Toto UltraMax Toilet Review: Great Toilet that Deserves Its Rave Reviews

Our review of the Toto UltraMax finds that it provides sleek style without sacrificing performance.

Toto UltraMax toilet installed

Consumers today expect more than an attractive appearance from their bathroom fixtures. Saving water, green features, and certifications that show the product has been tested and found ecologically sound are also sought by buyers. The Toto UltraMax Toilet provides a stylish appearance, water-saving efficiency, and is backed by sustainable manufacturing practices that will increase its appeal to the environmentally thoughtful buyer.  We interviewed Toto a while back about the UltraMax toilet, but we decided to revisit it and review what makes it so popular in the higher-end market.

Our review below considers appearance, performance, water efficiency, price, warranty and sustainable features.

Appearance: The Toto UltraMax Toilet is a sleek, transitional-style high profile toilet that will enhance the contemporary bathroom with its elegant style. The UltraMax is available in a one piece decorative toilet with a high profile tank. The tank cover, fittings, a chrome-plated handle, and SoftClose seat are included.

The Toto UltraMax Toilet is made of vitreous china and comes in five colors, including Cotton, Bone, Colonial White, Sedona Beige, and Ebony. Like the rest of the Toto product line, this fixture meets and exceeds standards set by various states, cities, and professional entities, including ADA, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and EPA Watersense.

Performance: The Toto UltraMax toilet bowl has been completely re-designed by Toto to flush better, use water more efficiently, and maintain cleanliness with less work.

Powered by the G-Max Flushing system, the Toto UltraMax toilet provides a quiet yet powerful commercial-grade performance. The G-Max system is one of the most respected and sought after flushing systems worldwide, preferred by professional builders, plumbers, and consumers who have done their research.  The Tota UltraMax toilet has a wide 3-inch flush valve is 125% larger than standard 2-inch valves, and a computer designed, fully glazed wider trapway (2-1/8 inch), large water surface, and siphon jet flushing action provide ultra-efficient functioning.

Toto provides an optional SanaGloss super smooth finish, with a patented ion barrier glaze that repels germs and helps keep the toilet bowl cleaner.

Consumer reviews for the Toto UltraMax toilet are quite complimentary, attesting to the fact that this toilet works well under everyday flushing conditions in the home environment.

Water Efficiency: All this great performance, and yet the Toto UltraMax toilet uses only 1.28 gallons per flush, less than most of today's toilets that use 1.6 gallons per flush, and far less than the traditional toilet flush of 3.5 gallons. A savings of over $2,000 is projected over the life cycle of the Toto UltraMax. This savings would more than cover the slightly higher cost of the Toto UltraMax toilet over the more standard lower priced toilet.

Price: The Toto UltraMax toilet varies greatly in price depending on where it is purchased.  It sells online at a price between $300 -$400.

Warranty: The Toto UltraMax toilet comes with a one-year limited warranty.

Sustainable Features: Recently Toto has asked ecoScorecard to rate products such as the UltraMax toilet in an effort to provide information for professionals who wish to obtain LEED or other certifications on their buildings. Current sustainable features of the Toto UltraMax toilet include: manufactured with 15% pre-consumer recycled materials, recyclable, the packaging used is made of 30% recyclable materials and the product is free of lead, mercury, cadmium, PBDEs, and urea-formaldehyde resins.

Summary: With an attractive, modern design, great performance, a strong flush and great water efficiency, it's no surprise that the Toto UltraMax toilet is a popular high-end toilet.  Both consumers and professionals give this toilet great reviews, attesting to the fact that the product does stand up to the companies claims.  So if you're in the market for a water efficient toilet, and can afford the higher cost, you'd do well to put the Toto UltraMax toilet at the top of your list.