Every review on Spices of Lust starts the same way: with a toy in our hands and a lot of time set aside to use it. We’ve been writing about sex and sex toys since 2015, and we’re a couple, so every toy we cover gets tested by both of us - alone and together.

People often ask how we decide whether a toy is worth recommending, and brands ask what actually happens after they send us a product. So here’s our review process, step by step.

Step 1: We Test It - Several Times, Over Several Weeks

One session tells you almost nothing. A toy can be exciting the first night simply because it’s new, or disappointing because you were tired or didn’t have the right lube. So we never review a toy after a single try.

Instead, we use it several times over the course of a few weeks:

  • Alone - each of us tries it solo, at our own pace, to see how it feels and how it fits our bodies and preferences.
  • Together - if the toy makes sense for partnered play, we use it together too, and see how it fits into our sex life as a couple.

Over those weeks we pay attention to the things that only show up with time: how it feels on day one versus week three, how easy it is to clean and charge, whether the controls still make sense in the dark, and whether we keep reaching for it once the novelty wears off.

Step 2: We Talk It Through With Each Other

After so many years of doing this - and playing together - we’ve learned that our best reviews come out of conversation. We sit down and compare notes.

What did each of us love? What annoyed us? Did we experience it the same way, or completely differently? Often one of us notices something the other missed, and talking it through helps us consolidate our thoughts into one honest verdict. When our opinions differ, we say so in the review - because that’s useful information for you, too.

Step 3: We Check What Other People Are Saying

Two bodies and two opinions only go so far. Before we write, we search the internet to see what other people are saying about the toy - other reviewers, buyer reviews and community discussions.

If lots of people report the same problem we had, that tells us it isn’t just us. If others love something we didn’t, we go back and look at it again. And if there are recurring complaints we didn’t run into, we mention them so you can make an informed choice.

Step 4: We Compare It With Similar Toys

No toy exists in a vacuum. We look for comparable toys - including ones we’ve already reviewed - and think about how this one stacks up on sensation, build quality, features, noise, ease of use and price.

That’s how a review goes from “this is nice” to something you can actually use: is it better than the alternatives, is it worth the price, and who is it really for? Sometimes the honest answer is that a cheaper toy does the same job - and we’ll tell you that.

Step 5: We Take Our Own Professional Photos

Manufacturer photos are polished, but they don’t always show what you’ll actually get. So we take our own professional photos of every toy we review, like the one at the top of this page.

Our photos show the real size, colour, texture and details, so you can see what it looks like in a real person’s hands, not just in a studio render.

Step 6: We Write, Schedule and Publish

Only then do we write the review. It’s built on everything above: our weeks of testing, our conversations, the research and the comparisons. Then we schedule and publish it, and in most cases translate it so readers in Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and French can read it too.

What This Means for Readers

  • Every review is based on real, hands-on use - by both of us, over weeks, not minutes.
  • Our opinions are our own. Some toys are sent to us by brands, and some reviews are sponsored, but that never buys a positive verdict. See our disclosure for how we handle this.
  • We tell you who a toy is for - and who should skip it.

You can browse everything we’ve tested in our sex toy reviews. We’re also proud members of the Alliance Of Independent Sex Toy Testers.

What This Means for Brands

If you send us a toy, it gets the full process above - the same weeks of testing, discussion, research and photography as every other review. Want to know about timings, packages and rates? Everything is in our sex toys media kit.