How to Choose a Sex Toy: The 5 Features I Refuse to Compromise On

Sex toy marketing is very good at telling me how many modes something has.

It is less good at telling me whether I’ll be able to reach the buttons without changing grip, whether the shape makes any ergonomic sense, or whether cleaning it will involve the patience of a conservator restoring a Renaissance painting.

These days, I’m much harder to impress.

Not because I’ve become impossibly picky. I’ve just stopped assuming that a product being popular, expensive or covered in enthusiastic adjectives means it has been designed well.

After enough trial and error, I have five things I look for before almost anything else: material, shape, control, comfort and cleaning.

They’re not glamorous criteria. Nobody is putting “pleasantly straightforward to wash” across a billboard.

But they’ve become my non-negotiables because I’ve learned that good sex toy design is rarely about having the longest feature list. It’s about whether those features actually work with your body.

And if you’ve read my thoughts on what actually works for women sexually, you’ll know I don’t believe there’s one universal formula for pleasure anyway.

So rather than asking, “Is this toy good?”, I now ask a much more useful question: Is this toy designed well for what I want it to do?

I stopped shopping by category and started shopping by features:

Labels can be useful.

Vibrator. Dildo. Strap-on. Wand.

Fine. They tell me roughly what part of the shop I’m standing in.

What they don’t tell me is whether something will suit me.

Even “beginner-friendly” only gets us so far. Beginner at what? Someone buying their first external vibrator may want something completely different from someone exploring penetration, trying a strap-on with a partner or looking for stronger stimulation after years of knowing exactly what they like.

This is where body literacy makes shopping easier.

Before looking at products, I think about the actual experience I’m after.

Do I want broad pressure or something more targeted? External stimulation, internal stimulation or flexibility to use either? Do I like a softer surface or something firmer? Am I likely to hold this for a while? Will somebody else use it with me? Do I want lots of variation, or would three genuinely useful settings beat 27 versions of “buzz”?

There are no gold-star answers here.

Let’s stop pretending there’s one “right” way.

The more clearly you understand your preferences, the less useful generic marketing becomes — and the easier it is to recognise genuinely thoughtful design.

A material I can actually identify:

My first rule is wonderfully unsexy:

Tell me what the thing is made from.

If I’m buying something designed for intimate use, I don’t want the material information hidden behind phrases like “velvety-touch luxury finish”.

That is marketing copy, not an answer.

I want clear material information, care instructions and guidance from the manufacturer about which lubricants are compatible with it.

A shape that works with my body, not against it:

There is a particular kind of sex toy photography where a product is balanced elegantly on a plinth and photographed like it has just won an architecture award.

Lovely.

I still need to know whether I can actually use it comfortably.

Shape is one of the biggest things I now pay attention to because bodies don’t conveniently rearrange themselves around product design.

I look at length, width, angle, flexibility and reach.

For external toys, I think about whether the shape lets me position it where I want without constantly adjusting my hand.

For penetrative toys, dimensions matter far more to me than whether something is marketed as “beginner”, “advanced” or anything in between. Comfort is individual, and smaller isn’t automatically beginner-perfect any more than larger means better.

If penetration hurts, stop. More determination is not a useful sex toy feature. Add lubricant if appropriate, adjust what you’re doing, or choose a different size or shape.

Controls I can use without doing admin:

Apparently, at some point, the sex toy industry became convinced that more settings always equals more value.

I disagree.

If a toy has 20 patterns but reaching the one I actually want requires pressing the same tiny button 14 times, I do not consider this technological progress.

Controls should make pleasure easier, not turn it into menu navigation.

I look for buttons that are easy to distinguish by touch. Separate intensity controls are a huge plus. Being able to move both up and down through power levels rather than cycling all the way around again makes an absurd amount of difference.

I also appreciate toys that start gently.

Not everyone wants maximum intensity immediately, and bodies can become more or less sensitive depending on mood, hormones, stress, context and about a hundred other variables.

Control gives you room to respond to that.

That is why I care less about how powerful something claims to be than how usable that power is.

Can I gradually increase it?

Can I find a setting I like and stay there?

Can I make adjustments without interrupting everything to stare at the buttons?

Those are much more interesting questions than the number printed on the packaging.

This connects closely to what I wrote about what actually works for women sexually. Pressure, pace and sensation are personal. Good controls let you work with those preferences instead of asking your body to adapt to whatever the motor happens to be doing.

My five-question test before I buy anything now:

So, when I’m looking at a new toy, I run through five questions.

1. Do I know exactly what it’s made from?

Clear material information beats mysterious “premium touch” language every time.

2. Does the shape suit the way I actually want to use it?

Not the imaginary person in the marketing campaign. Me.

3. Can I control the sensation easily?

Useful controls beat an impressive number of modes.

4. Will it be comfortable to hold and use?

My wrist is part of the experience too.

5. Can I clean and look after it without resenting it?

If maintenance feels like a weekend project, enthusiasm may decline rapidly.

Better design beats better marketing:

This is also why I’m wary of the industry’s obsession with gendered labels.

“For her” doesn’t tell me anything useful about pressure.

“Couples’ toy” doesn’t tell me which bodies or combinations of bodies the designer imagined.

“Lesbian toy” definitely doesn’t tell me whether something is comfortable, intuitive or compatible with the kind of sex I actually have.

I’ve written before about why queer women are still underserved by sex toy brands, and a big part of the problem is that too much marketing starts with identity stereotypes instead of useful information.

Queer shoppers don’t necessarily need completely different products.

We need better explanations of what products do.

Tell me how something is shaped.

Tell me how it’s held.

Tell me what it’s made from.

Tell me what kind of harness it fits.

Then let me decide whether it works for my body, my partner, my preferences and my life.

That is genuinely inclusive shopping information.

The rest is often just pink packaging with a Pride flag added in June.

The point isn’t to find the “perfect” toy:

I don’t think there’s a universally perfect sex toy.

There are too many bodies, preferences, relationships, moods and contexts for that.

What I do think we can get much better at is recognising our own criteria.

Understanding mine has made me far less susceptible to hype and much more confident about buying things I’ll actually use.

So I’ve stopped asking whether everyone else thinks a toy is brilliant.

I ask whether its material, shape, controls, ergonomics and care make sense for what I need it to do.

It’s a much less glamorous question.

It has also saved me from some very glamorous disappointments.

If something doesn’t work for you, that’s not a you problem.

Learn what your body likes. Pay attention to good design. Ignore the idea that there’s one correct way to experience pleasure.