Review: Coconu Wave Massager

There’s something so approachable about palm-sized vibrators like the Coconu Wave. They’re round-edged and soft, small enough to tuck into a nightstand or backpack, and fit perfectly into your hand.

Because of that, they’re intuitive in a way that other sex toys aren’t—they work in harmony with your hands to create an elevated sexual experience, for yourself or partners. Coconu’s Wave Massager exemplifies these qualities with such expertise that you’d never guess it’s the company’s first vibrator.

Carefully Crafted

I’ve tried a lot of first-draft vibrators from sex tech companies that typically specialize in other areas of the industry. I have yet to try one that’s unusably bad, but they all share a certain quality. There’s a tentativeness in the design, a sense that this product is a version built up by someone without much institutional knowledge. Sometimes the battery life falls flat, the shape is weird, or the motors are more buzz-buzz than rumble-rumble. But that’s to be expected! You have to make mistakes to get good at something.

That’s why the Coconu Wave surprised me so much. It’s a simple little thing, but there’s meticulous attention to detail in every component, the first of which is the silicone. It’s coated in platinum-cured silicone, and it surrounds the rigid internal structures with a sufficient thickness that still feels squishy to the touch. The silicone is exceptionally soft, smooth, and silky, never dusty or dry.

When you apply a few drops of water-based lubes, sometimes the silicone outer shell of low-quality sex toys can acquire a kind of squeaky feeling (like being squeaky clean) to the touch. It’s a mood killer. The Coconu Wave Massager avoids this pitfall entirely, which makes sense considering the company’s main specialty is lube. The Wave takes to water- and coconut oil-based lubes like a fish to water. The silicone shell becomes slick and smooth (like the inside of your cheek) but never sticky or squeaky.

How the Wave’s silicone outer takes to lubes is an important quality not just from a sensory-preferences point of view, but functionally, too. Because the lube distributes so easily over its surface, the Wave provides rich sensations even when it’s not turned on.

Riding the Wave

When you turn it on for the first time, you’re treated to a pleasantly light but deep-penetrating vibration, more rumbly than buzzy. It’s not what I’d characterize as a high level of intensity and it falls on the lower end of that spectrum, but the vibrations travel surprisingly deep even on the lowest vibration setting.

Notch the intensity up one level and the Wave positively sings. This mode is great for indirect stimulation and the vibrations travel pretty deep on nearly any part of your body. The tip of the nose is a great place to test how deeply you’ll be able to feel the vibrations from any given vibrator, and with the Wave on its second intensity level, I could feel it deep in my sinuses. That’s pretty unusual for a toy of this size. For instance, the Dame Pom, which I regard as one of the best small vibrators I’ve ever tested, produced similar results on the nose-tip test—and it’s twice the price of the $50 Wave Massager.

The internal motor is powerful for its size. It has 10 vibration settings to cycle through; the first two provide consistent vibration at different intensities, and the remaining eight cycle through different vibration patterns. It’s a decent amount of variety for a toy this size. The Dame Pom only has five intensities and five vibration patterns.