Review: Jopen Intensity

When a vibrator makes you re-enact a scene from a musical ((I’m struck by just how much Sondheim captured my thoughts and reactions to the Jopen Intensity, especially seeing as how he was actually writing a snarky piece about a Georges Seurat painting!)), you know it’s a strange toy. Yet here I am, hemming and hawing and pondering a great many things as I turn this bizarre piece of silicone, plastic, and circuitry over in my hands.

The Jopen Intensity is a hideous beast, there’s no two ways about that. It’s strangely shaped ((I’ve heard all manner of descriptions, from “deformed foot” to “preserved fetus in a jar”)). It’s a nausea-inducing shade of pinky-mauve. It’s large, but not in a “oh that looks delightfully filling” way but rather in a “what the fuck IS that?!?” way. It looks every bit like the (quack) medical device that it is purporting to have started out as. Or maybe some bizarre ray-gun. Paint it brass and take it to the next steampunk con?

The Intensity is trying to be an awful lot of things- clitoral vibrator, dildo, g-spotter, electro-stimulation, and kegel exerciser. It’s even trying to appeal to the wide range of preferences for insertable size. Unfortunately, I think they’re trying to ride all the horses with one butt.

I have so many thoughts and feelings on this, but they’re scattered and rant-y. So let’s just start with the base particulars, and then jump on into that list I just rattled off, shall we? Intensity is made of silicone, so that’s good. It has two metal electrodes on the insertion point. The silicone around those looks pretty well cast around it actually, so I don’t feel like cleaning is going to be a chore to ensure proper hygiene. So that’s good too. It uses four AAA batteries, which is not too bad, at least it’s not AAAA’s or somesuch impossible to find size. It… uhm… yeah, I think I’m out of what passes as nice things to say…

Before I jump into my list of Things That Are Wrong With This Toy, I need to say a few words about the battery compartment. I’d normally not mention the battery compartment but in this case I feel I have to. This is a device designed for women, and I’d hazard to say that most women I encounter on my day-to-day activity tend more towards the femme side of things. This battery compartment is most decidedly NOT femme-friendly. My nails aren’t particularly long, just a smidge past the tips of my fingers, but I couldn’t grasp the little twisty bit because my nails are too long. I dunno about you, but I don’t feel like I should have to change my manicure habits on account of a sextoy.

There is an “On/Off” power button, and two sets of controls on the Intensity, one marked “V” and “S” with up and down arrows for each, and a series of indicator LEDs. “V” for vibration, and “S” for… shock? I’m guessing they meant stimulation, but I’m going with shock based on my experiences with this thing. The tricky part is that I can never quite remember if the controls are designed with up/down oriented for when I’m just looking at the toy, or for when it’s inserted in me. This is problematic later, particularly when we get to the shock parts.

The vibrator on here is a “rabbit” style clitoral attachment, except instead of having a pair of ears which flutter uselessly like most rabbit vibes, this has THREE rather firm protrusions to poke you in the clit whilst emitting an annoying buzzing sensation. There is no redeeming the vibe action on this, at all. None. It stabs, it hurts (and not it a good way), and it annoys. Don’t believe me? You don’t have to take my word for it. Not much vibration carries internally, which doesn’t surprise me given the mechanics of this thing.

You see, people like a lot of different things when it comes to an insertable toy or dildo. I get asked all the time “what is the best?” or “what is your most popular?” or some variant on the theme of folk wanting to find the One Dildo To Rule Them All. Sorry folks, it doesn’t exist. Jopen tried to address this issue of custom-fit dildo needs by looking at that pinnacle period of technological advancement known as the early 1990’s. No, really. Their solution? See that big, round, bulbous portion of the “base”? That is none other than an air bladder, which you use to inflate the intensity to your desired size. Just like a pair of Reebok sneakers— a design idea which we all knew was preposterous almost as soon as they came out. The attempt to make this a g-spotting toy is something that I am glad was very clearly an afterthought, but that doesn’t prevent it from being awful for me. There’s an awkward lump on the shaft which presses into my pubic bone in a really painful and pinchy manner. I can’t imagine it being useful, at all, for anyone who wanted to stimulate their g-spot anyhow- wrong place, too small, and just useless.

Which brings us to the reason this toy falls into the $200+ price bracket, and what makes most people recoil in fear (myself included). Intensity is designed to use electrostimulation to engage your PC muscles and give them a work out. Basically? It’s trying to be a TENS unit for your cunt. I happen to like e-stim, and so I was really excited when I was offered the chance to stick this thing in me and electrocute my vagina for fun and science. Remember what I said about the controls being a pair of up/down buttons of vague orientation? Yeah- this is where that becomes an issue. Each intensity level (I see what you did there guys, and I’m not laughing) has a couple settings of how fast of a pulse you receive, and there are I believe ten levels. I don’t know for sure, I didn’t get through them all. Epiphora did though, and I bow to her vagina for doing so. Even just in my hand, I can tell the issue with the shock levels right away. There is too large a variance from one to the next. It’s like, instead of taking a flight of stairs one step at a time, taking them two or three, or stretching reaaaaaaaaalllly far to try and do four steps at once. You generally end up hurting yourself trying to do that.

Despite my reservations, I lubed up, smeared some electrode gel ((The ingredients for which are not located anywhere on the packaging, so I’m thanking my stars that it didn’t give me any problems)) on the contacts, put it in me, and turned it on. The first setting was the familiar “I think there might be an ant crawling on me” tickly feel of a TENS unit on really low. The second setting got buzzy. The third setting changed abruptly to feeling like someone was stabbing the inside of my vagina with one of the old-style tuberculosis tine-tests, but in your cunt instead of your arm. I tried going up to level four, at which point the stabbing moved on to feeling like knives in my vagina, and I tried to turn it off. Except for that whole “which way is up” problem. I still can’t believe I actually gave this a full round of testing sessions before hiding it under the bed for months, wanting never to look at it again.

This problem of power settings going from not enough to TOO MUCH in one step isn’t unique to Intensity, it’s a common issue for digital electrosex gear. Analog may be the way of the past for many things, but when it comes to using electricity to stimulate really sensitive parts of the body, the fine-tune control of analog really is the way to go. I’m the kind of person who, on a whim, decides to see what it feels like to take my TENS unit to a nipple ((Something which some electro-sex folk will tell you not to do due to proximity to the heart, etc. etc. I’m not saying this was a GOOD idea, ok?)) (which was really fun in ways I had never expected), who contemplates shearing my beloved cuntfur in order to get a better contact with my TENS pads on my labia, and there was that whole electro-bike thing…

I like e-stim quite a bit and don’t get nearly enough. I really should have loved Intensity, but I just can’t. I’d much rather do my kegels the old-fashioned way, or with some Luna Beads, than by painfully shocking my cunt into feeling like it’s being stabbed by knives. I’ve had one friend suggest that electrosex, to him, feels like angry bees in his dick. This was like angry bees with scimitars. I’ll stick to an analog unit and the wide world of probes and pads designed for electrofucking, thanks.