Do I need to charge my toothbrush via my monitor?

Do I need to charge my toothbrush via my monitor?

July 24, 2026 · Maximilian Beller

I am currently charging my shaver and my toothbrush through the USB hub of my Dell display in my office, and I'm trying to understand how it came to this.

Today I bought myself a new shaver, a Philips 3000 Series. My old one broke a couple of weeks ago and I tried wet-shaving in the meantime, but it's annoying, so I needed a dry shaver again. I bought it in store because I'm about to leave on vacation and didn't want to wait for a delivery. Luckily there's a Budnikowsky (a German "Drogerie") right next to my office. It was "just" 69 EUR, so I bought it off the shelf without much thinking. Not exactly cheap, but also not a real investment that justifies two hours of googling. How bad can the product be anyway?

The Philips 3000 Series.

You might wonder why I'm telling you about a shaver purchase. Well, there is some kind of pattern here that I'm still trying to figure out.

When I was back in the office, I wanted to charge the shaver before my trip, and it turns out it only comes with a USB-A cable. No charger in the box, just the cable. USB-A feels like how PS/2 felt in 2006: ancient, and in this case extremely annoying, because I don't have any real chargers with a USB-A port left, neither in the office nor at home.

Everything that comes in the box to charge it.

And then it all made somehow sense. A few months back my toothbrush, which also happens to be a Philips, broke down for good. To be fair, it was really old, so I was fine with buying a new one, and I bought the very same model. The old one came with a charging dock that had an actual plug for an actual wall socket. The new one has the same dock, except the cable now ends in USB-A.

For the younger readers: this is what toothbrush chargers used to look like. A real plug. For a real wall socket.

Who wants to charge their toothbrush through their laptop? Am I missing something here? Is the USB socket actually a real data connection to some kind of toothbrush or shaver computer, and this is "the future"? Or is it just much cheaper to put a USB-A cable in the box and let the consumer buy a real charger for 20 bucks on top? Is this it? Is this really it? But maybe I'm getting it all wrong.

Anyway, the only USB-A ports left in my life are on the hub of my Dell monitor, so I am now charging my toothbrush and my shaver through my display in the office, right next to my keyboard and mouse...

Is this the future?