Toy Review – Satisfyer 1, 2, Pro 2, Pro Penguin, Pro Deluxe
This isn’t going to follow my typical review style, no, this time you’re going to hear a story, an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish, because it’s the only way I can give you all the info you need to understand why I’m going to tell you to not buy anything from the company Satisfyer right now.
First of all, Satisfyer happened to the sex toy world after Womanizer. Womanizer are the people who came up with this “pressure wave” technology stuff that took the sex toy industry by storm in late 2015. While the toys all claim to offer a sensation that mimics sucking, what’s actually happening can best be compared to your stereo system’s subwoofer. The innards of the toy are actually punching air at your clitoris and for some reason that sorta feels like suction, so people keep calling these “sucking” toys…even though they’re not…but that’s not important.
Womanizer’s range retails close to $200 for all of its models – some special versions reaching as high as $800 – so Satisfyer came on the scene and figured they’d take that technology and knock it down into something more affordable (and less gaudy, and with a slightly less cringe-worthy name.) Not the worst idea anyone’s ever had if you can look past the blatant rip-off nature of the whole ordeal.
I’m not a huge proponent of straight up copy-cats but I also do understand the need for affordability in sexual pleasure (and I fucking hate how the Womanizers look, and that name….) so I wanted to really give Satisfyer a shot. It’s an extreme privilege to be able to drop $200 on a sex toy, but you can get a Satisfyer for as low as $32.
I’ve been afraid to buy any of these toys though (especially a $300 Womanizer) because as you know, I’ve got a weird vulva that I wasn’t quite sure how to navigate with one of these things. Both company’s toys are built basically in the same shapes, wherein there is a “nozzle” at the business-end of the toy that is supposed to be placed so that it surrounds the head of your clitoris, creating the “seal” needed to get the most out of that air-punching-sucking sensation, and live up to these “touchless orgasm” claims. I don’t have an exposed clitoris AT ALL so I wasn’t sure where to put these toys. Terrified they’d be a huge waste of money, I never picked one up last year, even as everyone else seemed to rave about them.
Left to right : Pro 2, Pro Deluxe, Penguin, 2, 1
At the beginning of this year one of my affiliates, Shevibe added the Satisfyer line to their store and I was able to request one as a review product. Joy of joys! If it’s terrible I haven’t flushed hundreds upon hundreds of dollars completely down the drain! I decided I would ask for the Penguin model because of all five of them, it looked to have the largest nozzle opening, which seemed like the best plan of action for someone who doesn’t have what you’re supposed to put inside of it and wants to cover the biggest area possible. Shevibe sent it out and I immediately got down to business testing this thing.
The most I’m going to say about the Penguin, and any other model, is that while I am capable of getting an orgasm from them, and it’s not the worst orgasm I’ve ever had, it’s also not that great either and I’m pretty sure they’re just not made for my anatomy because I don’t feel the “sucking” sensation at all. They’re just kinda like vibrators. This post isn’t going to be about whether or not I like these toys though, because even if I did, I still don’t want you to buy one.
After about two weeks of the Penguin being in my possession, I had the opportunity to try it out in the bath. I want to be extremely clear – Satisfyer’s website explicitly encourages you to take all of their toys into the bathtub with you, they are all labeled as fully submersible and waterproof. When I got out of my bath I washed the Penguin with soap and rinsed it, then propped it nozzle-down on some towels on the counter to dry out. The next morning when I picked it up to pack away, water came out. I figured that it had just pooled up inside at a weird angle and gave it a little shake. More water came out. I took the nozzle cover out (you’re supposed to) and gently tapped the toy on my palm a few times, then set it back on the towel to dry longer. Half a day later when any surface moisture would have been long gone, when I picked up my Penguin again and gave it a gentle shake, I could hear water still sloshing around inside of it. Clearly the water was not trapped externally down the nozzle, but had gotten into the body of the toy that was supposed to be sealed. This was not good.
I wrote to Shevibe to help me decide what to do at this point, because this is the first time I’m reviewing a toy badly not because of my feelings on it, but because of an actual defect. I know that defects happen – even the best manufacturers send out the occasional broken toy, this is why warranties exist – and I didn’t want to write a scathing post and totally blast a company over something that could easily be remedied. We decided that I would try to reach out to Satisfyer directly, explain the problem, and see what they would offer me as a solution (their TOS has a section on returns and refunds but it’s worded very strangely and sounds like it applies more to wholesale/retail than to individual consumers, so we weren’t sure what would happen)
When I wrote my email to Satisfyer I fully disclosed that I was a reviewer working with one of their retailers and that my review product was broken (I didn’t know if they’d ask me for proof of purchase, etc), so I can’t tell you if the reaction I got is the same type of reaction a regular consumer with a product issue would receive.
Satisfyer was very apologetic about my broken product, and was more than happy to send me a new one. To extend the apology they offered the other 4 models as well. I don’t know if that was just a show of good will or if they saw me identify myself as a reviewer and wanted me to review all of them (they’ve sent all of them to many reviewers they’ve been in contact with directly), or wanted to sweeten my review by sending extra… I accepted but at the time hadn’t decided if I would wind up reviewing all of them, since I only asked for the Penguin (and these reviews are actually a lot of work…)
It took them a while to actually put my toys in the mail, and then they bounced around Europe courtesy of fucking DHL (please stop sending shit through DHL, they are arguably the worst shipper you can choose) and finally landed on my doorstep 19 days after providing them with my address.
I started trying all of the models because…well…I had them, and was starting to lean towards reviewing all of them because being able to compare each model to the others is useful in helping someone choose between 5 products from the same company. The Penguin turned out to not be my favorite model so I figured I’d have to talk about all of them in order to explain why.
A month after all the toys arrived, well into my testing period, I decided to try them all out in the bath. Again, I fully submerged the toys that are supposed to be fully submersible, used them, then washed, rinsed, and set them on the countertop nozzle-down to dry out. Later that evening my husband and I went out for dinner. When we returned home a few hours later we heard a strange noise as we opened the front door. It took a moment to hunt it down, but we eventually figured out it was coming from one of my sex toys in the bathroom.
The Satisfyer 2 had turned itself on, and I couldn’t get it to turn off. After fiddling with the buttons a few times I decided to just take the batteries out (this model is a AAA battery-operated one that opens up at the bottom of the handle, but is STILL sold as fully waterproof). You can see what happened.
Curious, I opened up my Satisfyer 1, the other AAA battery-operated model and sure enough, the battery compartment on this one was also full of water. I washed the brown corroded battery water off my hands and countertop and threw them both in the trash. I picked up the rest of the rechargeable models hoping that my issues with the 1 and 2 were just that I had failed to put the caps on properly, and started to shake. The Penguin and the Pro 2 passed the test, but the Pro Deluxe exhibited that tell-tale sloshing. I turned the toy over and looked inside the nozzle, finding the water drops you see in the above photo trapped on the inside of the silicone. I turned the toy on and held it every way imaginable hoping the water would vibrate back out, but no luck. At this point I took to Twitter, both to complain and to warn the dozens of other bloggers who had just received their products (some of which are being used in giveaways right now.)
Twitter let me know others were experiencing the same issues with their 1 and 2 models. I am currently the only person (that I personally know of, I’m sure there’s someone out there) that has had their rechargeable models leak as well, but I don’t think it’s an honest mistake that two out of four rechargeable products are leaking and that I would be the one who gets them. Thats no freak accident, that’s a massive quality issue.
Update: I put a call out on Twitter in mid-May 2017 to anyone else who had experienced issues with any of the Satisfyer line. I will continue to update as I receive more responses.
I want to pause for a moment for us to remember that Satisfyer sent me 5 new products as an apology for my first product being broken. 4/6 total products wound up breaking in the exact same way. I wonder what they send you to apologize for that?
The adventure isn’t over yet! I took my new Penguin, Pro 2, and Pro Deluxe into the bedroom and set them on my nightstand, not yet sure what to do about this whole mess this late at night besides complain on Twitter. I went to bed. at 5am I woke up to a weird noise. The Pro Deluxe had turned itself on, and like the 2, wouldn’t turn off. Unlike the 2, I couldn’t just take the batteries out, no, this fucking thing had a FULL charge and wouldn’t shut off. It started off on its lowest setting which is truthfully very quiet, so I set it on the carpet next to the bed and figured now that I knew what the noise was, I’d be able to just sleep through it. Until the fucking thing started changing speeds on its own, and the higher speeds are too loud to ignore. The Pro Deluxe went into my kitchen trashcan around 5:30am and I prayed that it wouldn’t catch on fire and burn my house down while I tried to get back to sleep (images of this happening kept me from actually getting back to sleep until I knew my husband was awake and could extinguish my trashcan if my stupid sex toy decided to go Final Destination on us) The new and old Penguin and the Pro 2 followed the Pro Deluxe, 1, and 2 into the trash in the morning. Even though the Penguin and Pro 2 were not (yet) acting up, I wasn’t willing to deal with this shit anymore.
And that’s what this is – complete shit. Absurdity nobody should have to endure. No one should ever be woken up at 5am by their fucking vibrator being possessed, okay? That’s not acceptable.
Even if the toys don’t turn themselves on in the middle of the night, all of them exhibited troublesome behavior. When I put all of them in the bath, they all had a mass of air bubbles escaping from the bodies of the toys. Some air is totally normal and to be expected, surfaces carry air into the water with it, YOU have tiny air bubbles stuck to you when you get into the bath. Air coming from the nozzles is also normal if the toy went in nozzle-down and air was trapped. Continued air bubbles escaping from the toy is not normal though, that means water is finding it’s way inside. Even the toys that didn’t sound like they had water in them probably did, just not in a place where I could hear it splash about. Even if your toy never starts operating on its own, it’s still not actually wateroroof.
Why is this a big deal? Well, first and foremost, Satisfyer says they are waterproof, so it’s just a big fuckin lie. That’s a problem. You shouldn’t be lied to. Secondly, if water is getting inside, that means lube, body fluids, soaps, bleach you try to clean it with, and any other liquid the toy comes into contact with is getting inside too. I can’t tell you where it’s getting inside, and I can’t tell you if/where it’s coming back out. Either way…that’s fuckin gross and not safe for you. Even if you never fully submerge the toy in the bath, you need to wash it or the inside of the nozzle will get all gunked up (there’s lots of nooks and crannies in there) – if you can’t even wash it, it’s not safe. Third, if fluid is getting inside the toy it’s just going to break it, plain and simple. It might not turn on by itself and scare the shit out of you in the middle of the night, but it will eventually stop turning on at all and then you have no toy. And even if Satisfyer sends you a replacement (or five), that has more than a 50% chance of breaking in the exact same way.
None of this is okay, none of this is acceptable. If you as a manufacturer choose to explicitly bill your toys as waterproof they damn well better be. You cannot encourage people to use your product underwater only to have them all break from doing so.
I don’t own any so I can’t speak from personal experience, but I haven’t heard from anyone that their Womanizers have had any of these issues. It would appear in their attempt to be an affordable competitor to Womanizer, Satisfyer chose to cut some serious corners in their design, leaving me and many others with a pile of completely broken and unsafe toys to throw out. I haven’t spoken with Satisfyer again about this (I did include them in my Twitter ranting. They “liked” and “retweeted” my earlier praise of them, but I guess this wasn’t something they wanted to engage with me about) but I intend to send them my complaints and a link to this review after it’s posted for them to consider. There’s nothing they can do for me that would “fix” the problem (besides completely redesigning their entire line of toys so they don’t fuckin break) so really it’s just to notify them that this is something I’m going to be very vocal about. They’ve been extremely liberal about getting their toys into the hands of bloggers, there have already been numbers of glowing reviews, so I really want to make sure people are fully aware of the downsides to these toys.
If the waterproof-not waterproof issue hadn’t existed, I would have also complained about button function and placement (why does only one model have increase/decrease buttons, and why is it the battery operated model? What the fuck is with the Penguin’s on/off button weirdly placed inside the increase button?) things like how some people’s nozzle tips fall out but the one on my new penguin felt glued in (they are actually supposed to come out), that some of them smelled like glue out of the box but others didn’t? the sheer number of nooks crannies bumps and ridges that need cleaning oh my god if I can’t wash the damn thing this really needs to be better, that the intensity levels seem to skip ahead by 5 somewhere around level 2/3 and 3/4 on each model, and that all of the motors skip/slip which you can see and hear in my instagram videos here:
I took video of every model on every level to get a super clear understanding of how they differ and how badly the motors are timed, but that’s not even my biggest concern anymore. I may still upload them and if I do I will post links but just know…they sound like fucking broken down farm tractors with timing belt problems.
I also made sure to cc: Shevibe into my tweets and they replied that they’re discussing what to do about this, since obviously they don’t want to be selling toys that break like this.
I’m so disappointed in Satisfyer over this. How can you fail so massively? How can you send me broken toys to apologize for my broken toys? Was not a single toy model given even the tiniest bit of underwater testing before it went to production? How many hundreds of thousands of soon-to-be-broken toys are absolutely flooding the market right this moment? How many people will buy the cheaper Satisfyer instead of save up for the Womanizer, only to have thrown away money they couldn’t really afford to lose like that? What kind of feeling about sex toys does that leave with people, will they just give up, will they feel tricked or taken advantage of by the industry?
Dear Satisfyer : DO FUCKING BETTER
Even though I’m sad it had to turn out this way, still a big thanks to Shevibe for sending me one of the toys to review – I learned a lot of useful info about Satisfyer and hopefully my readers can avoid a disappointing purchase.
