Waterpik Ultra Professional Review: For Everyone Who Owns Floss and Never Uses It

What Is the Waterpik Ultra Professional?

The Waterpik Ultra Professional (WP-660UK) is a countertop water flosser: a small pump unit with a 650ml reservoir that fires a pulsing jet of water through a handheld wand, blasting plaque and food debris from between teeth and below the gumline. Waterpik essentially owns this category — it invented the device in 1962 and backs it with the clinical literature dentists actually cite, including studies showing up to 50% greater gum-health improvement than string floss.

At £64.99 with a 4.3-star average from over 1,500 UK buyers, the Ultra Professional is the brand's definitive model: ten pressure settings, 1,400 pulses per minute, and seven tips covering everything from braces to bridgework. Its real competition isn't another gadget — it's the drawer full of unopened string floss it's bought to replace.

Design and Build Quality

The unit is a compact white countertop box, roughly kettle-corner sized, with the wand resting in a holster and four spare tips storing under the reservoir lid. The reservoir doubles as a cover and lifts off for filling and dishwasher cleaning. Build quality is medical-device sensible rather than pretty: solid plastics, a positive click on the pressure dial, a pause button on the wand itself — the control that matters mid-floss.

Tips swap with an eject button: three classic jet tips (colour-ringed per family member), an orthodontic tip with a tapered brush for braces, a plaque-seeker with bristle tufts for implants and crowns, and a tongue scraper. It's corded mains power — the trade for consistent pressure that cordless models can't sustain — so it claims a permanent socket-adjacent spot.

Performance

The first use is revelatory and slightly horrifying: even after a thorough brush, the sink evidence shows how much a brush leaves between teeth. The pulsing jet reaches the contacts string floss snaps into and — more importantly — flushes the gumline pockets floss can't enter at all. After three weeks of daily 60-second sessions, our tester's chronically pink-tinged rinse stopped, the classic sign of gingival inflammation calming. That matches the clinical data and the hygienist anecdotes that sell these machines.

The ten-setting dial is genuinely useful: new users start at 2–3 (firm but painless), settling at 6–8 within a fortnight; 10 is a power-wash for the committed. The 650ml tank comfortably covers a full mouth at high pressure with water to spare. Noise is a businesslike hum, louder than an electric toothbrush, shorter-lived.

For orthodontic and restorative work it has no equal: around brackets and under a bridge, the dedicated tips clean in seconds what threader floss takes painful minutes to do badly. The learning curve is real but short — lean over the sink, lips loose, let it drain — and after three sessions the splashing stops being a thing.

Key Features

1,400 pulses/min jet: the pulsation (not just pressure) is what dislodges plaque biofilm — the engineering Waterpik's studies are built on. 10 pressure settings: from post-surgery gentle to deep-clean firm, which is why one unit serves a whole household. 7 tips included: braces, implants, crowns, tongue — the full dental situation covered in the box. 650ml reservoir: whole-mouth capacity, no mid-floss refills.

Who Should Buy the Waterpik Ultra Professional?

Buy it if you: know you should floss and reliably don't — this is the version of the habit that sticks; wear braces or have implants, crowns or bridges, where it's simply the right tool; have early gum issues your hygienist keeps mentioning.

Skip it if you: genuinely floss with string daily and your checkups are clean — you've solved the problem already; or you have no countertop space, where Waterpik's cordless models trade some consistency for compactness.

Verdict

The Ultra Professional turns the most-skipped step in dental care into something closer to a pressure-washing satisfaction loop — and the gum-health results follow within weeks. It's not glamorous and it hums like a small appliance, but it's the rare health gadget with decades of clinical receipts behind it.

Rating: 4.3/5 — The flossing habit you'll actually keep, in a box.