We flushed plastic balls, sponges, and water-filled condoms down toilets from American Standard, Glacier Bay, Kohler, Toto, and others to find the ones that don’t clog
Highly rated toilets, like the Cimarron from Kohler, are water-efficient, quiet, and budget-friendly.
By Pang-Chieh Ho
I like to think of the toilet as the workhorse of the home. The work it does might not be glamorous, but it’s incredibly essential. If you’re shopping for a new toilet, you’ll want to find models that flush better, use less water, and feel more comfortable to sit on. The better a toilet flushes, the less time you’ll also likely need to spend breaking out gloves and a scrub brush to clean the bowl.
Thanks to stronger flushing mechanisms, the best toilets in CR’s tests can clear out solid waste and clean the bowl well with one flush, even as they use less water (measured in gallons per flush, or gpf). Some have nonstick coatings that help with bowl cleaning, and elongated bowl shapes, which may be more comfortable for some people, though you may favor a round bowl depending on the size of your bathroom and the spot where the toilet goes. You’ll find that several toilets are available in both styles in our toilet ratings.
For those looking for an elevated bathroom experience, we’ve also tested smart toilets that offer built-in bidets along with other premium features, such as heated seats, warm-air dryers, air deodorizers, night-lights, and automated flushing and lid closure. Smart toilets, however, can be expensive—the priciest one we tested cost more than $3,000—so if you’re on a budget, it’s worth considering a bidet attachment. They are cheaper in themselves, and because you attach them to your existing toilet seat, they save you the cost and labor of installing a whole new toilet.
Based on our lab tests, you can see our Top Picks below, including both regular and smart models. There are dozens of other great toilets that have also earned CR’s recommendation, all of which are tracked in our full toilet ratings of over 60 models. And for more information on what to look for in a toilet, check out our toilet buying guide.
Best Standard Toilets
The four toilets below perform impressively in our tests that assess how well they flush waste and clean the bowl. The first two are single-flush models, and the last two are dual-flush, meaning you can use minimal water for most flushes and dial up the pressure for heavier needs. All of the models below are WaterSense certified by the Environmental Protection Agency, so they’re 20 percent more water-efficient than the typical models in this category and meet certain performance standards.
American Standard Colony 3 250DA104.020
The American Standard Colony 3 250DA104.020 is the highest-scoring single-flush toilet we’ve tested. Priced at under $200, this toilet is a strong performer: It earns an excellent score for solid waste removal and does a solid job of cleaning the toilet bowl, leaving few stains behind. It’s also fairly quiet. The single-flush toilet comes with a round bowl, which takes up less space in the bathroom. It’s a traditional two-piece toilet, and the toilet lid is sold separately.
Kohler Cimarron Rev 360 K-31668
In our lab tests, the single-flush Kohler Cimarron Rev 360 K-31668 impressed us with its solid waste removal abilities. While it might not be as quiet as the American Standard model above—it has a middling noise score—it’s better than the American Standard at keeping the toilet bowl clean with its flushes. This two-piece toilet’s height is ADA-compliant, measuring 16 ½ inches from the floor to the top edge of the bowl, making it easier to stand up from.
Glacier Bay N2428R-DF (Home Depot)
For a cost-friendly toilet, the Glacier Bay N2428R-DF (Home Depot) is a solid choice. It’s the top performer in the dual-flush toilet category, despite being one of the least expensive toilets we’ve tested. It aces our tests for solid waste removal and bowl cleaning, though its flushes earned it a so-so rating in our noise tests. The toilet’s height is ADA-compliant, making it easier for people with limited mobility to use. (The height from the floor to the toilet bowl rim is 17 inches.) The toilet bowl is available in a round or an elongated shape.
American Standard Edgemere 204BA200.020
The dual-flush American Standard Edgemere 204BA200.020 is top notch at flushing away solid waste and preventing clogs. It’s also very good at cleaning away stains from the toilet bowl, though its flushes are on the noisier side. Its 16 ½-inch chair-height bowl is ADA-compliant. The toilet has a two-piece design and a round bowl, and its lid is sold separately.
Best Smart Toilets
The two best smart toilets in our tests do a top-notch job at removing solid waste. Based on our tests, the bidets also clean well. Both toilets are WaterSense certified and ADA-compliant in height.
Horow Smart Toilet HRT38P
The Horow Smart Toilet HRT38P is one of the quietest smart toilets we’ve tested. It earns top-level scores for solid waste removal, and its bidet gets a solid rating for how well it cleans the user. Its bowl-cleaning ability, however, leaves something to be desired, with some residue remaining after flushing. (It’s worth noting that the toilet uses cleaning foam to reduce stains on the bowl, but in our tests, we used only the toilet’s flushes to clean the toilet and didn’t include the foam. When used with the foam, the toilet might have better bowl-cleaning performance.)
The Horow toilet features a bidet that self-cleans using UV sterilization, a warm-air dryer, a heated seat with four temperature settings, an air deodorizer, night-lights, and automated flushing and lid operation. It has a battery backup that keeps the toilet functional during a power outage, but you’ll have to purchase the battery separately.
Toto Washlet G5A Integrated Smart Toilet MS7631CEMFG
The Toto Washlet G5A Integrated Smart Toilet MS7631CEMFG is a well-rounded performer: It’s very good at flushing out solid waste and leaving the bowl clean afterward. The bidet has an excellent rating for how well it cleans users, though its noise levels earned it a middling rating in our noise tests.
The toilet uses electrolyzed water to self-clean its bidet. It also has a bowl-misting function that helps reduce stains and makes cleaning easier. Other features include a warm-air dryer, an air deodorizer, night-lights, automated flushing, and automatic lid opening and closing. While the toilet might be on the pricier side, established brands like Toto are more likely to provide the robust customer service and support needed if components of your electric toilet fail or wear out.
What to Consider When Buying a Toilet
It’s easy to overlook key considerations when buying a toilet, such as extra accessories or hardware needed for a complete assembly, or even regulations that may restrict which type of toilet you can buy, depending on where you live. Here are some things to consider:
State-level restrictions. A small number of the toilets tested by Consumer Reports aren’t available in a handful of states. California, Colorado, Georgia, New York, Texas, Washington, and others have banned the sale or installation of toilets that don’t meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense standard of 1.28 gallons, on average, per flush. But don’t worry: Most toilets in our ratings (including all the top-rated toilets listed here) are WaterSense certified, refuting the myth that efficiency has to come at the cost of performance.
Variants. Double-check that you’re getting the specific model you want. Toilets with similar model names or numbers often come in multiple variants, such as different bowl shapes.
Seats and hardware. Some toilets recommended by CR don’t come with a seat, a wax ring, or mounting hardware, so you may need to buy those separately. Expect to pay at least $40 more for the necessary accessories.
Smart toilet installation and maintenance. A smart toilet has requirements for installation beyond those of a standard toilet. For one, you’ll need a 125-volt ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) outlet that the smart toilet can plug into. (A GFCI outlet protects from electric shocks and is required by code in bathrooms.) Some smart toilets are tankless and may require your water supply to be within a certain pressure range to flush properly.
Smart toilets also require some maintenance. The bidet’s water filter and the air deodorizer’s filter will need to be replaced regularly, as do the batteries in the toilet’s backup system (if the backup system is powered by batteries).
How CR Tests Toilets
To develop our in-depth toilet ratings, Consumer Reports’ engineers put the fixtures through a battery of tests involving waste removal, bowl cleaning, and drain-line clogs. We also use a decibel meter to measure how loud a toilet’s flushes are. Based on performance in these tests, we give each toilet an Overall Score.
To test solid waste removal, we dump marble-sized plastic beads, weighted sponges, and water-filled condoms into the bowl and measure how well each flush handles the simulated waste. We also look at how well a toilet moves waste from bowl to sewer and whether there’s enough force to make sure the waste doesn’t get stuck, especially if waste needs to travel a long way to the sewer.
We use a combination of methods to assess how well a toilet cleans the entire bowl. First, we use water-based red paint to create a solid rectangular shape above the waterline in the front bottom of a clean bowl. We take a picture of the red rectangle, then the toilet is flushed two times. After the second flush, we take a second picture to record how much paint has been removed.
A second way we test how well a toilet cleans waste: We let the bowl fill up, then draw a line around the bowl with a water-soluble pen about an inch below the rim. Next, we flush. We then measure how much of the pen mark remains. The better a toilet cleans, the less marking and paint are left. We repeat the pen test three times and calculate the average to arrive at a score.
To gauge soil and odor potential, we measure the length and width of the bowl, as well as the depth of water inside. The deeper and wider the bowl, the better solid-waste odors will be trapped by the water.
For noise, we measure the decibel level of a toilet’s flushes in a silent chamber.
And for bidet cleaning, which we test only in smart toilets, not regular toilets, we smear Nutella on a clear piece of Plexiglass, then turn the bidet on its highest setting and see how much Nutella it washes off.
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