Dyson has always been a disruptor. Sure, tech startups popularized the label in the early aughts, but Dyson was upending the vacuum category long before disruption entered the Silicon Valley zeitgeist. The problem founder Sir James Dyson set out to solve was simple: Traditional vacuum bags clogged, causing suction to drop. His solution was to replace the porous vacuum bag with a centrifugal cyclone separator, using high-speed airflow to separate dust from air. By 1986, Dyson had already licensed his bagless vacuum to a Japanese company. In 1993, Dyson introduced its mass-produced vacuum, the DC01, which helped turn what had been a utilitarian appliance into an elevated technology purchase.
Applying that same formula to another category ripe for engineering intervention: oral care. Today, Dyson introduced the $499 CameraJet, a toothbrush that brushes and water-flosses at the same time.
CameraJet comes at a time when oral care as wellness is on the threshold of becoming a boom. Oral care brands share shelf space with wellness brands at Ulta Beauty, while Bluemercury features anti-aging tooth serums and peptide-rich oral products. The US oral care products market was valued at $11.41 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $15.71 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research.
Long before the skinification of haircare and the sciencification of consumer expectations,
Dyson was creating categories in beauty by solving problems consumers had long considered unsolvable—one engineer at a time.
Damaging your hair from high-heat tools? Dyson has a solution for that. Blowing out and straightening hair taking too long? Dyson has a solution for that too.
But where did the hair problem-solving come from?
To tell the Dyson Beauty story, one must start with air.
The company's expertise in high-velocity airflow informed the Airblade hand dryer, which, introduced in 2006, uses an airfoil effect to scrape water from hands. By 2008, Dyson filed a patent for the Air Multiplier technology behind its bladeless AM01 fan and launched it in 2009.
The DC01, Airblade, and AM01 walked so the Supersonic hair dryer could run—and run without burning hair, it did. Traditional hair dryers relied on excessive heat and cumbersome motors that were “loud, heavy, and bulky,” yet “quite ineffective in drying hair,” Niamh Turney, Senior Commercial Manager at Dyson, told BeautyMatter.
Dyson’s solution was to put its compact V9 digital motor in the handle, which “spins much faster” and reduces reliance on heat, Turney said, while making the dryer lighter and more ergonomic for superusers like hairdressers. The Supersonic launched in 2016, helping create a new category in the process: premium hair tools.
Then came the Airwrap in 2018, taking aim at the extreme heat of traditional curling irons. Using the Coandă effect (the tendency of fast-moving air to follow a curved surface), Dyson engineered airflow to draw hair around the barrel, much like how cotton candy wraps around a paper cone.
So how did Dyson pivot from premium hair tools to oral tools? It all started with Dyson engineers wanting to solve a common problem: People just aren’t that good at brushing their teeth.
As is to be expected with any Dyson launch, CameraJet is not your average toothbrush. After six years of research, development, and engineering, Dyson launched the CameraJet, featuring anatomically shaped bristles that hug the teeth and a miniature camera. Powered by the company’s proprietary Gap Optical Targeting, the camera analyzes 28 live images per second to locate gaps between teeth, then shoots mouthwash into them while jet-washing the teeth. Cavity Creeps beware!
It also scratches the deeply satisfying itch of watching footage of plaque being blasted off your teeth through the app's live viewing feature. Instead of having your mouth light up like a crime scene when the dentist applies dye to show where you're not brushing effectively, the app can provide brushing and flossing insights, coverage mapping, and personalized feedback.
The CameraJet was born from Dyson engineers’ frustration with the inefficiency of the traditional brushing and flossing routine: “The current way of flossing, for example, is archaic. Twiddling string around your fingers, trying to get it in the gaps. I personally find it horrible.” There was a clear problem to solve,” Turney said.
Dyson innovates fast by taking its time. It took the company four years to develop its Supersonic hairdryer, six years to develop the Airwrap, and six years to develop the CameraJet.
Turney explained that one of the most important challenges of developing the CameraJet was the machine learning algorithm: “Lots of physiological and pathological differences between teeth, gums, and the orientation and the color of the gums,” Turney said. “We had to collect nearly half a million dental images in the development, and there are over 16 million lines of code in the CameraJet. It’s incredibly sophisticated in how it detects gaps, reacts to them, and predicts them.”
When it comes to testing a new product, the company takes multiple approaches, according to Turney. Dyson developed its own clinical labs in Singapore, which allow engineers to observe how the products are used to better optimize the real-world use of the CameraJet. “And these clinical labs, if you can imagine, are set up almost like a clean bathroom with sinks and mirrors, but the mirror is a one-way mirror so the engineers can observe how people are interacting with the device.”
The company evaluates how superusers, dentists in this case, interact with the product in one room, while in the next room robot arms run 24 hours a day, brushing typodonts (fake teeth models). “The robots replicate human brushing techniques to verify our technology.
So it's effectively a belt-and-braces approach,” said Turney.
Turney has been at Dyson since 2017 as an undergraduate engineer with the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, the company’s ferociously competitive higher-education program (only 30-40 students are selected from thousands of applicants). The cohort of students has the opportunity to study for a Master of Engineering degree in Engineering, tuition-free, while working for (and being paid by) the company.
Turney’s trajectory is itself a product of Dyson’s long-game approach to R&D: Invest in the engineers first, and think about where the engineering might lead later. CameraJet’s six-year journey from idea to launch is a luxury few companies can afford.
As a privately held, family-controlled company, Dyson shows in its 2025 results how willing it is to keep feeding its innovation engine even when top-line growth moves in the opposite direction. While Dyson does not report earnings for its beauty division separately, Sir Dyson highlighted record sales of the Dyson Airwrap in the 2025 earnings report. Revenue declined 6.7% to £6.13 billion ($8.3 billion), while EBITDA rose 18% to £1.11 billion ($1.5 billion). Still, Dyson poured more than £400 million ($541.7 million) into R&D, filed 252 new patents, and launched a record 13 products.
The company is clearly committed to its beauty division. In 2022, the company invested £500 million (~$679 million) over a four-year investment period to expand and build out its research and development across its beauty portfolio.
It is no secret that as soon as Dyson releases a new innovation, other brands are quick to try to dupe it. Dyson’s beauty tools typically range from $300 to $750, giving competitors an opportunity to attempt to appeal to more budget-conscious consumers.
If there are so many less expensive dupes out there, why do consumers continue buying Dyson?
Andrew McDougall, Director of Beauty and Personal Care Insights at global market research firm Mintel, said it all comes down to reputation. “Dyson, like Apple, just has gravitas around the brand, so they could almost charge what they want for products, and people will pay it again and again because the quality is almost assured. There is a perceived quality there.”
That perceived quality helped Dyson when the company first pivoted to beauty, according to McDougall. “Dyson entered beauty with outside expertise, but one that was already trusted. We trust Dyson's engineering credentials. It does help them, then, obviously, command that premium. They’ve come at it from the angle of finding a problem they want to solve rather than just sort of piggybacking on a trend.”
Dupes don’t even cross Turney’s mind. She’s too busy looking ahead. “We're always looking at the next problem to solve, and we stay focused on the engineering and keep pushing for better products and better solutions. And I think staying ahead means avoiding marketing gimmicks, focusing on technology that truly drives meaningful improvement. And generally, I think it's just a commitment to genuine innovation. And I think that allows us to stay ahead.”
The CameraJet will retail at Amazon, Sephora, Best Buy, and Costco.
For Dyson, the question has never really been which category or trend comes next. It’s about finding the next problem worth solving.