The 6 Best Bidets For Your Bathroom, Based On A Year Of Testing
After testing ten bidets and washlets from 2023 to 2024, I found the Toto C5 Washlet to be the best bidet overall because it includes several user-friendly functions like an illuminated remote, a deodorizer, a pre-misting option that makes toilet cleaning easier and two preset options that allow users to customize their settings. During the year and a half I spent testing this bidet, I also found the Toto customer service team to be fast, helpful and easily accessible.
After testing 10 top models over 2023 and 2024, these are the seven best bidets you can get.
The best bidets do more than wash your butt—more advanced models (like the ones included on this list) have additional features, like an air dryer, heated seat, remote-controlled temperature and pressure control, deodorizer and even a nightlight for your toilet bowl. If you’re looking for the most luxurious bidet seat we tested, go for the Toto S7 Washlet. If you’re bidet-curious and not willing to spend a lot of money, or if you don’t need the extra features that the Toto models have, the Alpha JX Bidet, the Luxe Bidet Neo 120 or the Tushy Classic 3.0 are great beginner-friendly options. You can read my in-depth Toto C5 Washlet review for more details, too.
Toto, founded in Japan in 1917, is known for its high-end toilets. In fact, during March 2020, Toto sold out of its entire stock of bidet seats in the U.S. within two weeks. The Toto C5 Washlet demonstrates why the brand is so popular. It has the best combination of useful features, simple installation, sleek aesthetics and intuitive, easily adjustable functions of all the bidets I tested. Installing the Toto was a snap—the only difficulty I had was figuring out how to place the bolt anchors for the seat into the toilet, a process that involved a little trial and error.
Every electric bidet seat I tried had a tube that connected the seat to the main water supply. Unlike other models, though, the Toto came with the tube already attached to the seat. That means that you won’t have to attach one end to your water supply and one to the seat. It’s a small thing, but it made installation easier, because there was only one end of the flexible hose that I needed to tighten and check for leaks. In most other models, I had to double-check both the end of the tube that connected to the water supply and the end that went to the seat to ensure there was less potential for leaks.
You won’t have to attach the tube on your Toto to your water supply, which means an easier install.
It was also an innovation that proved important as I tested the bidet seat over time. After several months of use, the tube that connected the bidet seat to the water supply sprang a leak, rendering the bidet seat temporarily inoperable. I worried that having the tube already attached to the seat would make switching out the part impossible, but a phone call to Toto’s customer service team proved quick and helpful. They sent a new hose within 3 days, and replacing the part was no trouble. Within 15 minutes of the part being delivered to my house, the Toto was working again. The customer service representative also reminded me that I was in the scope of the warranty, so if for whatever reason the problem hadn’t been so easily addressed, they would have shipped a replacement.
In general I found the Toto pleasant, intuitive and even fun to use: This model turned me from a bidet skeptic to a bidet enthusiast. The dual-sided remote was easy to read and adjust. The Toto quickly and easily washed away the shaving cream that I put on a piece of plastic wrap. It took 12 seconds, but most of that was waiting for the nozzle to emerge from the base of the bidet seat and begin spraying. It also included a function that no other seat did: a “premist” function that sprays the toilet bowl with water to prevent poop from sticking to the sides.
It also has a deodorizer in the seat (essentially a small fan in the seat that activates to quickly disperse the smell), which only one other model I tested, the BioBidet, has. The deodorizer cartridge does need to be replaced every so often (Toto recommends six months). In my year of testing out the Toto C5, I’ve replaced the cartridge once. It was a relatively simple process, but it does add to the overall cost of upkeep; cartridges range from around $30-44 at time of publication.
The Toto’s remote also includes two user preset functions. That means you can customize your water pressure, angle and water temperature and save the setting, rather than having to recalibrate it every time you use the bathroom, which is useful if more than one person is using the bidet. While it’s useful for dialing in your particular pressure and angle preferences, I found that once my partner and I had the settings to our liking, I didn’t adjust them very much.
The Toto has a hot water tank, which runs out of hot water after about a minute of use. In a year of using the Toto, there wasn’t a single time when the hot water ran out before I was done, and I suspect that that a minute is more than enough for most people to wash themselves, so I wasn’t bothered by it. Once the hot water runs out, it also just fades to cooler water, so it isn’t an abrupt shift from hot to cold.
One drawback of the Toto is that the closed toilet seat itself isn’t sturdy enough to sit on. Sitting on the seat is just fine, but the closed lid might crack under the weight of someone sitting on it. I also found that over the course of using the C5 Washlet for many months, the Toto slowly drifted out of alignment with the toilet bowl. Adjusting it back to its correct position usually just required a quick nudge, but once or twice I had to take the seat off the fitting on the toilet and snap it back on.
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The Toto S7 Washlet is a bidet-lover’s bidet. It includes all the features that make the Toto C5 great, like an easy-to-install design, great customer service, deodorizer, premist function, and dialed in user settings, and expands on them. With the S7, you get four user settings compared to two on the C5, making the S7 useful for a larger household with multiple people using the same bidet. It also eliminates one of the few drawbacks of the C5 by including an instant, tankless continuous hot water heater, so you have as much hot water as you want for every bidet session. It also has an updated design that allows the bidet seat to nestle in closer to the toilet tank when you install it, eliminating the gap between bidet seat and the toilet tank that can collect grime and be annoying to clean.
The S7’s design improvements also include the option of two different toilet seat styles, one with a smooth edge and one with a beveled edge. Like the C5, you control the S7 with a remote. Unlike the other electronic bidet seat models I tested, however, the S7 remote is laid out horizontally rather than vertically, which makes it easier to read and navigate because the buttons are larger and easier to access. The S7 also has more settings to adjust than the C5, including several different temperature options for the dryer, and the option to hook up to an auto-flushing toilet, should you happen to have one of those. It’s a more expensive model than the C5, but if those extras are worth it to you, it’s an excellent upgrade choice.
If you’re interested in everything that the Toto C5 has to offer, but the idea of having a remote that controls your bidet isn’t as appealing as having buttons attached to the toilet itself, the Toto C2 is the washlet seat that I’d recommend. The C2 model has all the excellent features that the C5 offers, including a pretty identical installation process. It has the heated seat, the two user presets, the deodorizer function, and the premist for the toilet bowl. The only difference between the model is that the C2 has a side panel that attaches to the toilet to operate the bidet settings, rather than the C5’s remote. It’s also slightly less expensive than the C5.
The side panel has the advantage of being securely attached to the toilet, meaning that you can’t misplace it. If you live in a household with small children who are entranced by remotes, or if you are otherwise worried about misplacing the remote to your washlet and rendering the system temporarily inoperable, that might be a compelling case for a side panel bidet. In my year and a half of testing the C5, I’ve kept the remote in its holder attached to the wall next to the toilet, so I’ve never misplaced the remote or even moved it all that much, but your household may be different.) The C2’s side panel does require a bit more shifting and moving to use, so if that’s a concern, I’d recommend sticking with the C5. In every other respect, the two systems are identical.