What Toilet Should I Buy?

My friend Oskar and I stormed more than ten Japanese toilet showrooms on a quest to uncover a throne fit for a king!

For the last seven weeks I have been running a Peter‑Lynch‑style investment run on the smart‑toilet market: Pulling SEC filings, haunting Reddit bidet threads, peppering plumbers with questions, and even making the pilgrimage to the TOTO Museum in Kitakyushu to stare reverently at the humble beginnings of the world’s best toilet maker.

Yes, I actually dragged my wife to the TOTO museum for this article

Why the madness?

Two reasons: First, I once interned for an Indian NGO that installs low‑cost loos for women in rural Bihar. Seeing sanitation move the needle on both dignity and public health hard‑wired a fascination with toilets into my brain. Second, I am circling TOTO stock for the KonichiValue model portfolio, and as any Lynch disciple knows, you do not buy a company until you kick its product harder than its marketing department ever would.

That is how last weekend found me and my Swedish friend Oskar (new house outside Stockholm, five years of Japan experience, zero patience for “dry wipe” hygiene) “toilet‑shopping” like an odd couple of bathroom sommeliers.

We toured over 10 showrooms on his time here in Japan and boy do we have results…

Smart‑toilet adoption is rocketing. Japan crossed the 80 percent household‑penetration line years ago, while US bidet sales have grown at least 20 percent every year since the pandemic.

For investors and homeowners alike the obvious question is: Which brand actually deserves your backside – and your capital?

Below are the results of our extended butt‑test, scored with all the kindness of a short seller.

Three brands made the cut: TOTO, LIXIL (INAX / Grohe / American Standard), and Duravit. We graded a flagship model and a cheaper “gateway drug” for each on comfort, tech, installation pain, and value.

Ten is perfect, one sends you crawling back to a chamber pot.

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TOTO (Flagship: Neorest NX2. Mid-range: Retrofit Washlet S7A)

• Neorest NX2: comfort 10, tech 10, install 6, value 4.

  

• Washlet S7A: comfort 8, tech 8, install 10, value 8.

  

TOTO’s secret sauce is the geeky chemistry that outsiders never see. Ewater+, an electrolyzed rinse that sterilises the bowl after every flush, means fewer harsh cleaners; Actilight bakes away grime with ultraviolet light on the ultra‑premium versions.

Neorest NX2 is literally the best toilet money can buy! No other OEM showed comparable lab documentation. On the downside, the NX2 lists for the price of a used car and weighs enough that you must pay a plumber to shoehorn it into a mid-sized bathroom.

The Washlet S7A seat, by contrast, could be slapped onto Oskar existing Drake bowl in twenty minutes and instantly halved his future toilet‑paper budget (yes, you still need to wipe with a bide, just way less).

LIXIL (Flagship: Satis G. Luxury: DXV AT200. Mid‑range: Advanced Clean 100 via American Standard)

• Lixil Satis G: comfort 9, tech 10, install 6, value 6.

  

• American standard: DXV AT200: comfort 8, tech 9, install 7, value 7.

  

• American Standard Advanced Clean: comfort 7, tech 8, install 8, value 9.

  

Foam Cushion that kills splashback, Air Shield that traps odour inside the bowl, dual nozzles for gender‑specific cleansing – the Satis line is loaded. Honestly though, it is almost as much as TOTO NX2, and not nearly as good, so just skip it if you have this much money to splurge on a toilet.

DXV delivers almost everything TOTO offers without the sticker shock, and it looks like a normal toilet – an underrated virtue when spouses are voting. But the lid feels thinner than Japanese rivals and the dryer blows lukewarm at best.

The Advanced Clean 100 is much more interesting. Unfortunately for Lixil, the brand schizophrenia is real: In Tokyo it is INAX, in Berlin it morphs into Grohe Sensia, in Chicago it becomes American Standard SpaLet. Good luck Googling spare parts.

Still, the Advanced Clean 100 gives you auto‑open, auto‑flush and a five‑level seat heater under three‑grand and Good Housekeeping called it the “Most Versatile” pick of 2025. However, seat height is a low‑rider 15 inches, so Oskar (six‑foot‑two) vetoed it after one squat.

Public‑health footnote: LIXIL’s SATO division has already improved sanitation for more than 35 million people and is targeting 100 million by 2025 (SATO - A better life. Every day.). The fanciest bidet on earth still flushes into the same global sewer of problems that low‑income regions face. Any brand closing that gap earns extra karma in my DCF model.

Duravit (High-end: SensoWash Starck f Plus. Mid-range: SensoWash Classic seat)

• Duravit Starck f: comfort 10, tech 9, install 2, value 5.

  

• Duravit SensoWash Classic: comfort 8, tech 7, install 6, value 6.

  

This is the classic high-end European toilet style: Modernism 101. Wall‑hung elegance, app presets, energy‑saving heated seat, and HygieneGlaze ceramic that nukes bacteria. Amazing for looks, less so for repairs… First you need to hide all the plumbing in the wall, and second, you need to break that wall if anything breaks.

The cheaper Classic seat clips onto any Duravit bowl but ditches auto‑open and full seat heating and you are still paying a design premium. Pure eye‑candy.

What did Oskar finally buy?