CalExotics Empowered Smart Pleasure Goddess Vibrator: Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

The CalExotics Empowered Smart Pleasure Goddess Vibrator, which may as well have been named the “Gatekeep, Gaslight, Girlboss,” is a mouthful of a sex toy that opened up its maws and sucked in my clit like a ravenous lamprey. This is not a compliment. Rather than provide any kind of pleasurable sensation, the Empowered Goddess filled me with raw fear and panic. It HURT! There’s no other way to put it! I wanted pleasure, but all I got was a pinch.

I’m sure you’re wondering how such a harmless looking little egg can possibly cause so much pain. Keep reading—you’re about to find out.

First Impressions:

While writing the review for the CalExotics Empowered Smart Pleasure Goddess Vibrator, I had to look up the name several times to make sure I was getting it right. For the sake of having my review pop up in Google SEO results, I’ll be spitting out this paragraph of a name throughout this review, so…in advance, I am asking you to forgive me. Really though, I wonder if people searching for a review of this sex toy will even bother to write out the whole name in the first place. I can’t imagine that they will, seeing as it’s so difficult to even remember the whole thing in the first place. But, like all modern online writers, my writing is constrained by the bonds of SEO, and so I must assume that this is how readers will find my blog.

The packaging of the toy implied that the “EMPOWERED” part of the toy’s name was perhaps the most important, with the “Goddess” coming in smaller letters at the bottom. I guess the series is Empowered, and Goddess is the type? The box provides a lot of information, which I praise it for doing. If I were purchasing this toy in a store, I think it would tell me almost everything I’d want to know. The packaging is also mercifully tasteful.

Opening the box, you get the toy itself, the charger, and after removing the toy and charger you see a helpful piece of paper that informs you “Storage Bag Included Under Tray.” The instruction sheet is also under the tray. The addition of the storage bag is nice, and the toy itself is really convenient storage-wise because of its plastic cap.

Controls and Charging for the CalExotics Empowered Smart Pleasure Goddess Vibrator:

The CalExotics Empowered Smart Pleasure Goddess Vibrator charges using a USB cable, but requires that you pierce the toy to charge it. It’s described as having a “self-sealing port,” but the instructions clarify that the toy is NOT waterproof and must not be submerged under water. It unfortunately doesn’t provide any real information about whether or not it’s splashproof, so every time I clean it off I just splash some soapy water on it and hope for the best. The toy is made of silicone and ABS plastic, so it is solidly body-safe (if perhaps not water-safe).

Charging this toy was a huge pain in the ass. I initially thought the toy may have been defective, since the instructions stated a light would come on if the toy was charging correctly and the light…wasn’t coming on. After a few more tries, I was able to get it to successfully charge, but under very tight conditions. The “self-sealing port” makes it easy for the prong of the charger to dislodge, and it was difficult to position the charger deep enough that it would actually charge the toy.

Repeatedly, I would get it to connect and display the charging light, but then as soon as I set it down again the light would flicker out. No matter how delicately I tried to set it down, even the slightest movement would dislodge the charging prong. Finally, I just got lucky and the charger stayed in place. This was really annoying, though, and I would hate to have to go through this hassle every time I used this toy. Since I didn’t enjoy using this toy, though, I suppose future me is spared from that burden.

The instruction sheet for the Empowered Goddess is apparently the same set of instructions included with the other toys in the “Empowered” line, but instead of differentiating the toys by name, the instructions differentiate them by product number. This was initially confusing, and I read the wrong set of instructions wondering where the toy’s third button was before realizing my mistake.

The Empowered Goddess only has two buttons—an “S” and a “V.” The S refers to suction, the V refers to vibration. The buttons are easy enough to press, and fairly responsive, but powering them on and off is kind of iffy. Powering them on and off is done by pressing and holding the respective button for a few seconds, but it didn’t always seem to….work? Namely, when trying to power off the toy, I would think I had turned it off only for it to start again.

With this toy, when I wanted it turned off, I wanted it to turn off IMMEDIATELY. This made the response time feel more pronounced and like much more of a negative than it would otherwise.

Suction:

Why did I want this toy to turn off so quickly, you may ask? Well, this toy is a true suction toy IN A BAD WAY. The limited tests I did where I placed this onto my clit as intended resulted in sharp, immediate pain. Since pulling it away from my body only magnified the suction aspect, the only option was to shut it off as quickly as possible.

Before placing this toy on my clit, I first tried it out on my arm. The toy’s suction function didn’t feel terrible on my arm, but that’s of course because the skin there is so much thicker and less sensitive. It did, however, leave behind a noticeable red mark and a white ring that caused my partner and I to nickname it “Ringworm Simulator 9000.” When I observed the toy on my partner’s arm skin, I could see that it sucked their skin in hard enough to make it pucker. It looked much like I had just placed the end nozzle of a vacuum cleaner against their skin.

The Empowered Goddess has six suction settings, although I honestly struggled to differentiate between them. The intensity levels all feel pretty similar, and I think the main distance is the patterns and intervals between suctions. None of them felt good on my clit, and all of them provoked that same reaction of fear and panic.

What did it feel like, you may ask? Let me tell you a story.

One time, I visited a zoo that had an exhibit where you could feed manta rays swimming in their pool enclosure. When I fed my first manta ray, not only did it suck the food out of my outstretched palm, but it also sucked one of my fingers into its mouth and KEPT ON SUCKING. Manta rays are cute, and feeling a little nibble on your fingers is equally cute, but having your finger sucked and compressed within a manta ray’s mouth is terrifying and my primal instincts of “DEAR GOD, GET IT OFF, GET IT OFF!!!!” immediately activated in that situation.

That’s how I felt when I placed the Empowered Goddess against my clit.

The Empowered Goddess sucked my clit into its wide silicone mouth, and I immediately felt PAIN. My skin felt pinched, and it felt like it was going to get sucked in and stuck there. I felt no sense of erotic pleasure or sensation, since my mind was preoccupied with fear and panic.

The six settings on this toy don’t allow for any user control or fine-tuning of the experiment, so I felt like I was completely at this toy’s mercy. Since I value my clitoris and the surrounding skin, this was not a good feeling. I really intended to try this toy’s suction functions more than the few times I did, but every time I tried I was immediately struck with “DANGER!!!!” signals.

Vibrations:

Since I couldn’t get any enjoyment out of the suction function on this toy, I turned to the vibration settings instead. There are three vibration intensity settings and three vibration pattern options. None of the patterns were particularly good, so I don’t have anything to say about them one way or another. The standard vibrations, meanwhile, were strong even on the lowest intensity setting, but they were so buzzy my hand started tingling within seconds after switching the vibrations on.

The Empowered Goddess is so buzzy that even with my best efforts, I wasn’t able to bring myself to have an orgasm before my clit became desensitized from the buzzing. I turned it up to the highest settings, but my clit had already been knocked out and refused to feel anything except discomfort.

In addition to feeling super buzzy, the Empowered Goddess was LOUD AS FUCK. Again, even on the lowest setting, the toy whirred and rattled in a way that was very distracting and absolutely not discrete. It sounds like a power tool, and the noise only gets worse as you move to higher settings. The noise problem is present with just the suction setting, too. It’s at its absolute worst when both the vibration and suction functions are operating at the same time, though.

I think the intention of this toy is that you use the suction and vibration functions at the same time. When trying to use just the vibration setting, I found that I didn’t really know where to put it on my clit. I tried placing the suction element around my clit, but the vibrations didn’t transmit very well this way. Because my clit was confined in the space where suction was meant to take place, the vibrations were just going into the surrounding areas and…not really doing anything.

I tried various angles, including pressing the side of the suction element against my clit, pressing the side of the whole toy against my clit, but nothing really worked. Despite rattling all of the bones in my hand, I couldn’t find a good spot where the vibrations were concentrated enough that they could actually do anything to my clit. Again, this is also because my clit had been so rattled by that point that it had absolutely had enough. While I tried my best to get off with this toy, I wasn’t able to succeed. I felt achy, uncomfortable, and annoyed as fuck. It was buzzy enough that my clit felt straight up itchy, which is a miserable feeling.

Final Thoughts on the CalExotics Empowered Smart Pleasure Goddess Vibrator:

In a weak attempt to find something good about this toy, I suppose the suction could be good in some kind of kink scenario where you want to feel like you’re in danger of having your clit sucked off your body by a vengeful vacuum cleaner. However, I feel like that’s a pretty small niche. For most people, the toy’s overall poor performance combined with its hefty price tag ($89.99) makes me solidly not recommend this toy.

If you want an object that can deliver the same type of life threatening suction, I recommend visiting your local Bed, Bath, and Beyond and checking out the vacuum cleaners, because at least those are easier to turn off. If you want a good sex toy that’s a combination of vibrations and suctions, though…this isn’t it.

I would instead recommend the Womanizer Liberty as a toy in the same price range that delivers sucking sensations without feeling like your clit is going to detach from your body. For a vibrator in the same price range, I’d recommend the We-Vibe Tango X—or, for a less expensive vibrator, the Pillow Talk Sassy.

While the CalExotics Empowered Smart Pleasure Goddess Vibrator didn’t work for me, I am still glad Betty’s Toy Box gave me the opportunity to test it out. As a disclaimer, I received this toy for free in exchange for an honest review and affiliate links have been used in this post.