You know I only review technologically innovative sex toys, and knowing this the Hot Octopuss guys sent over a couple of new products that picked my curiosity. A little primer is required to understand their uniqueness, though.
A cockring is… well, pretty much anything ring-shaped that snugly fits a penis. Slightly constricting the base of the shaft influences the circulation. When you get aroused, more blood flows into the corpora cavernosa than it leaves them, thus achieving erection. A cockring further reduces the “draining”, making the erection firmer and more long-lasting. With two indispensable caveats that are never repeated enough.
Firstly, cockrings don’t work like in their advertisements, turning limp guys into Baobabs of Might™ – they are just… let’s say enhancers of what is already there. And, much more importantly: you don’t want to use anything rigid as a cockring, because the engorgement might make you unable to slide it off. Seriously: such accidents are common enough that many fire departments routinely train their personnel how to remove these sex toys using power tools.
Now, a special type of cockrings are the vibrating kind, which integrate a small battery-powered vibrator to better stimulate both the wearer and his partner. The models are countless, from ultra-cheap dollar-store designs that simply clasp a regular bullet-style vibrator to very high-end items using better, smaller (and more expensive) motors you can recharge via USB adaptor.
The latter tend to be fun, since they turn your dick into a living vibrator offering an interesting variation of regular penetration. I find it more ‘ha-ha’ fun than ‘oooooh’ fun but, as it always happens with these things, responses are highly subjective. Also, in my admittedly limited tests so far, I had only found one vibrating cockring powerful enough to be actually worth it.
Enter the Atom and Atom+, designed by the same people famous for their very original and ungodly intense Pulse III Duo. Their founding idea is to make this type of male sex toy right, meaning more anatomically designed and… yes, more powerful. The results are two strangely different products which share the now-popular features of most high-end toys: they are waterproof, rechargeable via a phone charger or your computer, and very pleasant to the touch thanks to a sorta-silky type of silicone. They share the same electronics, so you have five levels of intensity and five vibration patterns (including, I kid you not, an unexpectedly pleasant cha-cha-cha) on both.
And, since I know you are wondering, here is how they feel like.
The “basic” model is bulkier and heavier than every competitor, but for a good reason. The inner vibrating unit is such a beast that, the first time I turned it on in my hand, I had a comically few hard moments trying to grab it strong enough to be able to operate its buttons without them buzzing away from my fingertips. Talking about size, I found it comfortably snug – but then again: it all depends on your size.
This toy is all about intensity, though, and I was surprised to find that anything beyond the lowest setting was way too powerful for my taste and my partners’. Higher speeds tended to turn into a uniform, fuzzy buzzing that felt more numbing than pleasurable – although the combination with more staccato-like patterns was quite interesting. A pleasant plus was the ease of use of the controls even during penetration, something the competitors make way too complicated to be fun.
Talking about plus, the true star is in fact the larger model, whose shape depends on the presence of an equally intense second vibrator. The Atom+ is worn behind the scrotum, with this second motor meant to titillate the perineum while the main motor takes care of the upper part of the shaft. This is not the first sex toy to implement this idea, but it is the first to use one set of controls only for both of the motors, thanks to the clever engineering of the internal wiring running through the stretchy part of the ring. It makes the awkwardness of fumbling with your cock buttons a little less ridiculous, even if a good sense of humor is still definitely required when playing with this sort of high-tech toys.
While the reasoning behind the design is solid, I am not totally sure the product turned out as good as it was supposed to. Besides sharing the same arguably excessive power of its smaller brother, for example, I found the Atom+ truly uncomfortable to slip on, even when following the official instructions. The lower, necessarily rigid, part also didn’t reach back enough for me to feel it massaging the perineum proper and kinda poked me in an occasionally annoying fashion. But, most of all, try fucking with a solid board behind your balls and you will soon learn to fear any wrongly angled or too sudden push that might crush your lovelies in an unexpected BDSM plot twist.
Of course your own experience may be pretty different from mine, so I recommend giving it a try anyway if you have the opportunity to – especially given the dearth of male-oriented quality sex toys.
