Learn 11 min read
Choosing a first vibrator, and what to ignore
The choice that decides this is not brand or price. It is what kind of touch you want, and nobody can tell you that in advance, this shop included.
There is no best first vibrator. There is only the kind of touch you want, and that is settled outside or inside, something that shakes or something that moves air.
Those are different sensations rather than different amounts of one sensation. The touch one woman keeps reaching for is the one another turns off after a minute, and neither of them is doing it wrong.
Here is the part a shop does not usually open with. You cannot know which kind suits you before you own one. Not from a product description, not from a review written by a stranger with a different body, and not from us. So a first purchase is not really a decision. It is a way of finding something out, and it should be priced like one.
The kinds of touch you are choosing between
External means it works on the outside, on and around the clitoris. Internal means it goes inside. Some devices do both at once, on two arms.
Within external there is one more split, and it matters more than any brand name on this page. Vibration shakes the skin it touches. Air pulse moves a pocket of air against the clitoris without pressing on it. That is one sentence about a difference that deserves a page of its own, and it has one: air pulse or vibration, and which one suits you.
| Kind of touch | The shape it comes in | What the maker puts in writing | Where that kind starts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vibration on one small point | A slim bullet you hold exactly where you want it | Body-safe silicone, waterproof, USB rechargeable | Gemma Turbo |
| Vibration over a wider area | A wand with a working end at each side, one broad and one tapered | Body-safe silicone, waterproof, USB rechargeable | INYA Pleasure Wand |
| Air pulse, with nothing pressing on you | A silicone rim that rests over the clitoris and seals | Body-safe silicone, fully waterproof, USB rechargeable | ROMP Lemon Crush |
| Vibration inside | A curved shape with a ridged head, plus a warming function | Body-safe silicone, fully waterproof, USB rechargeable | Svakom Selena |
| Inside and outside at once | An internal arm with a second arm resting outside | Body-safe silicone, waterproof, USB rechargeable | Svakom Plume |
Those five rows are not five points on one scale from mild to strong. The mistake that fills a drawer with two devices instead of one goes like this: buy a bullet, feel nothing much, buy a stronger bullet. If a kind of touch did very little for you, the next thing to try is a different row, not a bigger version of the same row.
Powerful is the wrong first question
Ask about the bottom of whatever range it has instead of the top.
Too weak is the failure everyone shops against, and it is not the only way a device turns out wrong for you. It can be too much on bare skin. The sensation can flatten out after a few minutes and never come back. It can have one gear with nothing under it. A device you cannot turn down far enough is a device you use once.
Placement does more than power does, and it is not close, which is the one thing air pulse or vibration, and which one suits you spends a whole section on. So start at the lowest setting it has, if it has more than one, and stay there longer than feels useful.
If a vibrator is too sharp on bare skin, lay a finger over the clitoris and rest it there instead. Vibration carries through a finger. Air pulse does not, because anything under the rim breaks the seal, so with those you move the device rather than pad it.
What a first purchase should cost you
The expensive outcome is a device you do not reach for, so keep the first number small enough that being wrong about it does not sting.
The Next Liberty is the flagship of the range and the most expensive thing we sell, and it runs on the same pulsing air, with no direct contact, as the least expensive device on our shelf. If air pulse turns out not to be how your body likes to be touched, the flagship is a more expensive way to find that out and not a faster one.
That is the argument for starting cheap. Not that the inexpensive ones are secretly as good, but that the first one you buy is there to tell you something about your own body, and the expensive one tells you the same thing for more money.
That argument is easier to follow on one side of the shelf than the other. Our least expensive vibrator costs more than our least expensive air pulse device, so a woman who already knows she wants vibration cannot run this experiment as cheaply as the woman next to her. We do not have a cheap way in on that side, and telling you the difference is small would only move the problem into your drawer.
The one we would put in your hand first
The Gemma Turbo. Our catalog calls it the easiest place to start, and that is not a slogan. It works on the outside, so nothing has to go inside on a first attempt. It is small, so you place it rather than steer a whole handful of silicone. And you can end the entire thing by lifting your hand.
If price is the thing stopping you, the INYA Pleasure Wand costs less than the Gemma Turbo and gives you two shapes rather than one, a broad working end and a tapered one. We would still hand you the bullet first. But if the wand is what your money reaches, buy the wand and skip the bullet, and if what you want is the cheapest way in at all, that is the ROMP Lemon Crush rather than either of these.
The Lemon Crush is where air pulse starts. It is palm-sized, small enough to travel with, and it works by the same mechanism as the flagship at the other end of the shelf. So it answers the question you actually have, which is whether air pulse is your kind of touch at all, rather than the narrower question of whether you like an expensive one.
Internal is not where we would start most women, and that is a preference rather than a rule. If you already know you want something inside, the Svakom Selena is a curved internal vibrator with a ridged head shaped to sit against the G-spot and stay there, plus a warming function. The Svakom Plume has an internal arm and a second arm for external contact, so both are covered at once. Both are body-safe silicone and both are waterproof.
One more, with a caution. The Doxy Go is a compact cordless wand with a body-safe silicone head, small enough for a bedside drawer, from the maker best known for full-size mains-powered wands. It is the one powered thing on our shelf that does not say waterproof, so it never goes in the sink or the shower and takes a damp cloth instead. On a first device that is one more rule to remember on a night you would rather not be remembering rules.
Buy a water-based lubricant in the same order
Not later. The same order.
Water-based, and only water-based. Silicone lubricant ruins a silicone surface for good, and every device on this page is body-safe silicone where it touches you, so there is no exception here to keep track of. Simply Natural Gel says safe with silicone toys on the label, and it is the only bottle we carry that states latex condom compatible, which makes it the one to reach for when condoms are involved. The other two bottles we stock, and which body each of them is for, are in moisturizer or lubricant, and when you need both.
The massage oil and the body oil on our shelf are for skin. Neither is a lubricant, and oil weakens a latex condom without giving you any sign while it happens.
You do not need a toy cleaner. Shine Toy Cleaner is made with organic botanicals for silicone, glass and steel, and we keep it because at midnight it is faster than standing at a sink. It does not clean better than warm water and a mild unscented soap does. If the total is creeping up on you, that is the line to cut.
Charging it, and where it is going to live
Every device on this page charges over USB. Charge it all the way before the first use, because the first try is the one you will judge the whole category by, and a battery at a quarter is a bad witness. Wash it before the first use as well as after.
Then decide where it lives before it arrives, because that decision does more for whether you use it than anything on a spec sheet. Where it lives, what it goes in, and which ones go under a tap are in how to clean and store what you own. Read that first rather than after the first wash.
If it ends up somewhere you have to unpack to reach, you will not reach for it. That is a storage problem rather than a character flaw, and it is the one part of this you can settle tonight.
What we cannot tell you
- Which of these your body will like. Nobody can, this shop included, and anyone who says otherwise is guessing at your nerve endings from behind a counter.
- How loud most of them are. The Pleasure Air Pro is the only device in our collection whose maker puts anything in writing about noise, and it is the only one we call quiet. The others may well be. We do not have that from their makers, so we are not going to hand it to you as a fact when there is someone else in the house.
- What is in either Wicked bottle. Wicked has not published a list for those two anywhere we can cite, and the retailers who do print one keep mixing them up with a different Wicked formula. Both product pages say so instead of guessing, and both offer to read the label off a bottle for you, which is the useful half of that answer.
- What is in a device. That is not a question a device answers. It has a material rather than an ingredient list, and here that material is body-safe silicone where it touches you.
- Whether the full-size mains-powered wands Doxy is known for would suit you better than the compact one. We do not carry them, so we have nothing to compare for you.
- We cannot ship a stimulation device to Alabama or Mississippi. State law puts this category out of reach there, so an order from either gets refunded rather than shipped.
If something hurts, that is not a shopping problem
Pain during sex, bleeding after it, dryness that a good water-based lubricant does not cover, burning or itching that will not settle, and sensation that has clearly changed from what it used to be all belong in front of a doctor rather than in a cart. So does anything that arrived suddenly rather than gradually.
Nothing on this shelf is a remedy for any of that, and we are not going to imply one is by selling you something on the way past. If you think a medication changed things for you, that is a conversation with whoever prescribed it.
None of it is a strange thing to raise at an appointment. Two sentences do it, early in the visit rather than with your hand on the door. Sex has become painful and I want to know why. What should we be ruling out?
Start with a kind, not a brand
Pick the kind of touch first and let the brand fall out of that. Everything else printed on a box is downstream of that one choice.
If you would rather answer questions than read a table, start at the finder. It asks what kind of touch you are after and what feels reasonable to spend, and it hands back a short list instead of the whole shelf.
Then put the Gemma Turbo and a bottle of Simply Natural Gel in the bag, give it three unhurried evenings when nothing has to happen, and pay attention to which parts you wanted more of.