While female masturbators have long been the core of the adult market, it is only recently that male sex toys have been starting to get serious attention. Cock rings, male masturbators, and other male oriented stimulation devices are being rethought with some clever new variations. This is especially true in the area of Male masturbation sleeves. Part of the credit goes to the Fleshlight, which has been hugely successful. There are now quite a few competitors in the market, and the Tenga Flip makes our list of one of the better alternatives.

The Fleshlight is known for their reproductions of porn star genitalia, as well as their interior textures. I actually would rather not have anything anthropomorphic on my hand held masturbator, whether it is a mouth or a vagina or an anus. I also don’t give mine female names. I am fine with it just being a masturbator, which is what the Flip Zero is.

I live in L.A., and when I hear Tenga, I think of the Spanish meaning of “have,” as in “I gotta have one of these”, but the company is based in Japan, and the Japanese meaning, “righteously arranged and elegant” also works. Interior texture is what it is all about, and that has long been a focus for Tenga.

Tenga was founded by former auto-mechanic Koichi Matsumoto . He was apparently quite a good one considering his current expertise in auto-eroticism. The first product was single use masturbation cups introduced in 2006. Within a year they had sold over 2 million of them and they became the best selling male toy in Japan.

They are probably best known now for their Tenga eggs, an egg shaped stretchy masturbator that comes in a choice of 13 different textures. The Flip Zero goes in a different direction. Unlike the Tenga Eggs, it is not disposable. Inside is not a single texture, but a series of three different very intricate textured areas. It is difficult to describe the interior textures as it looks like something designed by aliens. Very horny aliens who think a lot about sex.

The way these textures interact with your penis is very interesting. There is a lot going on here, with different sensations the deeper you slide into the product. I found that by rotating the device a little to different orientations, different sensations could be experienced as you moved the device up and down along the penile shaft.

There are other Flip devices, including the slightly less expensive Flip Hole. It has a very different internal arrangement of textures and a different internal material. One difference that is important to me is that in the Flip Zero the interior material is a single piece with no seams at the point of insertion. This feels better and I am guessing probably helps it to last longer. I also had no problem at all with lube leaking out of it.

Speaking of lube, they suggest that you use their own branded lube for the best experience. Looking at the ingredients, I don’t see any specific reason theirs would work better than other brands. I did not do a series of lube tests on this, although I am guessing that a thicker lube that better adheres to the ridges would be most effective.

Most male masturbators are not that easy to clean. The Flip opens up (it flips open like a flip phone, hence the name), making it very easy to clean. You might want to read the directions for how to open it before you try, as it is a little bit like solving one of those Japanese wooden puzzles you have to figure out how to open.

You open it and rinse it off with warm water. You can then then use the slide arms you slid off to open it with the case to hold the entire device open but inverted, which makes for quicker drying. There is a lot of attention to detail like that paid to all of the design work on this. The molded detail inside is quite impressive, and it would be very difficult to really clean in a sealed product.

I like the pressure pads on the side, and definitely prefer them to the more gimmicky three buttons on the Tenga Flip Hole. When you squeeze, the air is pushed out through an internal one way valve to create a sucking sensation. I don’t know that it felt all that much like sucking to me, but I did enjoy the extra pressure it added. One thing they don’t show in the demo video is that by squeezing in different areas of the pressure pad it also squeezes against your penis in slightly different ways, so you do not have to squeeze just in the middle. Just the sensation of squeezing feels good.

On the Flip Hole they state that it is good for about 50 uses, which is a wild guess because of the dramatic variability of how long each usage might last. I notice that there is no mention of that limitation anywhere in their literature on the Flip Zero, and since it is a different and they claim superiror material, I think we can safely assume that it is much longer lasting. I am not going to stress test it on my penis though, since I think my penis will wear out long before it does.

When I picked it up, my first concern was with the weight, which is a little over a pound. In actual use, though, this turned out not to be a concern at all. It fits easily into the hand and I had no problem at all with hand fatigue, even with the extensive use I did in the interest of scientific testing.

The insertion length is 6.73 inches, so you do need to have a slightly longer than 6 inch penis to get all the way into the third texture area. I am about 8 inches, and while I could not insert all the way in, this did not seem to effect the sensations much at all.

I did set the unit on top of a piece of colored newsprint, which transferred color onto one of the squeezable dimpled white panels. It would not affect usage, but does look unsightly, so you want to be careful what you set this down on.

I have seen long discussions on message and comment boards about what men prefer in their masturbation sleeves, and what you quickly learn is that preferences tend to be very personal. What I would suggest is to start with a less expensive option like a Tenga Egg. Some have more subtle textures and some are more pronounced. Their web site shows you the different interior arrangements, and you might want to get a more pronounced texture as that is closer to what you get in the Flip Zero. Try a couple (they are only around $5 each) and see what you think. If you enjoy a masturbation sleeve and you like pronounced textures, a more expensive sleeve like the Tenga Zero is probably going to be a good investment for you.

I really like the variable textures, the easy ability to clean it is a huge plus, and I appreciate the design from an engineering standpoint. Whether you are a regular masturbator or new to the whole masturbating thing, I am pretty sure you will enjoy this much more than your own hand.