Actually, at this moment, we are especially up-to-date on the question of the topic line. We are remodeling our powder room (the bathroom that guests in our home use), and one of the primary reasons is to make it adaptable to a washlet-style seat. My spouse's sister and her husband have had Toto Washlets in both their upstairs and downstairs bathrooms in their home in Kamakura since the early 1980s, and we perforce use those appliances every year when we visit them and stay in their home; our home in the United States has seemed deficient without one. Last month, before our annual visit to Japan, I looked into the options, and one (very slightly, at its feature level) cheaper attractive on the North American market is the INAX Clessence. I admit that, in all my years spent in Japan, the brand INAX had not registered on my consciousness until last month. That changed in a hurry. After deplaning at Narita International Airport, I used the restroom in the Customs area while awaiting the arrival of our bags. All INAX fixtures. The next day, we met friends at Ginza 4-chome to see the art exhibition in Wako Department Store, and, looking down Ginza Doori, I saw a large INAX logo atop a building on the other side of Yurakucho. When I commented on it, our friends responded that the INAX Showroom and Gallery had become a favorite meeting place in central Tokyo, so we went there after Wako. Six floors, including one floor devoted to a gallery. Very hgh-end plumbing fixtures, including complete toilets, tile bathtubs, vessel sinks, high-end plumbing fixtures for both kitchen and bath. Everything was very elegant and understated, in the manner of the Dornbracht fixtures sold in the United States. When we mentioned INAX to our sister and her husband that evening, their comment was that INAX was absolutely top-rate --- if you can afford it. In Japan, INAX "advanced toilet seats" sell for a premium above the price of similarly spec'ed Toto Washlets. Very much the same kinds of comments, we found, were made unanimously by others, similar to comments about Miele appliances here. We took a side excursion down north (in Japanese, any trip away from Tokyo is "down," even when the direction is north) to visit friends and relatives in Sapporo. In the brand new terminal at Haneda International Airport, all of the fixtures were INAX. At Chitose Airport, all of the fixtures were INAX. We stayed in the new (opened mid-2009) Mercure Hotel in Sapporo, and all of the fixtures in our room and all of the fixtures in the restroom off the main lobby were INAX. Yes, we have used Inax "advanced toilet seats," in several locations, and in every respect they seem at least as well built as any Toto Washlet we have encountered, and they function flawlessly. For our part, we have decided that the "washlet" that goes into our remodeled powder room will not be a Toto Washlet but will be an INAX Clessence. Here is a link that might be useful: History of the company that makes INAX

janesylvia: "I know TOTO washlet S300 is good. But it's $900, kind of expensive. I don't know if the COCO bidet 9500R (about $450)is as good." Janesylvia, the very fact that we cannot offer an opinion as to the Coco Bidet may be the point of our "opinion" of alternatives to the Toto model. We travel back and forth to Japan several times a year -- and as you know Japan is where the advanced toilet seat technology was invented and is constantly being improved upon. We have seen and "tried" many different models of advanced toilet seats when in Japan (where I happen to be while typing this), but every single one of them was either a Toto model or an Inax model. We have seen other brands, less expensive, of advanced toilet seats for sale in discount stores, but never have we seen any advanced toilet seat that was not either an Inax or a Toto in any public facility or in a home. Inax and Toto completely dominate the Japanese market, which is the most sophisticated market in the world for this specific genre of product. As a matter of personal preference, we prefer the two-wand design of the Inax line -- which allows the posterior cleaning wand and the feminine cleaning wand each to be positioned for the respective optimal angles of incidence of the spray -- to the one-wand design of the Toto models, but that may not be as important to you as it is to us. To underscore the latter, for our own home in the Unted States, we purchased an Inax (the Clessence model that does not have a remote control) for a price about half that of the Toto S300. We are happy with our Inax, and we do not experience the initial "cold moment" that crops up as an issue in the (very positive) Amazon.com reviews of the Coco to you which you linked. Here is a link that might be useful: Other options to consider

Thank you everybody! We bought S300 washlet - decided to go for the best in this case. It should be installed next week - we are doing complete master bathroom remodeling. Have to say that this board was huge help, especially the tread about best bathroom remodeling ideas!

dianne47: "There are many brands of bidet toilet seats. We're very happy with our Coco 6035R and I recently bought a USPA 6800 (which appears to be identical to the Coco, down to the same remote control)." You are correct, of course, that there are many brands of advanced toilet seats, but the number of makers are probably a small fraction of the number of brands. As you may suspect of your respective Coco and USPA toilet seats, there is a possibility, maybe even a probability, that they both are made by the same third party and merely marketed by Coco and USPA, either of which marketers may change its subcontractor/supplier from time to time. Even for Kohler, which sells a lot of toilets in the United States, advanced toilet seats comprise only a tiny segment of sales, and although I would not be shocked if Kohler expended the cost of R&D and the commitment of valuable production lines to the manufacture of such seats, I would be mildly surprised if Kohler did not instead subcontract the R&D and production for a niche product so near to the margin of its line of business. In Japan, where most toilet seats, both those installed in construction of new homes, apartment, and in commercial offices, hotels, and restaurants, and replacement seats for those applications, are of the "shower" or "advanced" or Washlet variety, I am aware of only three major makers of such toilet seats: Toto, Inax, and Toshiba. As here, there are many brands, of course, but, looking carefully at them, most of the off-brand seats appear to be just like models made by the major manufacturing companies, and may just be rebranded by their marketers. There are not a lot of moving parts to break down in an advanced toilet seat as there are in, say, an automobile, but the availability of parts and the company behind the warranty might be matters for consideration when making a purchase.