A powered toothbrush apparatus with capacitive touch control, which includes a head portion having an oscillating tuft block driven by a motor, a handle portion, and an elastically deformable capacitive touch control panel mounted in the handle portion. In one embodiment, the control panel includes movable sensor targets each paired with a corresponding capacitance sensor electrically connected to a programmable microprocessor. Applying finger pressure on the control panel adjacent a sensor target operates to change the capacitance of the respective sensor target-sensor pair. The microprocessor detects the change in capacitance, which may be used to control the motor speed for changing the oscillation rate of the tuft block. In one embodiment, a linear array of sensor targets-sensors is provided which is activated by a sliding finger or thumb motion across the array. A related operating method is disclosed.