Brondell Swash 1000 Review

[Aliris19]

I found it difficult to gather information about these products on this site so I'm posting this review in case it's useful for another. It's too long for a single post so it'll appear in parts:

We installed the Brondell swash 1000 on a Toto Drake about five months ago. There's been a long learning curve.

Originally I bought the machine in advance of my elderly mother's visit, thinking she could substitute daily baths with better "real-time" cleaning.

As it happens she did not visit so I cannot comment on the use of this advanced toilet seat as a hygiene device for the elderly. I still think it might be particularly useful for this purpose but, I'm a little leery given the way the use of this unit has played out for us (see below). Can't do this experiment though.

Installation was as easy as advertised. Well… guess I'm forgetting. We experienced some "user error" with me not seating the tube properly to the tank, and visiting Home Depot repeatedly in search of the right length fitting. That was, now that I think of it, all very annoying but not Brondell's fault. It is easy to install the seat, you just have to be careful in seating threads and be vigilant about buying the right coupling.

Upon installation there was a little glitch getting the "economy" setting to work. But this is a mini-computer in the seat, and resetting the thing by unplugging for a few hours was helpful. A quick unplug didn't do it but on the suggestion of tech support, just leaving it while gone to run an errand did the trick. I'm sure a full two hours was overkill, but sufficient.

The "economy" setting means the computer goes to sleep if not used in a certain time. However it is overridden, seemingly, by the seat temperature feature. If you want the seat temperature warm when you sit down, the entire unit does not "sleep" and will not go into "economy" mode. Perhaps this is unavoidable, but it seems to me it ought to have been featured to wake up to a certain seat temperature setting without disabling the sleep function altogether. This is not the only way this computer is a little disappointingly "dumb".

I'm writing a lot about this seat because in researching what to buy I had trouble finding good information about the whole concept of a "washlet" or bidet seat. Without seeing the thing it sounded like a good idea. But it was hard to evaluate relative worth or value of different types and features out there. And what's really hard to know by reading is what the whole thing just *feels* like. That's where the biggest learning curve comes in.

One devoted commenter on GardenWeb (herring_maven!), was helpful in delineating a clear difference between available seat-types as depending on whether the advanced toilet seat uses one or two wands. Our Brondell uses a two-wand system like those most popular in Japan, I gather. Not having ever even seen a one-wand system, like Toto's, I cannot personally compare. But it sounds to me fundamentally different, for women at least.

With two wands women need to sit waiting for each wand in succession to emerge and spray their intended targets, first one then the other (anus and vagina). I find this a bit annoying to wait twice and have to fiddle with the remote twice. It's not a deal-breaker, and having never seen nor tried the other variety I cannot know whether it takes as long to have a single wand turn on twice at its two different angles; that could be as annoying. But as this stands, one irritation with this Brondell is that there is no "memory" to the special features you set. If you want the wand to emerge further than its lowest setting, that takes three clicks of the rocker switch, and if you want it to "feather" back and forth, that's another button-push. And all this has to happen twice for each wand; there's no default setting. All this button-pushing has to happen each and every time either wand is used by any person.

IMO it would be a significant advantage if the seat could be programmed for different individuals' usual, default preference. That would include features such as wand-advance, feathering (where the wand moves back and forth a little bit to enhance cleaning power), water temperature, spray angle, seat temperature. Although that latter setting isn't wand-dependent; the other three are.

The biggest problem, though, is that the settings of these wands just don't really fit where my anatomy wishes them to reach to. I cannot tell whether that's a me-thing, this Brondell-thing or whether it's inherent to any advanced toilet seat. That is there's a requirement for the wand to retract, and be able to do so efficiently and effectively; it could be that the short distance these wands extend cannot be altered and are not among different manufacturers. For me, though, these wands even when I'm sitting all the way back on the full seat, only barely at best reach where they're supposed to reach. And I really can't control the variables electronically adequately. Therefore I find myself literally squirming around back and forth, leaning forward and back every time I use the wands.

 

[Aliris19]

This is sort of OK because I have, like other reviewers, grown very accustomed to this whole wash-don't-wipe phenomenon. It's really a better way to clean and hard to switch back to the old smeary-paradigm (which is honestly quite disgusting no matter how used to it we may be here in America). So I'm happy doing this really weird dance on the toilet seat every time. But I do feel like a fool and no one else in my household has any interest in being thus-humbled. I am disappointed by this because I was really looking forward to cutting way back on toilet paper, but no dice. DH claims to have very burly anatomy in this department such that a spray of water just won't clean him adequately. I'm not really believing this, and think that if he were willing to squirm about and finagle "cheek-angle" the way I do, he could make it work. But there's no way he will. Teenagers are seemingly too embarrassed by the whole thing as well. It's disappointing.

I'm guessing for the same reason that my elderly mother never would have warmed to the thing, though we'll never know. I'm guessing that the seat-warming feature, speaking of "warming to it", would be particularly helpful for the elderly suffering from constipation. But again, I haven't tested this theory. I only know that on sad occasions when I want cheering up, I've found the warm toilet seat to be oddly comforting.

What else? Most of the features on this advanced seat have seemed helpful to me. I don't use the seat warmer too much but it's nice to have it there. The water warmer is defintely nice; without it plain air-temperature water on your nether regions really is coooold. Spray angle (width) I find very helpful and different fore and aft (that is I prefer one setting for the back and a different for the front, sometimes). I guess I never use the water pressure setting, but I wouldn't want that adequately strong; the thing wouldn't work.

This has a warm air drying setting which I find fairly useless. Its biggest problem is that it smells horrible. When it's on or been turned on the whole bathroom smells bad, just mildewy I guess and icky. The unit smells this way if the toilet seat is turned on too. If it is accidentally enabled when I walk into the room I know right away from the smell. It's quite nauseating.

As well waiting for that dryer to actually work is to me a real waste of time. It takes forever and doesn't really ever get there. I'm sure that's user-dependent and varies with, ahem, "thatch". Sorry. But long before it actually dries me thoroughly something starts to burn: it gets hot! I don't know whether different manufacturers' units work better than this or whether this is a problem inherent to the whole concept. I would happily forgo that feature.

Speaking of drying, there are no instructions with this thing and I couldn't make out how to use it in practice. I'd end up just pulling clothes over my very wet nether regions at first but that was really no good. It actually literally caused my underpants to become moldy from so much damp. I know this is TMI but it has to be said! I've resolved this problem by reasoning after the sprinkle bath I'm really as clean as after a shower so there's nothing wrong with using a cloth towel. I use a facecloth placed near the toilet and use the same one for a day or two then change. Just a quick blot works fine, saves paper and it is no different from toweling off after a bath cleanliness-wise.

Am I happy to have bought this? Yes, I far prefer using the bidet than not. However there are substantial irritants with this seat. I worry all that squirming is affecting the seal of the very toilet to the ground; certainly the seat has worked its way loose a bit. Again, I have no idea whether other manufacturers' seats are subject to the same issue. If I were to make this purchase again I would go to some trouble to try to actually try the seat in advance of purchase. And I'd buy it from Costco to be sure. I got a good price at Home Perfect but I'm sorry to have foregone CC's peerless return policy. I think that was a mistake although so far there haven't been any manufacturer problems that couldn't be resolved. It's just that if this squirming were to trouble you from CC the thing could easily be returned, even still.

This Brondell is Distinguished by being the one with the strongest toilet seat. I'm not sure that's a critical feature; I've never sat on the lid and it's at a slant anyway so not really comfortable to. Utility depends on your bathroom configuration I suppose.

One reason I chose this unit over another is that the wands are stainless steel. That seems to me a wise choice. This unit allows a "sterilize" and "deodorize" cycle. Both seem to work well; I'm not sure how I'd know though whether it's "sterilized". Also I wonder about health effects of the sterilization process, but you don't run this feature while sitting on the seat so this may be unimportant even if an issue theoretically.

The remote is well-designed, intuitive and comfortable. We just leave it on a ledge next to the seat.

Wish I had some comparative information to offer, but I've still never even seen one of these of any sort anywhere else! If I had the purchase to do over I'd strongly consider finding a programmable memory, but the cost trade-off for that might be very high.

The water must be some sort of insta-heater element; that's probably what smells bad. When it first starts it's very cold but heats almost instantly; it's fine. But I don't think there's a tank.

I'm not sure the inax is still available here in the US.

I'd also consider the suggestion to install a small amount of nighttime illumination in the bathroom. The Brondell's remote is less simple than it could be and a little difficult to use in the dark. Not impossible but a teensy bit of light would be helpful. Wish they'd backlight the remote.