Review: Tenga Flip Hole Masturbator (Black)

For some reason, this review was kinda hard to write. And oddly, that’s not because the Tenga Flip Hole Black is mediocre or bad. In fact, my husband loves. Hell, I love it. I keep finding myself idly playing with it; shoving a finger in and out, caressing the various textured bits inside.

And yes.

I’m having some penis envy.

The Tenga Flip Hole Black is, in fact, so awesome and so geeky and so wow-stimulation-zomg that I really, really wish I had an appendage to stick in there and experience it for myself. I know, I know – I have enough sex toys. But come onnnn it’s so cool!!

This review is really going to be picture-heavy because it deserves a lot of pictures.

Tenga Flip Hole vs Fleshlight in 3 easy steps:

1. You can use soap and water to clean the Tenga. The Fleshlight requires water only, or in case of mildewing, rubbing alcohol
2. The Flip Hole opens up clamshell-style for easy cleaning and air drying
3. The Flip Hole has “buttons”, i.e. pressure points, that allow for much greater suction control or pressure control

My husband has tried two different Fleshlights. The “original” which has no textures and the widest canal; and the Wonder Wave which has a medium canal and medium texture. Granted there are Fleshlights with more texture and a slightly smaller canal, but he feels that the Tenga Flip Hole Black far surpasses what a Fleshlight can offer for texture. For him, the Flip Hole has now completely replaced his use of the Fleshlight.

Tenga Texture

The Flip Hole comes in both a White and Black version. The White has a less-intense texture. The Black has more texture to it, obviously. The Flip Hole can feel different depending on which side you have facing “up” (the side you can see). The textures are different on each half of it, and the shapes are kinda like mirror images. Where one side has two little nubby balls on the left and right, the other side has one nubby ball in the center and when closed it all lines up. Where one side has two large nubby balls with an entrance slit cut in, the other side has a large convex portion. The clear material has that weird “sticky yet not” thing goin on. If it’s dry, you’re dry, and you touch it it feels sticky (yet your skin retains no sticky). If you’re lubed up or it’s wet, it just feels slippery and lovely. It’s very soft and squishy. Edit: as of 2014 the Flip Hole comes in 4 varieties: White, Black, Red, Silver. White is the softest, Black is the most extreme, Red and Silver in between. This page on the Tenga site explains a little more about them.

How to Use the Tenga Flip Hole

The Flip Hole comes in two pieces – the masturbator and the “sheath”. The sheath is just black plastic that has a top and little sides. It serves three purposes: To keep it closed and the top entrance covered when it’s dry and ready for storage; to hang the Flip Hole on for air drying; to keep the Flip Hole closed while it’s in use. From the reviews I’ve read of customers, some of them don’t realize that the black sheath is meant to help keep the Flip Hole closed during use. As you can see below, when a cock is inside of the masturbator, the super-soft TPR bulges out – if you don’t use the sheath, it requires a lot of hand strength to keep it closed and it makes using the “buttons” darn near impossible.

The sheath needs to be put on prior to shoving your cock inside; if you don’t, it’s really difficult to get it lined up properly. The edges of the Flip Hole, where the two sides of plastic meet, have a ridge. The sheath has a groove and you must slide the sheath down so that the ridge and groove interlock – sort of like how a drawer works.

When I looked at the Flip Hole online and read reviews talking about the “buttons” on the sides, I thought they actually were buttons. Clicky-clicky buttons. They’re not; on each side there where there’s no black plastic and the TPR shows through, you can see these white buttons. They are attached to a single plate of plastic that’s sandwiched inside the TPR. The button farthest from the entrance increases suction the more you press it (you press both side buttons from each side at the same time); the button closest to the entrance makes the beginning portion more snug; the middle button does the least. When you press on the bottom or top buttons, as you can see below, they really press the material in a lot because of the movement of the plate that they’re attached to. Pressing the middle button just exerts equal pressure on the whole plate and it doesn’t press in as much.

Lube

The Tenga comes with 3 plastic vials of lube, with the cringe-worthy name of “Hole Lotion”. Ugh. Sorry, “lotion” to me means the creamy stuff, this is lube. It is supposed to be 3 different viscosities of lube: Very thin, very thick (so thick it’s pretty much gel. I can turn the tube upside down and it takes a full minute to get it moving a little), and kinda thick; one of them is supposed to be warming but hubs never felt that at all. Other reviews say the same thing. Each viscosity supposedly changes the intensity of the Tenga – the really thin would make you feel all the little intricacies of the textures moreso, the very thick less so. The Tenga requires a lot of lube, especially for a girthier-than-average cock. If you were to like, and use, all three lubes you might get 6 or 8 sessions out of all totaled. My husband however much preferred his ID Glide lube for this.

Make sure you lube up the entrance more than you’d think necessary, as it’s a bit of an effort getting yourself in there at first shove. You do need a good amount of lube but nothing obscene; perhaps overall a tablespoon or two? Just guessing. He didn’t think that the Tenga “absorbed” lube like the Fleshlight seemed to.

Overall Experience – what the Tenga Flip Hole Black feels like

Hubs loves it. He likens the Fleshlight more to sex, in that it might be better suited to guys who’ve not gotten laid in a long time, aren’t dating, and want something a little bit closer to sex. He thinks the Tenga is a bit more like a blowjob, but yet….more complicated. You can thrust a little, thrust a lot or just hold it still and rapidly switch being pressing the top and bottom buttons (I did this to him and his eyes rolled back in his head). And the Tenga IS, in my opinion, somewhat of an almost architectural/engineering marvel. It’s geeky, it’s futuristic, it doesn’t try to look like a mouth or a vulva or an anus. If you need more stimulation and a tighter fit, no matter your size, the Tenga outperforms by miles. Hubs, in order to get “more” from the Fleshlight, even tried using the Fleshlight without the plastic case – to no avail. But the Tenga, with its two different sides, the “buttons”, the varying sensations you can have by changing your lube….it’s just a better investment. I would only not recommend this one for guys who have a very sensitive cock, this would be sensation overload for you.

There’s another point to mention – the temperature. There’s a Tenga Hole Warmer, a reusable tube that gets warm and you can insert it inside the Flip Hole or probably other Tenga masturbators, and warm up the material. Many people that use a Fleshlight highly recommend letting it sit in a bath of very warm water for a few minutes as it greatly improves the feeling of it and the material doesn’t really warm up on its own during use. The Flip Hole though, does. Hubs (and others I’ve read) have said that in just a minute or two of use the material warms up very nicely all on its own.

Care and Cleaning of the Tenga Flip Hole

I’ve mentioned above that you can safely use soap and water to clean this. The fact that it opens up clamshell-style makes cleanup – and drying – a breeze. Cleanup and drying is a big downfall of the Fleshlight. The design makes it more likely that it could be stored when still damp, leading to mildew because the material is very porous.