They redesigned these vibrators and made them worse. Am I wrong?

Find the people who owned both

Every product page has a small group of reviewers who can compare rather than describe: the ones who start with "my old one". They're rarely at the top, because they arrive a year or two after launch when the page has moved on.

They're easy to find. Search the page for old, previous, original, replacement. Ten minutes, and it's the best use of ten minutes before buying a second-generation anything.

On the Boost rabbit, 304 reviews, sixteen of the 69 at three stars or below compare it to the model it replaced. All sixteen prefer the old one. On the bullet it's nine out of 46, and eight prefer the old one.

That's a quarter of the negative reviews on those two pages, all making the same argument.

What the old one did better

Three things come up again and again.

The material changed. "The old model material was very soft and malleable and never failed me. This new version is very hard and thinner." Except another reviewer says the new one is "way too soft and feels insipid". Two complaints pointing opposite ways tells you the change wasn't a fix for anything. It was just a change, and a material somebody had learned to like got swapped out.

The geometry moved. "Smaller and less powerful than its predecessors." "It's not as long as the old one." "The ears don't sit correctly." A rabbit is a fit rather than a spec: the distance between the shaft and the ears decides whether it works on a given body, and a few millimetres in the wrong direction stops it fitting the people it used to fit.

And the charger got worse. That one's clear enough to deserve its own section.

The charger

Nine of the 46 negative reviews on the bullet are about the charger. Not the toy. The charger. And the buyers describe the change precisely: the old one had a connector that seated into the body, the new one is held on by a magnet.

Then the consequences, which they list like a log. Charging it in a drawer and it slides off. Charging it on a bed, same. Holding the cable in place for the whole hour. Coming back to find it half charged. One says the new charger is rubbish and this will be her last one. Another says it feels like a downgrade.

The mechanism explains it. A plug stays seated because something is holding it. A magnet doesn't hold anything; it's balanced, and the force drops off fast, so a two-millimetre nudge ends the charge. Both versions are described on the box as USB rechargeable, which is why no spec sheet can tell you that one of them is a thing you'll be managing for years.

None of which is an argument against magnetic charging. It's sealed, there's no flap to lose, and on something you wash that's the right idea. What matters is whether the contact sits in a recess or on a flat face, and you can answer that from a product photograph in five seconds.

More modes isn't an upgrade

Three reviewers on these pages complain about the controls, from three angles. "Lots of buttons and off doesn't go off straight away." "The on off button is not raised enough to feel." And the clearest: "If you find a setting you like and then accidentally lose it, it takes ages to find it again, in which time the moment has passed."

Counting modes is the cheapest thing to add and the easiest thing to put in a comparison table. It's also the least connected to whether the object is any good. A redesign that adds four patterns and loses a charger has made the product worse and the spec sheet better.

Where the other upgrade went right

The Pro 2 comparison is worth keeping in view. The third generation didn't add power, because the measured pulse is identical. It added a cap that covers the opening, which solves one named problem: the focused pulse is unbearable in the seconds after orgasm. That's a change aimed at a complaint.

So the test I'd use is whether the new version fixes something people complained about, or adds a number to the box. Those seem to be the only two options, and they're easy to tell apart once you know to look.

Before you buy a v2

• Find out what the previous version was called. Usually "the original" in the reviews, sometimes a colour, because the old model came in a different finish.
• Search the page for it. Old, previous, original, replacement. Read those and nothing else.
• If they're positive, the redesign is probably fine. Plenty of them are.
• If they're negative and specific, about the charger, the material, the length, believe them. Specificity is the signal. A wall of "not as good" with no detail is just disappointment.
• Look at the charger in the photos. A magnetic puck sitting in a recess is fine. A magnetic puck on a flat face is a maintenance item.
• If the old one is still on sale, consider it. Being superseded isn't the same as being worse, and the previous version usually has five years of reviews instead of five months.

Where these numbers come from

• Ann Summers vibrator listings: the products, ratings and review counts, read on 26 October 2026
• Every review for the two redesigned lines was read in full, and the ones comparing versions were counted by hand rather than estimated
• Is the new Satisfyer Pro 2 worth it: the upgrade that did hold up, and the measured figures behind it
• I read 1,899 vibrator reviews: the wider sample this sits inside, 1,899 reviews and 436 of them negative

No product here is linked for commission. Prices aren't quoted because they move.