Dyson Won’t Say What’s Wrong With Its CameraJet Toothbrush

戴森拒绝透露其 CameraJet 牙刷究竟出了什么问题

There’s always a danger in over-complicating products. Simple is so often best. The apocryphal story of NASA spending millions crafting a space pen while Soviet cosmonauts used a pencil is often cited as a prime example, even if it’s actually not true. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Dyson has got into hot water trying to reinvent the electric toothbrush.

产品过度复杂化总是有风险的，简单往往才是最好的。NASA 花费数百万美元研发太空笔，而苏联宇航员却使用铅笔的传闻常被引用为典型案例，尽管这并非事实。或许戴森在试图重塑电动牙刷时陷入困境并不令人意外。

The Chinese invented the first bristle toothbrush during the Ming dynasty. That concept muddled along quite nicely until 1937, when Tomlinson Moseley filed a patent for the earliest electric toothbrush. After more than 400 years, the Motodent marked the beginning of an evolutionary shift from manual brushing to powered oral care.

中国人早在明朝就发明了第一把鬃毛牙刷。这一概念一直沿用到 1937 年，当时汤姆林森·莫斯利（Tomlinson Moseley）申请了最早的电动牙刷专利。四百多年后，Motodent 标志着从手动刷牙向电动口腔护理演变的开端。

Having had considerable success reimagining established product categories such as stick vacuums and premium hair dryers—though not so much air-purifying headphones—the company earlier this month, with great fanfare, unveiled the next leap forward for teeth: the $499 Dyson CameraJet with a tiny camera to aim streams of rinsing fluid into the gaps between your teeth.

戴森在重塑手持吸尘器和高端吹风机等成熟产品类别方面取得了巨大成功（尽管空气净化耳机表现平平），本月初，该公司大张旗鼓地发布了牙齿护理的下一个飞跃产品：售价 499 美元的 Dyson CameraJet。它配备了一个微型摄像头，可以将冲洗液精准喷射到牙缝中。

Others, like the Waterpik Sonic-Fusion 2.0, have already been daring (or foolhardy) enough to combine brushing and water flossing. However, Dyson upped the ante further by adding a macro-lens camera, allowing its “Gap Optical Targeting system,” trained on 470,000 dental images, to identify within 100 milliseconds precisely where to squirt fluid from the 12.5 milliliters of mouth rinse stored in its on-board reservoir.

其他产品，如 Waterpik Sonic-Fusion 2.0，已经大胆（或鲁莽）地将刷牙和水牙线结合在一起。然而，戴森更进一步，增加了一个微距镜头摄像头，使其基于 470,000 张牙齿图像训练的“牙缝光学瞄准系统”，能在 100 毫秒内精准识别喷射位置，并将内置储液罐中 12.5 毫升的漱口水喷出。

It’s taken Dyson six years, 38 patents, and an awful lot of money to make this camera-squirt-brush doohickey work. However, something has gone badly wrong with the CameraJet. So wrong that despite James Dyson globally launching the product at a Paris event mere weeks ago, you can no longer, as far as WIRED can ascertain, buy the CameraJet anywhere.

戴森花费了六年时间、申请了 38 项专利并投入了巨额资金，才让这个集摄像头、喷水和刷牙功能于一体的小玩意儿得以问世。然而，CameraJet 出了大问题。问题严重到尽管詹姆斯·戴森（James Dyson）几周前才在巴黎的活动上全球发布了该产品，但据《连线》（WIRED）调查，你现在已经买不到它了。

The CameraJet launched in US stores on September 8. Just a day later, reports began outlining the first user complaints of water in the battery compartment and failures within 30 seconds of use. Consumer Reports’ own review unit stopped working less than 24 hours after unboxing. On September 11, French outlet Numerama reported that the French Dyson site and stores had reportedly stopped selling the toothbrush. By September 15, stores in the US, UK, and Singapore, where Dyson’s headquarters now reside, had followed suit.

CameraJet 于 9 月 8 日在美国商店上架。仅仅一天后，首批用户投诉就开始出现，反映电池仓进水以及使用不到 30 秒就发生故障。《消费者报告》（Consumer Reports）的评测机在开箱不到 24 小时后就停止了工作。9 月 11 日，法国媒体 Numerama 报道称，法国戴森官网和门店已停止销售该牙刷。到 9 月 15 日，美国、英国以及戴森总部所在地新加坡的门店也纷纷跟进。

Despite the product disappearing from shelves and online stores, Liv Thomas, the company’s head of Beauty Communications, insists to WIRED that the CameraJet hasn’t been recalled. Instead, the gadget is “experiencing strong demand globally” and “shortages of supply as we are in the process of scaling up production.” Units will reappear supposedly in “the coming weeks.” But what about the multiple reports of breakages, leaking, and battery failures in multiple countries?

尽管产品已从货架和网店消失，但戴森美容传播主管利夫·托马斯（Liv Thomas）坚称 CameraJet 并未被召回。相反，她表示该产品“全球需求强劲”，且“由于我们正在扩大生产规模，导致供应短缺”。产品预计将在“未来几周内”重新上架。但对于多国出现的损坏、漏水和电池故障报告，又该如何解释呢？

“We have identified a single component issue affecting a small number of early batches,” Thomas says. “We have isolated those batches and are supporting affected customers.”

“我们已经确定了一个影响少数早期批次的单一组件问题，”托马斯说，“我们已经隔离了这些批次，并正在为受影响的客户提供支持。”

Thomas confirmed that Dyson would not answer questions on where—if anywhere—the Dyson CameraJet was still on sale worldwide. Nor would Dyson confirm when it stopped shipments of the product. Thomas also confirmed that Dyson refuses to detail what the faulty “single component” is, what problem it’s causing for the CameraJet, or how many units have been affected globally. Dyson also refused to comment on why it had not issued a formal recall of these faulty early batches of the $500 device.

托马斯证实，戴森不会回答关于全球何处（如果有的话）仍在销售 Dyson CameraJet 的问题。戴森也不愿确认何时停止了该产品的发货。托马斯还证实，戴森拒绝详细说明那个有缺陷的“单一组件”是什么、它给 CameraJet 造成了什么问题，以及全球有多少台设备受到影响。戴森还拒绝评论为何没有对这批价值 500 美元的早期缺陷设备发布正式召回。

Dyson Reddit forums have lit up, with names such as “ScameraJet” being bandied around, along with one disgruntled buyer commenting: “Bought two of these and both of them have stopped working. Since I bought it in the UK and wasn’t planning to return it and have thrown the packaging away, I can’t even return them. Disappointed that they scammed so good. Unbelievable that it lasted just two weeks.”

戴森的 Reddit 论坛上讨论热烈，诸如“ScameraJet”（骗局牙刷）之类的绰号四处流传。一位不满的买家评论道：“我买了两个，结果都坏了。因为是在英国买的，没打算退货就把包装扔了，现在连退都退不了。真没想到他们骗得这么彻底。难以置信，它竟然只用了两周。”

Kyle Wiens, CEO of the repair company iFixit, feels the problem may well be leaking. “This sounds like a waterproofing issue. Making products at scale with the tolerances required to waterproof are hard,” he says. “My guess without getting a chance to look at a failed unit is that we either have a tolerance issue where some parts aren’t mating perfectly, or a failure in the adhesive curing process, either during manufacturing or in shipping.”

维修公司 iFixit 的首席执行官凯尔·维恩斯（Kyle Wiens）认为问题很可能是漏水。“这听起来像是防水问题。在大规模生产中达到防水所需的公差要求是非常困难的，”他说，“在没有机会检查故障机的情况下，我猜测要么是公差问题导致某些部件配合不完美，要么是粘合剂固化过程出现了故障，可能发生在制造或运输过程中。”

Wiens says this adhesive-curing failure can happen in such a way that a product can pass factory testing fine, but then heat or humidity (or both) during shipping causes a problem.

维恩斯表示，这种粘合剂固化故障可能导致产品在出厂测试时表现正常，但随后在运输过程中受热或受潮（或两者兼有）而引发问题。

Adam Toner, founder and technical director of Ripcord Designs, a UK-based electronic design consultancy that has worked with multinational companies including Formula One Management and Panasonic, also thinks water is the CameraJet’s problem. “On a product like this, there just should never be any water ingress into the internals,” he says. “I don’t have one in front of me, but I’ve seen a few videos and people explaining how you change the battery. Once you pull the battery off—which is where people say they’re seeing water—it looks like there is probably access from that battery compartment into all of the internals of the device.”

Ripcord Designs 的创始人兼技术总监亚当·托纳（Adam Toner）也认为水是 CameraJet 的问题所在。该公司是一家英国电子设计咨询公司，曾与一级方程式管理公司（Formula One Management）和松下（Panasonic）等跨国公司合作。他说：“对于这样的产品，内部绝不应该有任何进水。我手头虽然没有实物，但我看过一些视频，人们解释了如何更换电池。一旦你拔下电池——也就是人们说发现水的地方——看起来电池仓很可能与设备的所有内部组件相通。”

The CameraJet not charging, overheating, or failing to start—all of that can be explained by water getting into the device, Toner says. He suspects the problem could be as benign as a faulty gasket or O-ring.

托纳说，CameraJet 无法充电、过热或无法启动，所有这些都可以用设备进水来解释。他怀疑问题可能只是一个有缺陷的垫圈或 O 型密封圈那么简单。

If water getting in does turn out to be an issue for the CameraJet, as these experts suggest, this begs the obvious question: How on earth has Dyson managed to spend six years developing a teched-up toothbrush, designed to be dunked in water every use, and that carries liquid around in it, yet fail to make it waterproof?

如果正如这些专家所言，进水确实是 CameraJet 的问题，那么一个显而易见的问题就出现了：戴森究竟是如何花费六年时间开发出一款高科技牙刷，明明设计初衷就是每次使用都要浸入水中，且内部还要携带液体，却偏偏没能做到防水的？

Wiens believes the CameraJet chaos could force a well-overdue rethink for Dyson. “Clearly they didn’t plan for this to happen,” he says. “They should ta

维恩斯认为，CameraJet 的混乱局面可能会迫使戴森进行一次迟来的反思。“显然，他们没预料到会发生这种情况，”他说，“他们应该……”