The Lovehoney Desire Luxury Ribbed Clitoral Vibrator takes me back. The first five times I tested it, I remembered the days when I thought I couldn’t orgasm on vibrators.
I was drawn to this toy because it’s cute AF. The sparkly, iridescent sheen in the silicone coating—holographic glitter, a silicone expert told me—is a pleasure to look at. Unfortunately, that’s where the pleasure usually ends for me, because the timber of the Desire Luxury Ribbed Vibe’s motor does so little. (It’s a motor shared by the bumpy, “studded” version of the same vibe and the original Desire Luxury Clit Vibe.1) It’s not a weak motor, but it is essentially buzzy.
Almost all professional sex toy reviewers put one quality—rumbliness, the opposite of “buzzy-ness”—on a pedestal. A motor is rumbly when the vibes it produces carry through flesh well, when they penetrate deeper. Now, I’ve gone on record saying that I like a hint of buzz, not all rumbliness, in my vibrators. There has to be a balance. And the Lovehoney Desire Luxury Ribbed Vibe has no balance—besides a hint of rumbliness on its first setting.
The vibration noise reminds me of an electric toothbrush: it has that humming, whirring sound that—at super high speeds—I’ve previously described as like a nearby leafblower.
Rumbliness is a big goddamn deal for clitoral vibes in particular because so many clit owners get off more easily when their internal clitoris is stimulated, not just the head. With the Lovehoney Desire Luxury Ribbed Clit Vibe, my experience has been the opposite. The first steady speed just doesn’t have the power I need, and it’s already buzzing some.
And the second steady speed is much worse. I can’t orgasm by having the contoured shape wrap around my pubic bone and sit on my clit. My clit is there making its presence known, for sure—swelling and making me feel like I need to get off, but I can’t. The buzzy vibes just don’t stimulate the shaft of my clit: the section of the internal clitoris that runs down toward the urethra and then wishbones out around the vagina. And I need that deeper vibration to come—I absolutely am not someone who enjoys external-only stimulation.
I try to compensate for the truly mediocre vibe quality by using the Desire Luxury vibe’s ridges to massage my clitoral hood. I usually love having it rubbed up and down over the clit. The toy’s contoured shape makes this hard to pull off, though. The curved design fits very well in the palm of my hand and wraps around my pubic bone beautifully, but it’s not ideal for rubbing underneath my clitoris, where I personally get the most sensation. The curve bumps into my mons too awkwardly for that.
Once I was testing the Desire Luxury Ribbed Clit Vibe this way, rubbing it methodically to stimulate myself through the hood, trying to coax an orgasm out. Then the vibe died. Huh. Oh well, I figured I’d finish up by comparing another vibe with my recent Desire Luxury experience. I picked the Screaming O Charged Vooom to be charitable—it sells for under $30 and is decently powerful (with some rumble!) but not like a We-Vibe-Tango-level of “knock your socks off.” I’d spent ten minutes with the Lovehoney vibe, with no orgasm in sight—but after literally ten seconds with the Charged Vooom, my clit was so relieved to finally encounter rumblier vibration intensity that I came hard, rocking back and forth for almost a minute.
After that I was about ready to give up totally on the Desire Luxury Ribbed Vibe, but I finally realized that the answer to my no-deeper-clit-stim problem was turning the vibe the other direction. I sit on the interesting plastic circle here (while wondering what its point is—why not have the whole thing coated in iridescent silicone, rather than leaving a circle to trap gunk? Whatever).
Anyway, the back of the vibe, the part that’s designed to fit in your palm, rests outside the mouth of my vag and makes my expansive inner labia feel pleasantly tingly. Apparently my vaginal mouth and lips are much more amenable to buzzy vibrations than my clit. Meanwhile, the pointy tip of the vibe presses down right above the top of my clitoral hood and I can grind on it without feeling overwhelmed by the buzz.
So yeah, I can in fact get off on this vibe. It’s a different kind of sensation—and not one I see myself seeking out often when I have so many other vibes at my disposal.
So give me decent vibe pitch over sparkles. Turns out, I’m a practical person when it comes to orgasms. There’s really no excuse for a “luxury” toy being this goddamn buzzy when you can buy a decently rumbly bullet for $20 these days.
Overall Thoughts
I was seduced by the Desire Luxury Ribbed Clit Vibe’s glittery silicone coating. I mean, it changes from blue to sparkly purple depending on the lighting, how cool is that? This is a sleek, good-looking clit vibe, for sure. It has an ergonomic, easy-to-hold shape. And I’m not going to say that its vibration quality is going to be a failure for everyone—the higher speeds are definitely not weak.
But I didn’t even bother mentioning in the body of my review that the Desire Luxury Ribbed Clit Vibe has six steady vibration speeds (and some number of adjustable-intensity patterns2), because everything above the first steady speed irritates my clit too fiercely—so much buzz.
The fact that you can change the power of the patterns, via up-and-down control buttons, is a great feature. (I recently raved about adjustable-intensity patterns in my Dorr Silker G-spot vibe review.) Or, it would be a great feature if my clit wasn’t generally opposed to the Desire Luxury vibe’s motor. Alas, it and I are not meant to be together.
If you know you’re good with surface-level vibes and you’re drawn to the shape, then find one of these toys at Lovehoney US, or Lovehoney Canada, Lovehoney UK, or Lovehoney EU.
But, if you want and/or need a more penetrating motor, then the Je Joue Mimi (or its twin with a softer silicone tip, Mimi Soft) are oval-shaped clit vibes that offer more rumbliness. Or go for the renowned We-Vibe Touch!
- And very likely also found in this black Fifty Shades vibe.
- My thoughts about testing those ran along the lines of “Why even bother,” since the steady speeds didn’t do a ton for me, and most people are indifferent to patterned vibes anyway.