The Flip Hole is Tenga’s top of the line model, and a durable multi-use masturbator intended to rival the Fleshlight. It’s currently available in four different coloured cases, each with its own unique texture inside.

Standing at 7" tall, and with a 9" circumference, the Flip Hole is quite compact, making it perfect to hold in the hand and nice to grip onto. It's comprised of two separate pieces, the major of which constitutes the actual body of the toy. The body is manufactured from solid plastic, with two oval-shaped viewing windows cut from opposite sides. These windows allow you to see and feel the soft clear silicone from which the interior of the masturbator is made. The issue I found with this is that the material is very sticky in nature, and I wasn't crazy about having to touch it during use. The obvious solution to remove the stickiness would be to dust the area with a light coating of corn starch, as you would a Fleshlight, but it's an inconvenience. Embedded within the silicone on either side is a thin sheet of white plastic, which protrudes from the surface in the form of six buttons. These "buttons" can be squeezed during use to apply pressure. The other piece of the Flip Hole is the end cap, which serves a couple of functions. When the Flip Hole isn’t being used the cap covers the soft orifice and protects it from dust and/or damage, but when the Flip Hole is being used the cap slots onto the opposite end of the toy, and helps hold the two sides of it together.

One of the defining features of the Flip Hole is its ability to completely open up and unfold into two halves using a hinge at one end, and this is where both its strength and weaknesses lie. This seemingly clever part of the design unfortunately causes as many problems as it solves. The first issue involves the orifice of the toy. The opening is a mere 3/4” wide, and it extends into the toy for a depth of less than an inch before it’s completely blocked off by a piece of material which acts like a diaphragm. When you insert yourself into the toy, instead of the material stretching to accommodate the thickness of the penis, it stretches slightly and then the two halves suddenly split apart. The material all around the opening bursts outwards and hangs down the shaft. It doesn't affect performance in any significant way, but it does look quite odd, and clearly like it's not supposed to happen. The next issue is with the interior of the Flip Hole itself. It has a good 6" long cavity inside, but during use you don't get a sense of the penis being completely enveloped. There is pressure to be felt on the top and bottom of the penis, but none along the sides. Due to the way the raised texture is laid out there's no actual channel moulded into the material, and the overwhelming sensation is that of having your penis sandwiched between two halves of something, rather than it being fully encompassed. The final drawback is that the toy leaks air all along the divide, practically eliminating any sense of suction you might get when using it.

The benefits of having the toy open up are obvious when it comes to cleaning it, as you can simply rinse away any fluids from the inside under a tap, without the bother of submerging it. The Flip Hole also dries faster than a Fleshlight as the inside can be left open to the air, allowing any moisture to readily evaporate. In this instance the end cap can also be used as a drying rack to balance the toy on, as the product photos indicate. When washing the Flip Hole it’s perfectly safe to use a mild soap, if desired, as the material inside is silicone.

Having the toy open up is also helpful when applying lube, as instead of having to squirt it through a tiny aperture you can simply spread the lube liberally over the unfolded interior.

Heating the toy before use is more awkward to do than with a Fleshlight because the silicone inside is permanently attached to the hard outer case. You need to submerge the whole thing in a basin of hot water, but personally I wouldn't bother as they never seem to hold any warmth for long, and it just causes more hassle and mess.

The texture on the inside of the Flip Hole is incredibly bumpy, but due to the silicone being so soft it never feels as though the sensations are too intense. Personally I really wasn't that keen on the texture. One of the selling points of the Flip Hole is that there's a different texture on each side, so you can vary the experience by “flipping” it and using it the other way up, but from my perspective the difference was rather negligible, and it all felt like a variation on a theme - bumpy. Long deep thrusting with the toy was rather unsatisfying, and my best experiences came when I found a section of the texture that I liked best, and just massaged the head of the penis with it, using short strokes. The Flip Hole did feel nice, as you’d expect any such toy to, but it didn't feel remotely special or amazing. The texture neither tickled, teased, nor titillated any part of my penis, and in fact it wasn't very memorable at all, with all the lumps and bumps just blending into one.

When using the Flip Hole a rather surprising amount of the inner silicone bulges out of the windows cut out of either side of the case. The material essentially displaces itself rather than stretching to make room for the penis inside. Because of this it’s necessary to squeeze the aforementioned "buttons" on either side if you want to get a significantly tight sensation. This actually works quite effectively, and the ability to adjust the pressure is an enjoyable feature compared to a standard hard-case Fleshlight. The downside is that you need to constantly adjust how hard you’re squeezing, if you wish to keep the level of pressure constant whilst thrusting.

The Flip Hole feels nothing at all like sex, as you might well expect from looking at the texture, but unlike other products you don’t get an impression that it’s even trying replicate it. It's not so much a case of whether it feels better or worse, it just feels very different, and it comes down to personal preference whether you like that difference or not.

I have to say that sadly on the whole I'm rather disappointed with the Tenga Flip Hole. Being a fan of Fleshlights, but hating the cleaning process, I felt sure the Flip Hole would be the solution I was looking for, and that I'd love it, but unfortunately it wasn't so. It's a well-built high quality product, but I just didn't enjoy the texture at all, and some of the design features seemed to act like a double-edged sword, helping and hindering in equal measure. I won't write off the Flip Hole completely though, there are still Black, White, and Silver to try, so it may just be a case that I haven't found my perfect match yet.

I've made a real effort to try to find a way to get on with the Flip Hole, but no matter what I try I just can't get the texture of the red one to do anything for me, and so it has been confined to the back of the cupboard while I return to my Fleshlights.