.

How do the sizes of the mouthpieces compare?

One of the first things you may notice when comparing the Instafloss and Miracle Smile mouthpieces is that they are considerably different sizes.

The Instafloss mouthpiece is covered in a soft silicone.

There are considerable variations in teeth sizes and arrangement between people. These include different sized teeth or jaws, crooked teeth, spaced teeth, teeth with braces or prosthetics, and malocclusion. With these considerations, the Instafloss mouthpiece can fit 98% of people. In contrast, when we tested the Ontel Miracle Smile’s mouthpiece, we had difficulty fitting over the molars of multiple testers in our office — and the inability to fit over some teeth appears to be a common complaint online. Our testing of the Miracle Smile is far from a rigorous scientific study, but Ontel has not provided any data, that we know of, in regards to user fitting.

The water use in the Ontel Miracle Smile does not match the medical literature.

If you compare the jets of the Instafloss and the Ontel Miracle Smile, you will notice that the Miracle Smile’s jets are much thinner. We measured the flow rate of the Ontel Miracle Smile and it was about 2 mL/s per jet. This is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3x less water per jet than is used in almost all scientific literature on effective water flossing. While we can’t say for certain that this isn’t enough water for an effective water floss, we can say that we have never seen any study show effective results with such a small amount of water. The amount of water used by the Ontel Miracle Smile jets does not match the scientific literature, and as far as we’re aware, Ontel has not provided any studies of their own, so this is a cause for concern.

In sum, we recommend avoiding the Ontel Miracle Smile because:

• It has only 4 jets compared to Instafloss’ 12
• It does not appear to floss all areas of your gum line
• It does not appear to floss all areas between your teeth
• The jets are not at the dentist-recommended 90-degree angle
• The mouthpiece is too small to fit over some teeth
• The water flow per jet does not match the medical literature