Bullets, wands and lay-ons: three shapes you hold, doing three different jobs
Same hand, same idea on paper. The median bullet is 52g, the median wand 175g, and that gap decides more than any review score does.
| Bullet vibrators | Wands | Lay-on vibrators | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Products | 19 | 7 | 14 |
| Brands | 3 | 4 | 2 |
| Price range | £9.99–£81.75 | £20.99–£99.95 | £30.75–£66.94 |
| Median price | £19.99 | £49.99 | £48.95 |
| Median weight | 52 g | 175 g | 102 g |
| Weight range | 22–138 g | 70–365 g | 22–280 g |
| Publish a rating | 7 of 19 | 3 of 7 | 14 of 14 |
| Reviews in total | 1,067 | 242 | 13,728 |
| Median two-star share | 0.8% | 0.9% | 1.5% |
None of these three is a better version of the others. A bullet is for one hand and a short session, a wand is for a long one and asks you to put it down between, and a lay-on is the only one of the three that can stay where you left it. Buy the shape that matches how you use it, then pick within that shape on price and weight.
The price is not a ladder
Nineteen bullets run £9.99 to £81.75 with a median of £19.99. Seven wands run £20.99 to £99.95 with a median of £49.99. Fourteen lay-ons run £30.75 to £66.94 with a median of £48.95. So a bullet costs about a third of what the other two cost, and a wand and a lay-on cost the same as each other. If these were three quality tiers you would see three steps. You see one step and then a plateau, which is what a difference in job looks like rather than a difference in how good they are.
Weight is the real specification
The median bullet is 52g, the median lay-on 102g, the median wand 175g. A bullet sits between two fingers and its weight barely registers. A lay-on rests against you, so 102g is held by your body rather than your wrist. A wand is the one you carry, and at 175g the cost is paid over minutes rather than seconds. That is also why the wand range is the widest of the three, 70g to 365g: the same shape can be a light handheld or a two-handed appliance.
Reviews do not compare shapes
The fourteen lay-ons carry 13,728 reviews between them. The seven wands carry 242. That looks like a verdict until you look at where the lay-on number comes from: two Satisfyer air-pulse toys account for most of it, and one of them alone has 10,103. The wand figure is spread across three products from three brands. What you are comparing there is how much each brand invested in collecting reviews, not how well each shape works, and no amount of arithmetic fixes that.
So pick the shape first
If you want something you hold in one hand for a few minutes, a bullet at the median price is the low-risk choice and the reviews within that shape are consistent. If you want to hold something against yourself without gripping it, that is a lay-on, and it is the only one of the three where a two-hour runtime is normal. If you already know you like broad pressure and long sessions, a wand, and then the weight range is the thing to read before the price.
Every figure is computed from the product library, which is read from each manufacturer's own product page. The median is the middle value, not the average, because one £150 outlier should not move what a typical one costs.