UPDATE MAY 2020: The LELO Soraya is no longer in production. Instead, LELO has moved onto (and upgraded!) it into the LELO Soraya 2.
LELO Insignia Soraya is a plastic and silicone dual-stimulation vibrator. The vibrator itself is eight and a half inches long, and the vibrator is only about an inch in diameter at the widest point on the shaft. The clitoral stimulator is about two inches long and extends off the body of the vibrator. The pretty pink color is the body-safe silicone that LELO uses, and the metal-looking portion is actually silver-colored plastic.
Like all LELO products, the Soraya comes in a plain-black, discreet cardboard box. This discreet cardboard box is kept in an outer box that serves as the “marketing” packaging that includes, in a classy design, information about the sex toy and features about. This inner, discreet box functions very nicely for storage since it doesn’t have “sex toy” written on it anywhere at all. Inside the box, Soraya is sitting in a plastic tray. This tray works great to hold Soraya in place. Underneath one side of the box is the charger, instruction manual, and warranty information. (Soraya has a 10 year warranty from LELO!) Along with your sex toy, LELO also includes an Insignia Brooch that would, if you were out and about, project your “sex toy love” to the world. For long-term storage, you can use the box, or if you’d like, LELO includes a satin, black bag that will work for storage as well.
The body of the Soraya is just downright sexy. The pink color looks sexy in itself, and I remember absolutely falling in love with this color on the LELO Liv, and on the Soraya, the color is just as sexy. The pink silicone is completely smooth, and there are no lines that can be felt on the body. Along with this, the silicone is not plushy at all which means that it doesn’t eat up as much lubricant during insertion. The silicone is soft, smooth, and sexy without being plushy in the slightest. Instead, the silicone feels much more like a “cover” for the silver plastic to make the plastic feel more pleasurable. As you probably noticed, the Soraya also includes a little hole at the end of the vibrator. This is to give you a handle during use. The topside of the vibrator also includes little buttons to make it easy to control the vibrations during use.
The handle actually works perfectly. With some vibrators, the lubricant can make them slippery, and when they are slippery, vibrators can be difficult to hold. This finger hole actually makes it much easier to keep a grip on your sex toy. I haven’t ahd any issues with having the toy slip out of my grip. Along with this, the LELO Soraya is completely waterproof, so if you want to play underwater, this sex toy can go underwater with you, and you will have no problem keep a grip on the handle of the toy.
The waterproofing issue actually brings me to a “wtf” halt. Now, I’m not sure what LELO was thinking here. Yes, they made a great, waterproof toy, and they even thought to include a finger-hole to make it easier to play with underwater. This is awesome. What’s not so awesome? The fact that playing underwater naturally “erodes” your body’s lubrication. Guess what lubricant isn’t water-proof? Water-based. Guess what lubricant has to be used with a silicone toy? Water-based. This, for me when I tried it, makes the Soraya a no-go for underwater play. The silicone produces too much drag on the skin to use it without lubricant, and water-based lubricant can’t be used underwater. This made it okay for shower/splash-based play, but for in the bath, it just didn’t work as well as I was hoping it would.
The Soraya is actually waterproof even though it does have a recharging port. I’m not sure how it does it, but the Soraya’s charging port recloses after the charger has been inserted. It’s like a little silicone “door”. The charger plugs in much like a cell phone charger would. It takes up to 2 hours to fully charge, and the charge should last up to four hours. That’s definitely a really good charging time and using time. Along with that, the vibrator will keep power for 90 days while just sitting around on stand-by. When charging, the LED light on the Soraya will pulse. When finished, it will stay steadily lit. During use, if the vibrator is running low on battery, the light will flash rapidly.
This Insignia vibrator is strong. It’s not Hitachi-strong, but for a rechargeable rabbit vibrator, this is one of the strongest that I’ve felt. The clitoral stimulator gets a lot more of the vibration strength than the shaft does. The shaft still gets some strong vibrations (from the two different motors), but it doesn’t get as much power since it doesn’t move around nearly as much. The clitoral vibrations are a bit on the buzzy side. (For an FYI, my idea of “buzzy” is if, when pressure is applied, the toy’s vibrations get weaker.) The shaft is a bit buzzy as well, but not as much as the clitoral stimulator. This makes it not nearly as strong for me as other clitoral vibrators are, but it is still strong compared to most rabbit vibrators.
The clitoral vibrations also get weaker with the farther that the clitoral stimulator is pulled back. It’s extremely flexible, and it will move wherever you need it to, but the vibrations get weaker as the stimulator is moved. This only is a bad thing if you want to insert the vibration really far into yourself or you keep pushing against it trying to get pressure. For me, I like pressure while using my vibrators, so everytime I’d try to push against the clitoral stimulator, it would move. It got frustrating pretty quickly, but it’s still not something that would keep me from using the Soraya; it was just something that didn’t make it as amazing as it could have been.
I’m impressed with how quiet this vibrator is, too. On the highest setting, I can barely hear it. On the highest setting, the boyfriend, sitting five feet away, could not hear it. There’s no way it’d be heard through a closed door. No way at all. It’s amazingly quiet for how powerful the vibrations are. Maybe the plastic being used, instead of metal, makes it more powerful? That would explain why they used plastic instead. Either way, it’s definitely very strong and very quiet.
The patterns on the Soraya are pretty darn amazing too. You don’t just have the basic low, medium, and high with a couple rolling patterns, but instead, LELO actually did some fun patterns that alternate the vibrations between the shaft and the clitoral piece in surprising patterns. The patterns, while I normally hate patterns, were fun on the Soraya since it was almost like it was a “surprise” as to what was coming next. The vibration strengths are nice, and the buttons on the Soraya? Just perfect. They don’t accidentally get pushed, but they also are pretty easy to push and make a satisfying “click” when you push on them. The buttons on the Soraya are also a lot better than the old control scheme for LELO vibrators. There is a +, -, and an oval. Plus and minus control the strength while the oval cycles through patterns. That’s it! Along with this, you can pick your vibration strength for each one of the patterns; you aren’t just stuck with one strength.
As for my actual use, the clitoral stimulator, even though I couldn’t apply pressure, was easily strong enough to be useful. I prefer applying pressure, but the strength of the vibrations in the Soraya still worked great for me. Along with this, the vibrator was pretty easy to insert. The concave edges of the Soraya (with the plastic) felt a bit awkward, but they weren’t too noticable during use unless you enjoy thrusting which is something I don’t do much with the Soraya. Just make sure you use a bit of lubricant to insert to make it as pleasurable as possible. The shaft, even though it’s slightly curved, does not hit my g-spot at all, which is not really a “downside” to Soraya since it takes a lot to hit my g-spot, and after seeing the design, I didn’t expect the Soraya to. If most g-spot toys happen to hit your g-spot, the Soraya will too, but if you require certain designs to hit your g-spot, the Soraya probably won’t.
I hate to fall in line with what everyone else is saying, but if you do have concerns about cleaning or are prone to yeast infections, the Soraya may be a bigger headache than it’s worth. It’s a great toy, yes, but the seam between the plastic and the silicone requires extra cleaning care to keep it sterilized and bacteria-free. I’m not prone to yeast infections, so the idea of having it not always-perfect doesn’t bother me much, but if you are, it may not be worth the ten-minutes-after-each-use it takes to make sure the seams of the vibrator are completely clean. The silicone layer does pull up and away from the plastic if pulled, so it may require using a toothpick if you are seriously concerned about cleaning. For this reason, I recommend either covering this with a condom or not using it for multiple-non-fluid-bonded partner use. The LELO Insignia Soraya is not compatible with silicone-based lubricant (only water-based), and it can either be stored in the original box or in the satin storage bag that is included.
For my final comments, I really like Soraya. I really do. I normally would give it five stars, but because of the price, I do have to hold this vibrator up to a higher standard. The design doesn’t allow me to apply pressure like I enjoy, but the strong vibrations do end up working well enough. I also wasn’t really able to use this in the bath which was disappointing for me. However, Soraya is well-made, and that quality definitely shows in the extremely quiet, yet extremely powerful, vibrations and the different vibration patterns and settings.
