AW HELL NO: LELO Sona 2 Cruise & Soraya Wave reviews

I need to purge my editorial calendar of this shit, okay?

The LELO Sona 2 and Sona 2 Cruise have been sit­ting the review queue for months. It's not even that I don't enjoy them, but I must warn my read­ers of safe­ty concerns.

And the LELO Soraya Wave is a high­ly dis­ap­point­ing new release; maybe I should have main­tained low­er expec­ta­tions of this man­u­fac­tur­er all along.

Jump to a section in this LELO review:

• LELO Sona 2 and Sona 2 Cruise
  • The good, bad, and ugly
  • Does LELO give a fuck about con­sumer safety?
  • What I'd rec­om­mend instead
• LELO Soraya Wave
  • How it feels in use
  • Other lux­u­ry rab­bit vibra­tors to consider

LELO Sona 2 and Sona 2 Cruise review

What's good about the LELO Sona clitoral suction toys

I'll start with the kindest thing I'll say in this entire review.

I actu­al­ly like the LELO Sona 2 Cruise's sen­sa­tion a lot. It's super pow­er­ful — I used to rec­om­mend it because it was among the suck­i­est (in a pos­i­tive way) of the pres­sure wave toys on the mar­ket at the time.

And its con­trols are great! It fea­tures three but­tons, eight inten­si­ty options (that I can dis­cern) in a near­ly con­tin­u­ous range, and 11 pat­terns that… feel good and don't ever dip too low in speed or for too long? Yes?! There's a lot to choose from here.

From what I can tell, the Sona 2 Cruise's 4th set­ting or so is com­pa­ra­ble to not-​Cruise Sona 2's high­est speed. Overwhelmingly intense orgasm plateau and all kinds of forced good­ness, if you're into that kind of thing.

Update: The LELO Sona 2 Cruise is still among one of the most pow­er­ful cli­toral air pulse mas­sagers. See how it mea­sures up to the others.

What's terrible about the LELO Sona series

The LELO Sona 2 not-​Cruise version sucks — in an awful way.

If I'm on one of the low­er set­tings, and I push the noz­zle hard against my vul­va, the air pul­sa­tion stalls and stops. The fuck?

No, that's not nor­mal in a pres­sure wave mas­sager. You don't have to tol­er­ate that, and espe­cial­ly not at near­ly $100!

That brings me to the dif­fer­ence between the LELO Sona 2 and Sona 2 Cruise. Their "Cruise Control" fea­ture osten­si­bly "reserves 20% of Sona's pow­er for when you press the toy against your body hard­er." That's just a frilly-​packaged way of say­ing, "The Sona 2 Cruise con­tin­ues puls­ing the way it was sup­posed to, anyway."

It's like they're offering a solution to a problem that they created.

Even the cheap AF ROMP air pulse toys don't have that defect.

What's downright F U G L Y and disgusting

So it sounds like the LELO Sona 2 should be fine, as long as you get the Cruise ver­sion, right?

Nah.

While I had a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence, I still can't rec­om­mend this prod­uct in good faith any­more. Not when it's a law­suit just wait­ing to happen.

The LELO Sona Cruise has cut many cus­tomers and review­ers and bro­ken skin — and it con­tin­ues to be a prob­lem with the new­er Sona 2 Cruise.

Clitoral blistering doesn't sound fun, does it?

Okay, so how the hell does a clit toy make the user bleed? Dangerous Lilly, a retired sex toy review vet­er­an, hypoth­e­sizes that the prob­lem lies in a fatal design flaw: the noz­zle and air cham­ber are too damn short. The toy forms a tight suc­tion seal and pulls their bits against the motor's rapid­ly puls­ing membrane.

Another user com­pared it to using it to makes their lips swell up but going overboard.

And it gets worse! Like, $300 of medical bills worse.

Here's a recap from yet anoth­er user who had blood blis­ters and pos­si­ble nerve dam­age on her vul­va from the LELO Sona:

1) LELO admits the prod­uct made me bleed, then denies this, and 2) short­ly after clos­ing my case, LELO posts an ad admit­ting their prod­uct can cause injury, 3) Then LELO denies the prod­uct caus­es bleed­ing. This is just incred­i­ble uneth­i­cal and dan­ger­ous cor­po­rate behavior.

I'll let you read that again.

And again.

Here's the pic­ture of her Sona after using it (and it's bloody and graph­ic, duh). And below is her screen­shot of the Google ad that shows up when some­one search­es, "LELO Sona bleeding":

Does LELO give a fuck about its products harming users?

So they knew there was a safe­ty issue, and they didn't do any­thing about it. If any­thing, they're a bit gaslight‑y for my taste. At LELO's prices, there should be beta-​testing and built-​in safe­ty mea­sures from the first mod­el. Not after their first and sec­ond iter­a­tions have injured people.

It's not like LELO can't afford it, but they don't give a fuck. We've already seen evi­dence that they don't care. Usually, if there's a hole in a con­dom, it rips upon apply­ing thrust­ing fric­tion, right? That's not the case with the LELO Hex, which is designed so that some­one can poke holes in it, undetected.

They call it a "fea­ture." Gross.

We-​Vibe Melt: an air pulse massager I'd recommend instead of the LELO Sona

Remember when I said that the Sona 2 Cruise is one of the most intense pres­sure wave toys? Yeah, well. The We-​Vibe Melt is up there, too, tak­ing me to Come Kingdom — with­out the haz­ards of the Sona Cruise.

What I love about the We-​Vibe Melt:

• It's super sucky (the fun kind)
• The con­trols are delightful.
• It's app-​compatible for total con­trol of the inten­si­ty and patterns.
• A long-​distance part­ner can oper­ate it from their smartphone.
• Its noz­zle is posi­tioned for min­i­mal vulva-hogging 
  • Great for dual stimulation/​pairing with penetration

I'll post a more in-​depth review lat­er on, but the Melt is my cur­rent top pick. Take 10% off the Melt (or any­thing else) at Peepshow Toys with coupon code SUPERSMASHCACHE

LELO Soraya Wave "come hither" rabbit vibrator review

Oh, you're still reading and considering getting a LELO product?

Let's talk about their newest prod­uct, the Soraya Wave. It's less egre­gious than the Sona (which isn't say­ing much) but still annoy­ing. I wouldn't be sur­prised if LELO didn't have humans beta-​test their toys before release to the public.

How this luxury dual stimulation massager felt in use

I've expressed my dis­il­lu­sion­ment with the LELO Wave vibra­tors before. Their "come hith­er" motion is as slow as a snail climb­ing uphill in molasses. If a guy fin­gered my G‑spot that slow­ly, I'd kick him TF out.

Ever let some­one back in because you thought they had changed? Yeah, well. It was no dif­fer­ent with the Soraya Wave.

Also, while the vibra­tions are decent, the exter­nal stim­u­la­tor align­ment over­shoots my cli­toris. My clit-​vag gap is a very aver­age 1 inch. Yours might be com­pat­i­ble with the LELO Soraya 2 (pls don't get the Wave) if it's longer than 1.25" and you don't need a lot of pressure.

Either way, it sure as hell isn't worth $219+ for me. For that price, you could get the Le Wand Contour — a mag­i­cal stain­less steel "instant orgasm" appa­ra­tus for me. Don't spend that much on some­thing that's only decent and col­lects vagi­nal secre­tions in the seams.

Updates on other luxury rabbit vibrators

BAD NEWS UPDATE: The We-​Vibe Nova 2 wasn't what I hoped; my vagi­na straight­ens out the curve, and it's an awful fit for my anato­my. I'm griev­ing the loss of the orig­i­nal Nova Classic.

GOOD NEWS UPDATE: I have found my rab­bit vibra­tor soul­mate! Meet the California Dreaming Santa Cruz Coaster.