Best bidet of 2023 | CNN Underscored

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The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 jump-started interest in bidets, and many American households have since made up lost ground in toilet technology. Now that we’ve come to our senses and started actually washing our butts, we’ve realized that the benefits of bidets go beyond feeling cleaner and fresher — switching to a bidet (and using toilet paper made from recycled fibers) can help you live more sustainably, helping to combat deforestation and offset the vast amounts of water that go into paper production.

If you’re one of the many adopting a bidet for the first time, it can be a confusing and intimidating process to find the right one. That’s why we spent more than three months meticulously testing 19 of the most popular bidets on the market to find the very best. Here are four we love.

Runner-up bidet seat

The Toto Washlet C2 uses a tank, so it doesn’t provide endless warm water, but its stream and dryer were more effective than the Alpha JX’s. Plus, its pre-mist and deodorizer features bring even more luxury to your bathroom.

If you’re looking for a low-cost bidet that’s simple to set up, effective and not overly complicated, the Tushy Classic 3.0 is definitely the bidet for you. While working on this story, we actually tested the Tushy Spa, not the Classic. (We’ve used the Tushy Classic in the past, but we didn’t officially test it again for this story.)

Out of the attachments, the Tushy Classic 3.0 had the most comfortable stream by far, and its adjustable nozzle made it much easier than others to get a thorough clean. While it’s a bare-bones bidet, you still get a solid range of pressure and directional adjustability so you can find what feels right for you. With attachments in general, we found ourselves using low pressures, as their streams felt more aggressive than their electric counterparts.

The Tushy Classic was also relatively easy to install, and the clear instructions are simple to follow, even if you’re not particularly handy. However, when installing any bidet, the most important aspect is making sure it’s compatible with your toilet. You should also find the water connections and try taking off your toilet seat beforehand so you know how everything works. Luckily, the Tushy Classic fits all two-piece toilets and most one-piece toilets (more on this below). If you’re still not sure if the Tushy will fit your specific toilet, you can check out more about Tushy’s compatibility here and even browse through its searchable list of toilets here.

While we love the Tushy attachment, there’s one big caveat: We found that the method used to supply warm water to the Tushy Spa — and all the other bidet attachments we used — wasn’t effective.

Since a toilet only has a cold water supply, to get warm water with a simple attachment like the Tushy, you have to hook it up to your sink’s hot water supply. There’s no internal heater, so your water temperature is completely dependent on how quickly your sink’s water gets hot, and even then you still have to flush out the water that’s been sitting in the hose before you get a warm wash. For that reason, we recommend you get the Tushy Classic over the Tushy Spa and avoid attachments altogether if you want to use warm water. If you do prefer a heated wash, we suggest you upgrade to a full bidet seat, like one of our picks, the Alpha JX or Toto Washlet C2.

The Tushy Classic 3.0 is a fantastic bidet for beginners and a great value at just under $100. No other bidet attachment was as comfortable to use as the Tushy, and it has a gentle yet effective stream, simple installation and easy-to-use controls along with adjustable pressure and direction. However, if you want more features such as warm water, a heated seat or a dryer, then you’ll have to shell out some more cash — but trust us, it’s worth it.

The Alpha JX bidet seat was the best overall bidet seat we tested, featuring the most desirable technologies at the lowest price. However, while the Alpha JX ended up on top, the race between it and our runner-up, the Toto Washlet C2, was incredibly close. Both have plenty of features you expect in a bidet at this price range, including a heated seat, dryer, full control of the stream’s pressure and direction, plus warm water. However, the Alpha JX has an unlimited warm water supply compared to the Toto’s limited one, which is what ended up pushing the Alpha into our winning spot.

Electric bidet seats can give you a warm water wash in two ways. The simpler and cheaper way is with a tank that’s built into the bidet. This tank holds a set amount of water and keeps it warm; however, when the tank is out of hot water, your wash turns cold. It varies from bidet to bidet, but typically these tanks provide about 20 to 30 seconds of warm water, which is enough for a normal wash in most cases. If you want a longer wash or want there to be hot water even if the bidet is used back-to-back, you’ll want a bidet that has a coil heating system. These bidets instantly heat the water as it passes through the bidet so you can sit there and enjoy the warm water for as long as you like.

During our testing, we saw a huge difference between the comfort of an infinite warm water supply and a limited one (if you think your shower getting cold is bad, you don’t want to know what it feels like when your bidet tank runs out). Normally, this coil heating system is reserved for bidets costing upward of $600, but the Alpha JX gives it to you for around $350 — more than $200 cheaper than its competitors.

Besides infinite hot water, the Alpha JX features a heated seat, a dryer and a fully customizable stream, all adjustable from a remote control. With clear buttons that are all labeled, it’s super easy to go through a wash and dry cycle, even if you’ve never used a bidet before. You can adjust the position, strength and temperature of the spray and see what level your settings are at with the small screen. Plus, the Alpha JX has a “Wash & Dry” button that runs through a complete wash and dry cycle with just one press.

The Alpha JX was also quite easy to put on our toilet, and while you have to replace your seat entirely, we were surprised to find that installing electric bidet seats in general isn’t much more complicated than installing bidet attachments like the Tushy. However, since you’re taking off your existing toilet seat, be sure to figure out if your seat is round or elongated, and buy the corresponding bidet (more on this below).

There are plenty of pros and cons between the Alpha JX and the Toto Washlet C2. Both are fantastic bidets that you’ll love having on your toilet. The Alpha JX has endless warm water, but the stream and dryer performance of the Toto C2 is slightly better. If you want that comfortable experience and don’t mind a tank heating system, read on for our full thoughts on the Toto Washlet C2.

If you don’t need endless warm water and want the best deal on the most comfortable wash and dry experience on the market, the Toto Washlet C2 is the bidet seat for you. While it has a limited warm water supply due to its tank, it delivers a luxurious wash and dry cycle and even has extra features like a deodorizer and a pre-mist that sprays your toilet bowl when you sit down.

The Toto Washlet C2’s stream is really its main selling point. It was the most comfortable out of all the bidets we tested, with a thick, aerated spray that gave us the best cleaning experience. The oscillation function on the Toto was a great way to get a fuller, more thorough clean, and it also features a front wash and pulsating feature, although we didn’t find the pulsing function to add much to the experience.

The Toto’s stream was definitely the most comfortable we tested, with a thick but gentle spray that adjusts to specific levels so you can find just the right pressure. Compared to the Alpha JX, the Toto’s stream felt fuller and a tad more comfortable. The adjustability of the Toto’s stream was also better, as the differences between each level were more subtle. The highest pressure on the Alpha felt just right to us, but the other levels were way too soft.

Once you’re done with your wash, the dryer on the Toto C2 — just like its spray — is best in class. It felt the most comfortable, with a wide, even dry that really helped us cut back on toilet paper use. Plus, you can adjust the dryer over three heat settings to find what’s most comfortable for you. It was superior to the drying experience of the Alpha JX (which did the job but took longer).

On top of an extremely comfortable and effective wash, the Toto also has some extra features that aren’t must-haves but definitely make your bathroom experience all the more luxurious. One of these functions is a pre-mist feature, which is only available on Toto bidets. It turns on automatically when it senses someone sitting on the seat and sprays a mist onto your toilet bowl to lubricate the surface, which helps keep it clean. The deodorizer is also automatic, activating once you stand up to help your bathroom stay fresh.

Instead of a remote like the Alpha JX, the Toto C2’s controls are mounted on a sidearm. If you want a remote for the extra convenience, or you’re worried a bidet with an arm won’t fit in your bathroom, the Toto Washlet C5 is basically the same as the C2 but features a remote and added user profiles for about $50 more. However, we actually liked the sidearm better because unlike on the remote, all the buttons are labeled, so there’s no need to decipher and memorize symbols, which means it’s simple to use even if you’ve never sat on a bidet before.

So if you’re looking for a feature-filled bidet that will give you a wash so comfortable and effective you’ll be wondering how you ever just used toilet paper, the Toto Washlet C2 is your bidet. But, if the idea of infinite hot water strikes your fancy, you’ll be better served by the Alpha JX or our luxury pick, the Toto Washlet K300.

If you want the best of the best in a bidet seat, you’re going to love the Toto Washlet K300. This electric bidet seat features the same top-notch spray and dryer of the Toto C2 and C5, but instead of heating water with a tank, the K300 utilizes a coil heating system like the Alpha JX for instantaneous, infinite warm water.

The Toto Washlet K300 has the most features out of all the bidets we tested and, along with the Toto C2 and C5, the most effective and comfortable spray and dryer. If you have the money to spend, we can’t recommend the K300 enough.

Getting the superior spray of the Toto bidets paired with endless warm water results in a truly luxurious wash. Plus, the K300 has all the extra fancy features of the C2 and C5, including an automatic pre-mist and deodorizer, along with the same remote as the C5. In addition to more convenient control, this remote gives you the ability to set user presets. So when you find your perfect seat temperature, water temperature and dry temperature, on top of your preferred pressure and position, you can save it to one of two presets so you can quickly access the perfect wash at the press of a button.

The only real setback of the K300 is that it only comes in an elongated shape, which means if you have a round toilet, you’re out of luck. If you do have a round toilet and still want a luxurious bidet, we loved the Bio Bidet Bliss BB-2000, which is available in round shapes. The BB-2000 had the second-most-comfortable spray experience, and on top of the oscillation stream you’ll find on many bidet seats, it had a fantastic massage function that was our favorite spray pattern of any bidet we tested.

So if you want the best of both worlds and want extravagant features, the best stream and dryer on the market and an endless hot water supply to boot, there’s no doubt you’ll love the Toto Washlet K300.

Bidets have so many features, shapes and technologies that it’s hard to keep everything straight. So if you need a little guidance, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about bidets so you can have a better buying experience.

The simplest bidets are bidet attachments, which install underneath your existing toilet seat. Think of the Tushy Classic 3.0; you’re not replacing your seat, just putting a thin attachment underneath it. These attachments are by far the cheapest option, but you’re sacrificing a lot of comfort. For one, we found the stream in all of the attachments we tried to be much harsher than any of the electric bidet seats we tested. Plus, as we mentioned before, bidet seat attachments don’t have internal electric heaters, rely on hot water from your sink and, in all the options we tested, didn’t actually get noticeably warm during the time we spent washing.

If you want predictable, adjustable heating and more control over the stream, you’ll have to upgrade to an electric bidet seat. Electric bidet seats definitely cost more, but for the investment you get a big upgrade in experience. The streams are gentler and more effective, the water actually gets warm and you get other technologies like a heated seat and — our favorite feature — the dryer.

Electric bidet seats with a good dryer are a great purchase because not only do they give you a better experience on the toilet, but if you use the dryer after your wash, you end up using less toilet paper, which is great both for the earth and your wallet. We were expecting to use less toilet paper with all the bidets we tested but quickly found that bidet attachments leave you needing to pat dry, which often takes just as much toilet paper as you’d normally use. For that reason, if cutting back on toilet paper is a big motivation for your bidet purchase, we’d definitely recommend getting one with a dryer.

Now, electric bidet seats vary a lot in price due to the wide range of features and technologies available. Typically, tankless units (that use a coil heater to provide unlimited hot water) are more expensive than those that use a reserve tank to store enough hot water for a single use. Most bidets with endless hot water will cost you somewhere around $600, though our top pick, the Alpha JX, comes in a couple of hundred dollars cheaper, making it a great buy.

Once you know what sort of bidet you want, you now have to ensure that it fits on your toilet. In general, the first thing you’ll want to check is if you have a one-piece toilet or a two-piece toilet. A one-piece toilet has no separation between the bowl and the tank behind it, whereas a two-piece has a gap between those two elements. Basically all bidets will fit a two-piece toilet (you’ll just have to check bowl shape, but more on that in a second), but some one-piece designs don’t leave enough room to fit an attachment. So if you have a one-piece toilet you’ll want to make sure you don’t have one with a French curve (where the frame of the toilet between the bowl and the tank curves up), and you should always measure the space between the bowl and the tank to make sure it matches your desired bidet’s requirements.

If you want an electric bidet seat, next you’ll have to measure your bowl to see if it’s elongated or round. Most come in varieties to fit both, so you’ll want to ensure the bidet you purchase fits correctly. To see which measurements are which, check out this compatibility guide from BidetKing.

We won’t walk you through bidet installation step by step, as it is surprisingly simple — not much more difficult than installing any replacement toilet seat, plus a little plumbing — and most instruction manuals are quite clear, but it is good to note that for all bidets, you’ll have to remove your existing toilet seat. With attachments you’ll put the seat right back on, but with electric bidet seats you’ll mount the bidet onto your toilet and get rid of your old seat and lid. It’s good to check out how your current seat mounts beforehand, as some lids have a quick-release function, while others screw off, so be sure you know how yours works, as it could affect your installation.

If you go into the shopping experience knowing exactly what kind of toilet you have and what kind of bidet you want, it’s much easier to find the perfect one for you. Plus, installation becomes easier when you know your bidet actually fits.

We tested 19 bidets over the course of three months to find the best ones on the market. To do that, we installed each bidet and used it for at least two days, noting the effectiveness and adjustability of all its features.

We broke up our testing into two main categories: performance, and quality and design. Within each category, we conducted various tests and examined every aspect of each bidet from ease of installation to number of features, spray quality and so much more.

Here’s a breakdown of all the tests we ran:

Quality and design

This bidet attachment had the second-most-comfortable stream behind the Tushy but still wasn’t anywhere near as comfortable. It’s got one knob that controls both the front and rear wash, but you’re unable to adjust the position beyond that.

The Omigo Element+ has a dedicated front and rear wash instead of the general adjustability of the Tushy and isn’t anywhere near as comfortable.

The stream on the Brondell SimpleSpa Thinline felt thin and more aggressive than the other bidet attachments we tried. It wasn’t a comfortable experience and we’d definitely recommend the Tushy if you’re looking for a low-cost bidet.

This bidet is a slight upgrade from our runner-up bidet seat, the Toto Washlet C2, adding a remote control and the ability to set two user presets. It’s a fantastic bidet with an ultra-comfortable stream and dryer.

This bidet is a solid option with a comfortable and effective stream. Its spray wasn’t quite as good as Toto’s, and its dryer didn’t cover the wide area that Toto’s did, but it was comfortable, and in general, we really enjoyed using this bidet.

The LE99 Swash from Brondell is very similar to the LE89, but instead of a sidearm control panel, you can adjust all its settings with a remote control. Just like the LE89, it’s a solid bidet, but it could definitely use some improvements on its dryer.

The spray on the Brondell Swash DS275 wasn’t as good as that on the Toto Washlets. And similar to the other Brondell bidets, we didn’t think the dryer was as effective as the Toto’s. It does come with a massage function and a deodorizer, but we think the oscillation of the Toto C2 and Alpha JX do the job better, and if you want a deodorizer, go with a Toto.

Like the Alpha JX, the Alpha iX Hybrid also utilizes coil heating technology to instantly heat your water, but the iX’s wasn’t as good as its more full-featured sibling. In our testing, the temperature varied a lot and got cold during our wash. The spray also felt thinner and more uncomfortable than a lot of other seats we tested.

The Bidetmega 150’s spray wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the Toto’s or the Alpha JX’s, and the dryer wasn’t as effective as either of our picks either. Plus, installing the Coway bidets was by far the hardest out of all the options we tested. The T-valve you use to connect your bidet to your bathroom’s water line is divided into parts, meaning you have to find the properly sized adapters to attach the bidet. It adds an extra, confusing step and also gives the connection more points where it could leak.

The Bidetmega 200 is the same as the Bidetmega 150, but instead of a sidearm it’s got a remote control. Like the Bidetmega 150, it didn’t have the best stream or dryer and was more of a pain to install than other bidets.

If you want a luxury bidet but can’t find the Toto K300, we’d pick the Bio Bidet BB-2000 Bliss. It didn’t perform quite as well as the Toto K300, but it has a very comfortable spray and dryer, and its massage function was our favorite stream pattern out of all the bidets we tested. The remote is more complicated than the Toto’s, so it takes a while to learn what all the symbols mean and what they do.

The Tushy Ace was another solid luxury contender, but its stream and dryer comfort just couldn’t cut it against the Toto K300. It also doesn’t have the extra features the K300 does like user presets, pre-mist or a deodorizer. But, if you’re a Tushy loyalist, you won’t be let down.

The Coway Bidetmega 400 had a similarly frustrating installation process as the cheaper Coway bidets. The Bidetmega 400 has more features than the 150 and 200, however, its spray wasn’t as comfortable or effective as other top contenders, even though it automatically goes through a four-stage washing cycle unique to Coway bidets. It’s a nice luxury bidet, but if you’re willing to spend a little more we think you’ll be better served by a Toto or the Bio Bidet Bliss BB-2000.

The Brondell Swash 1400 and Omigo Luxury Bidet seemed to be the exact same bidet seat with different branding. The Swash 1400 didn’t have the most comfortable stream, and its dryer felt like it was only hitting half of the area it needed to. If you’re going to spend this much money on a bidet, we’d recommend the Toto K300 or the Bio Bidet Bliss BB-2000.

The Omigo Luxury Bidet felt and looked identical to the Brondell Swash 1400 and had similar problems, with a lackluster spray and ineffective dryer.

Read more from CNN Underscored’s hands-on testing: