Review: OhMiBod

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OhMiBod

I knew the OhMiBod was a shoddy piece of crap from the get-go. I just didn’t have quite enough justification to state that blatantly in this review… until last night when it died. After about 1.5 uses, and right after I finished compiling a 33-song playlist of songs to test, it stopped working.

As irritating as it was, however, it was not altogether surprising, and not altogether disappointing. A music-powered vibrator may sound fun, but once you use it, you know the truth. It’s like one of those dancing flowers — cute at first, until you realize wow, this thing has only the most rudimentary understanding of music.

The OhMiBod is a white, plastic vibrator that looks like a jumbo tampon. It comes with two different silver caps (one for music hookup and one to turn it into a regular vibrator) and a hot pink bag with “OhMiBod” embroidered on it, which is cute if you think hot pink is cute.

I was surprised at how chintzy the OhMiBod was. It may look classy in pictures, but one glance at the cheapo silver caps and you’ll change your mind. Also, you have to bang the thing against a hard surface to even get the plastic battery sleeve out. Then, in the manual, the total hard-on killer: “Do not use rechargeable batteries.” Dude, you don’t get to cost $70 and then say that.

Well, you also don’t get to cost $70 and then die.

There is one thing you should know up front. When listening to music with the OhMiBod, there is about a 50 millisecond delay between the music and the corresponding vibrations. For me, this is unforgivable. A music-powered vibrator that can’t even keep up with the music? It’s not a huge delay, or even a delay that most people would notice, but neurotic me noticed it — and it made me grate my teeth.

The OhMiBod’s box reads “The range and variety of vibrations are endless.” NOPE. The range and variety of vibrations are extremely limited, and are often so non-specific that they could easily be replicated in any other vibrator with pulsation functions. The volume also has to be turned up to get decent-strength vibrations.

To gauge whether or not the OhMiBod will respond to a particular song, you must understand just how particular this little brat is. To say that it responds to a nice beat would be incorrect — what it really does is respond to a strong beat if there is not much else going on in the song. For instance,  “Bonnie Taylor Shakedown (2K4)” by Hellogoodbye may have a killer beat, but there’s too much going on for the OhMiBod to respond to it. It becomes just a constant buzz.

Here are a few songs that the OhMiBod responded positively to before it died: “Guitar Hero” by Amanda Palmer, “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson, “Miss Magnolia” by Matt Costa, “Music is my Hot, Hot Sex” by Cansei de Ser Sexy. However, even in songs like these, the OhMiBod tends to flake out when the chorus comes along, unable to distinguish the beat from everything else.

Also, being a moron, I attempted watching porn with the OhMiBod. Too bad it responds to only the most obnoxious and repetitive of moans.

I wanted to try Blink 182, Eve 6, Nirvana, Simon & Garfunkel, and the all-important “Drops of Jupiter,” but it died before I could.

So how about as a regular vibrator? It apparently has/had seven vibration patterns. I didn’t try them before it died, but I’m sure they wouldn’t be anything special. This thing is still made of plastic, after all. It’s no better than a $15 plastic vibrator, and that is exactly what it feels like in my vagina.

The thing that scares me about the OhMiBod is that I’ve seen several favorable reviews of it out there. Don’t listen to them, people. Sure, this thing sort-of vibrates along to some types of music, which is something few vibrators do. But it doesn’t do it well — and then it dies. You’d really be better off buying any >$15 plastic vibrator with a more pleasing shape and a nice selection of vibration patterns. I hereby rename the OhMiBod: the OhMiSuck.