What if we told you there’s a new revolutionary condom you won’t just tolerate, you’ll actually enjoy using?
We know. You’re skeptical. You’re convinced no new rubber will ever get you—let alone millions of dudes—excited about using condoms. But with STI rates skyrocketing (more than 1 million people are infected every day, according to the World Health Organization), the emergence of brand new infections headlining news, and the prevalence of unintended pregnancies (in 2011, 45 percent of pregnancies in the U.S were unintended, per research published March 2016 in the New England Journal of Medicine), it pays to protect yourself.
Enter the new HEX condom.
Developed after seven years of research by the pleasure pioneers at boutique Swedish sex toy brand LELO, the HEX has attracted a growing fanbase of about 15,000 people who helped generate $400,000 on HEX’s IndieGogo fundraising page, over 3,000% more than the brand’s original goal. (Among those backers is one Charlie Sheen—because, hey, who better to throw sexual health into the limelight?)
So why the HEX’s popularity? Sure, it’s one of the thinnest, feels-like-nothing’s-there condoms on the market. But the HEX’s real impact isn’t just the feel: It’s the structure—which, the company boasts, marks the first major condom innovation in 70 years. As the name implies, the HEX condom has a unique hexagonal design that makes it one of the strongest, most durable, condoms around.
When they were designing the HEX, LELO engineers focused on the three most common complaints they heard from condom wearers (and frustrated non-condom-wearers): strength, sensation, and intimacy. So the engineers looked to architecture—light yet strong structures, like bridges and planes—as well as the structure of graphene, a hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms that’s 100 times stronger than steel.
From there, they designed the condom with that inherently strong honeycomb pattern inside the condom, while adding textured, raised honeycombs to grip the wearer’s penis without squeezing it—just as tires grip the track in Formula 1. No slippage.
Each condom has 350 individual hexagons and ultra-thin latex panels that mold to each guy’s unique shape. Better yet, if you do manage to poke a hole in it—and it apparently takes serious force, since fingernails, pens, and pins have a hard time puncturing the latex—the damage will be confined and contained to a single cell, LELO founder Filip Sedic told Business Insider.
Now, after three years of research and four years of testing, LELO is giving men and women the chance try, see, and feel the difference for themselves.
The HEX sells online for $19.90 for a 12-pack or $34.90 for a 36-pack. Soon, LELO will begin selling the condom in retail stores around the world.
