I’ve always been pretty ambivalent about doing Kegel exercises. I know they’re good for my sexual and urinary health, but so are all the orgasms I have. I know you can do them anywhere – waiting in line, riding on a bus, etc. – but that’s also true of playing Scrabble on my phone. Like other types of exercise, Kegels are a “virtuous” activity that I mostly just find boring and annoying, even though I know I ought to do ’em more often.
Enter the Monster Pub Doctor Whale 2, a toy that actually makes Kegel exercises more fun and interesting to do. Whaaaat?!
What is the Doctor Whale 2?
Monster Pub sent me their original version of the Doctor Whale about four years ago. It’s a C-shaped vibrator meant to stimulate your clit and G-spot simultaneously, like the We-Vibe or the Lelo Noa, but is designed to look like a cute li’l whale. The toy is connectable to the MonsterPub app (available on iOS and Android), through which you can control its vibrations and do guided Kegel workouts.
Monster Pub seems to have made a few changes to the Doctor Whale in this latest iteration. The whale’s “tail” has been widened, so it can (theoretically) hit your clit while also stimulating your labia a bit. The Bluetooth connectivity between the toy and the app seems much-improved. I’m not sure if any other changes have been made, but those two alone make a big difference.
What are the Kegel workouts like?
Once the toy is inside you and connected to the app – a process that happens fairly easily and quickly by holding down the vibe’s power button for 2 seconds and pairing it through the app – you can navigate to the “Health” section of the app and begin a workout.
You will then be guided through cycles of squeezing your Kegel muscles for a few seconds and relaxing for a few seconds. The “narrator” of the workout also helps you sync up your breathing to your squeezing, so the process can become meditative and grounding, like a yoga class. There’s even a short “cooldown” at the end that reminds me of the savasana many yoga practitioners end every session with. I always feel both accomplished and chilled out when I finish a Monster Pub workout, much like I do after a great yoga sesh.
Most interestingly to me, there is a pressure sensor inside the toy that conveys live feedback to the app, showing you at any given moment how tightly you’re squeezing the toy on a scale from 0 to 199. I find this highly motivating to watch during my workouts, as I try to beat my previous record. You can view patterns in your sessions to see your muscles getting stronger over time (hey Apple, you should integrate these stats into your Health app!). The app informs me that I apparently have stronger Kegel muscles than 95% of its users, which will be a great thing to brag about if I ever go to a party again.
As I’ve noted before, there’s still a substantial language barrier problem with this app; many of the functions are hard to find because of how poorly labeled everything is, and the person doing voiceover for the guided workouts (who seems to speak English fluently) nonetheless sounds awkward speaking the badly-translated script they’ve been given. I do think the app has been slightly improved in this regard since the last time I reviewed it, but Monster Pub would benefit a lot from hiring an English-speaking translator/copywriter to make sure all the text makes sense and is comprehensible to English-speaking users.
But is the toy… pleasurable?
The motor of the Doctor Whale 2 is decent: not quite as strong or as rumbly as I’d prefer, but certainly moreso than the majority of vibes out there. I didn’t notice any numbness, itchiness, or irritation, the likes of which I often feel from overly-buzzy vibrations on my G-spot. The Kegel workouts are interspersed with vibration, as if to reward you with pleasure in between squeezes, and it functions well for that purpose.
That said, the clitoral arm remains an issue. Because of its width, it mostly just sits on the outside of my labia, rather than being able to make full contact with my clit. I can spread my outer labia as wide as they go and tuck the toy between them, and that’s slightly better, but I still have to physically press the arm against my clit in order to feel much of anything.
I do like the social functions of the app. You can have a partner control the vibrations of your toy from afar, or you can connect with random strangers for play via what the app calls “hit-on messages,” which can be disabled if you don’t want to get flirted with by randos. You can create your own vibration patterns, or try other people’s creations (I particularly enjoyed the inventive stylings of a user named DaddysLilSlut).
Supposedly this vibrator has a warming function, but this is the 3rd Monster Pub toy I’ve tried that has boasted that feature and I’ve never once figured out how to enable it. (You can seemingly only control the toy via the app, which is, as I’ve mentioned, pretty overloaded and at times incomprehensible.)
Final thoughts?
I don’t think this vibe could get me off on its own – it’s not strong enough, rumbly enough, or capable of providing enough clitoral stimulation for that – but it works a treat as a Kegel exerciser. I actually get excited about doing workouts with this toy, although often I’m turned on enough by the end of a session that I need to switch to different toys to finish the job.
At $169 for the premium version of the toy (which is the version with Kegel exercise functionality), this toy is pretty pricey for what it does. You can get the standard version for $119 but I’m not sure why you would – the Kegel capability is easily the best thing about this product. But if you want/need to do Kegels more often, and you (like me) find it difficult to motivate yourself to do so, then $169 might be worth it for you. The app can even be set up to send you daily reminders to do your exercises – thoughtfully skipping your period, should you choose to track your cycle in the MonsterPub app – so it’s like having your own Kegels-focused personal trainer, keeping you in line and cheering you on.
Get the Monster Pub Doctor Whale 2 if you need help doing your Kegels and think some pleasure and guidance would do the trick. But if that’s not your situation, there are other vibes that would be better for your purposes. They may not have a medical degree like Doctor Whale, but hey, can’t win ’em all.
This post was sponsored, which means I was paid to write a fair and honest review of this product. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.