I applaud how serious the author makes this seem:

This could lead to a catastrophic brushing failure where the toothbrush runs out of power in mid-clean.

What a world we live in where even the toothbrushes can’t be trusted :(

The vendor has a deactivation process that will allow the toothbrush to operate manually with the radio disabled.

So… Assuming this deactivation process requires connectivity, once the base station dies, the toothbrush will be come unusable unless it’s been deactivated? Typical IoT.

A direct call to the sales channel resulted in the comment, “who the hell would want to monitor a toothbrush”.

I fully agree. It just sounds a bit weird coming from the vendor of SmartMonitor and associated toothbrushes.