“Hey Joe, what do ya know?” “Hey Jane, how’s the game?”
Those two sentences come to mind every time I lay my hands on this particular product, and for very good reason. Yes, my friends, the world’s first artificially intelligent (A.I) sex toy has hit the mainstream market.
What’s that over there, Jane?
Oh Joe, don’t you know? It’s our predecessor, the HUM!
No, unfortunately it isn’t in the shape of a plastic fantastic Jude Law or Ashley Scott, a ’la Gigolo Joe and Gigolo Jane, but rather in the shape of an equally gorgeous looking vibrator.
Meet the HUM!
Taking words directly from Californian company HUM’s website, I was faced with a sex toy that boasts ‘body responsive technology’. An intuitive vibrator that feels the motions and pressures of your body and responds accordingly.
Those motion sensors can supposedly detect things like the speed you’re going, and how tight your muscles are squeezing, and as you increase your pace, the computer inside the vibe gives the HUM instructions, ensuring that it keeps pace with your needs.
That’s a lot of fancy talk, so I was eager to find out whether this A.I vibe lived up to its maker’s claims. So, did it, or didn’t it?
Well, first off, I’ll tell you that the HUM really is lovely to look at. Shaped very much like a curvy ninepin, it’s 7 inches in total length with a maximum 5 inch girth, and is made from the strangest feeling silicone I’ve ever come across.
It’s hand poured silicone, and isn’t 100% uniform in texture. Some parts are so smooth it’s like touching a warmed ceramic, but in other places it’s quite textured, almost as if there are super fine wrinkles. Like I said though, this is hand poured, so you can expect there to be little abnormalities in the finish.
It feels very nice to the touch, and unlike a lot of silicone toys, it doesn’t take a lot of lube to get things slipping and sliding smoothly. I’ve only used mine with water-based Sliquid lubes, but according to the HUM website, you can use any lubricant with it quite safely. I would always advise a patch test though, just in case, as you really don’t want to damage the finish of this one!
There are many colour options for you to choose from, such as pure white, limo (black) blue glow and frost, but the colourway I chose was Sky. A beautiful, clean white marbled with a bright primary blue. It really does remind me of the sky on a warm summer’s day, and even though I’m a lover of stormier skies, this colouring really is stunning.
Even just out of the box, the HUM was impressing me with its fancy features. Like so many other toys these days it’s usb rechargeable, but unlike the majority of those other toys, it has a super simple charging dock. That dock comes in the shape of a black and blue disc, known as the Qi charging pad. The cable is one of those universal phone charger types, and it plugs into the Qi at the back. Once the power is switched on, the light on the Qi will glow red. The HUM is then stood atop of it, and that red light will turn a solid blue, and once a full charge is complete, the blue light will begin to flash.
I’ll admit, the whole flashing when it’s done thing threw me, because in age old Ella tradition, I didn’t read the instructions. That left me wondering why I had a solid (usually meaning finished) light, when I shoulda been looking for a flash. It was actually charged from the start, so it sat on the dock for two hours for no reason whatsoever. Also, my HUM doesn’t flash blue, it turns green, but that’s no big shakes, I’m just happy to know when it’s done.
Something else that makes me happy about the HUM, is that it tells you how much battery life it has left in it when you first switch it on. To do so, press and hold the HUM lettering for a few seconds, and your toy will come to life. Three short pulses tells you you’re full and ready to go, one pulse lets you know that you’re probably gonna end up tearing your hair out when your almost empty battery dies on you mid-use.
Now, this is where the A.I aspect of the HUM kicks in. As I said earlier, beneath all that lovely smooth silicone lies a series of motion and pressure sensors, all linked to a little internal computer. It literally learns from what I’m doing with it, and then responds to suit whatever I’m doing. Here are a few examples:
- If I shake it like a Polaroid picture, the intensity of the vibrations increases, and the faster I go, the faster it goes.
- If I squeeze it in a hard and constant manner, the intensity of the vibrations increases
- If I squeeze or shake in a pattern, it does its best to pick up and mimic that pattern
- If I stop completely, it seems to idle on its lowest setting like a car engine waiting for its driver to tell it what to do
Basically, the HUM fucks you back. (Actually, according to the email I received, it hums you back, but I prefer my uncouth version, lol.) But if all that doesn’t tickle your fancy, you always have the option of using the plus (+) and minus (–) buttons to find the right speed for you.
When you first switch it on, you’re around the midway point on the vibrations scale, and you can go down 5 notches to a so faint it’s barely there shiver, or up what feels to me like 8 notches until you come to a pretty powerful shudder. In fact, even if you do like the fancy responsive aspect, you can still use that and the controls at the same time, making your HUM experience a truly customisable one.
On the lower to middle settings, the vibes of the HUM are pretty quiet. Once you reach the giddy highs of the top speeds, though, things get a little rackety. Still, if you’re under the covers in a room with a closed door, anyone on the other side of said door would have to be intentionally listening to hear anything.
And how do those vibes feel? Well, it’s difficult to pin down exactly what I think, actually. They do feel powerful to me, so that’s good, but they wobble and change as soon as I wrap my hand around the shaft, so gauging exactly where they are on the buzzy/rumbly scale is hard. I have to at least give an indication though, so I’d say they do have a certain rumbliness to them, but they’re mostly buzzy. Powerfully so, but buzzy all the same.
Even though I much prefer rumbles, I can’t say I disliked the HUM. My first encounter with it was very positive, and that was just me messing around with it, trying to get an idea of how it responded to my body. I’d lubed it up and was busy thrusting, tensing my kegels and squeezing with my hand, when all of a sudden I hit an angle that felt so good, I went from exploration to masturbation.
My jeans were still around my ankles, my shoes on, yet I still fucked myself senseless for a good half hour. To keep the HUM connected with the spot that had gotten me all excited I had to thrust in slow, jerky movements, so had to manually increase the intensity to bring myself to orgasm. That didn’t bother me in the slightest, though, because not only is that what the buttons are there for, but I’ve found I have to use the buttons anyway, as I can’t seem to make the vibes increase to full just with my movements and squeezes.
Since then, the Fella and I have used the HUM a good few times. He loves holding it while I ride it so he can listen to the vibes (and me) get louder as I get more vigorous, and he absolutely adores edging me with it. My favourite way to use it is to lie on my back with it inserted, and flex my kegels in different ways while I manually stimulate my clit. I really get off on knowing that the vibe is doing a fast pulse, or a slow rolling one, purely cos my vagina is telling it to.
While the A.I aspect of the HUM works for me, I can see that it could be a problem for some. My worry is that, if your muscles are weak, or if your hand grip is weak, the toy isn’t going to respond as well for you. Imagine getting to the stage where you’re really going hell for leather, squeezing your muscles for all you’re worth, and the HUM does nothing. The vibes don’t speed up, or strengthen… they just stay as they were, buzzing away softly while you give yourself friction burns on your labia and blisters on your fingers in your quest for an orgasm.
If you have neat and tidy little labia, or if you can’t take much of the length of the vibe inside you, you’ll have a better chance of it working for you, as your hand can make the magic happen as you hold, twist, and thrust. But if, like me, you have larger labia or can take most of the shaft inside you, there’s nothing for your hand or fingers to work with because the very bottom of the HUM is unresponsive to pressure (though shaking it still works well).
You do still have the control buttons to fall back on if you find yourself among those the A.I feature doesn’t work for, but I’d have to say in that case that the HUM becomes just vibrator. You’d then have to ask yourself if it’s the best vibrator you could get for your money, and you’d be parting with a substantial chunk of that if you bought the HUM for its current going price of between $199 and $229 (£150 / £170 – €178 / €205). If I was in a position where I had to consider the HUM without its A.I capabilities, I’d personally choose something else, as without it, it doesn’t stand out as anything special.
One last thing to say about the HUM is that it’s 100% submersible. I always forget to mention that, seeing as though I’m not a fan of masturbating in the bath. But yeah, waterproof, so you can take your fun to the bathroom, or if you’re like me and you’d rather not, you can just rest comfortably in the knowledge that cleaning is as simple as giving your toy a dunk in some warm soapy water after play.
At this point in a review, I’d often give an indication as to who I think a product would work for, but this time, I can’t. I don’t want to come across as disliking the HUM in any way, as I really do enjoy it every time I use it, but I have to think of how it will be for you, lovely reader, and I have to have an opinion as to whether or not you’d be getting as much bang for your buck as possible if you were looking to buy.
But in this case, I’d say you’ll have to experience it to know whether or not the HUM hums for you.
The HUM Artificially Intelligent Vibrator was sent to me by HUM in exchange for an honest review. This in no way influences my opinions, which are now, and will forever be, my own. No affiliate links have been used in this post.
