Aren't you buying a toothbrush with a bunch of features you'll never use though? Why not just buy a less fully-featured privacy respecting toothbrush?

(Something is up with the world when you're thinking about toothbrushes that respect your privacy. It's like something out of a Douglas Adams book.)

Sure, but pretty much my only considerations were the quality of brushing, cost of new brushes, and general reliability. The one I thought was best and in-budget just happened to have these anti-features too, which fortunately I don't have to use.

It wasn't worth it to me to spend more time on it to see if I could find something without the connected crap.

(And I do wonder if the connected crap makes the device cheaper, since they're hoping to make money on selling user data.)

This is speculation, but maybe electric toothbrushes are going the way of TVs, in that most have “smart” features and you pay a premium for one without.