Ring-a-ding-ding: FirmTech’s New RingMate Vibrator
Good for detecting erections, having fun—or both?
Massagers, strokers, thrusters, oscillators, and everything between, while I’ve enjoyed nearly every sextech plaything I’ve reviewed, I’ve always had a marked fondness for penile-constricting, ring-type sextoys.
So naturally, I was more than slightly excited when FirmTech sent me their new erection-monitoring, multi-speed vibrating RingMate vibrator to review.
Though I had a quite stimulating time with it, and found it well-made with several excellent features,, I have to report it has a number of issues preventing it from ranking as an A+ ring toy.
What the RingMate’s for
Unlike other cock ring-type pleasure devices, FirmTech’s RingMate is designed to pull double dutyduring heterosexual intercourse, arousing both penis and a partner’s clitoris while monitoring the degree and frequency of the former’s erections. RingMate also monitors erections while masturbating and nocturnal, ahem, risings when worn overnight.
Information which could be used to diagnose sexual health-related conditions such as erectile dysfunction.
Or, at least, that’s how it’s intended to function, but however many times I tried, I couldn’t get the RingMate to recognize let alone connect with the FirmTech smartphone app.
On one hand
Not that the RingMate isn’t pleasurable; but when I compare it to other BlueTooth-enabled sextoys—also boasting a wider range of innovative features and effortless connectivity—this failure of FirmMate’s major selling point is particularly glaring.
RECOMMENDED READ: Get Your Soft-on With a Week’s Worth of Juicy Adult Sex Ed
Putting that serious issue aside for a moment, as a vibrator ring, the FirmMate has a lot going for it, starting with how its motorized section is engineered less to directly stimulate the wearer’s penis and more to excite their partner’s clitoris.
A body-safe, gel-like, non-reactive material covers the hard plastic unit, helping to enhance its overall comfort.
Along with a RingMate, I was also sent one of FirmTech’s High-Performance Rings, a hook-and-loop fashioned from the same squishy material.
Inserting the High-Performance Ring into the RingMate’s own loops and linking it together results in a pleasantly secure fit and makes taking it off a snap.
What you get
The RingMate comes with the unit itself, a little drawstring bag to store it in, and a USB power cord—and nothing else. Scanning the QR Code on the side of the box takes you to the FirmTech site with step-by-step instructions on how to use it and, hopefully, get it to wireless link to the supportive smartphone app.
The Max Performance Ring, though lacking an obviously unnecessary power cord, does come with a handy little instruction booklet.
As I and other Future of Sex sextech reviewers, most notably Dr. Amy Marsh, have repeatedly pointed out, not providing an easily readable guidebook is blatantly biased against people without easy access to a smartphone or the web.
Insult on insult: The inside of the RingMate’s box does have some pairing info, but the font is so small that it is practically invisible.
On the other hand
Reporting FirmTech’s initial launch back in 2023, I made a point to call out what seems to be the company’s anxiety-inducing focus on penis-owners’ having to achieve and maintain an erection—as if there’s no other way to have mutually or solitary satisfying sexual experiences—and how it flies in the face of what sexologists recommend, such as our own Amy Marsh, who said, “It’s terrible that this should be such a source of worry. We need a sexual culture change.”
A change which I’d like to give voice to by saying erections are fine and dandy, but there are thousands of different and equally, if not more exciting, solo or partner sexual activities not requiring one.
Not that erectile dysfunction concerns aren’t valid, especially if they might indicate a potentially injurious or quality-of-life diminishing medical condition, but the undeniable truth is on-call, instantaneous, and unflagging erections are the stuff of carefully-edited, professionally performed adult entertainment fantasies.
The reality is, particularly as penis-owners age, erections come and go, and no magical drug or technological marvel can alter that fact.
But as Dr. Amy Marsh pointed out, rather than attempting to change our bodies, what we can begin changing is our perceptions around what sex is and could be—by having fun with interesting, exciting, and arousing products like FirmTech’s RingMate without fearing whether you’re hard or not.
Image Sources: FirmTech, Depositphotos
