Review date: November 2011

High Octane delivers a generous helping of good quality video scenes featuring hot young European and Latino men in professionally shot solos, duos, and group fuckfests. It's a nice contribution to Raging Stallion's Man Sex Pass, though there is DRM on the videos, some usability issues and a cut-down trial.

Tour

The free area of High Octane is a mirror of the membership site so it's easy to browse through the indexes, but when it comes time to check out the video clips make sure you browse through the videos that display on the home page. If you navigate through the "Videos" link at the top of the page you will have to wait up to 30 seconds for a clip to start playing. If you're patient enough, you'll reach the free limit of 10 clips and then be taken to the join page.

Usability

Navigation to the various areas of the site is simple but for a major caveat we explain below. "Videos" is an index by each scene; "DVDs" is an index by DVD title; pics are in "Solo Photos" and "Action Photos" and the model index is under "Men." In each of the main content areas you can sort alphabetically, by newest, oldest, most viewed, and top rated and you can filter by various themes.

However High Octane has usability issues with the "Play" optionst:
- if you click "Play" to watch a streaming videos it will take up to 30 seconds to start; during this dead time you stare at a black screen and you cannot use your mouse to click away; if you try to click around too much at this point your browser may crash;
- when the Flash stream starts to play there are frequent micro-pauses in the play that makes it seem jerky;
- if you use the Back button to move back from the streaming video page you will be logged out; you MUST use the tiny "close" text link instead;

For the above reasons it's best to avoid the "Play" option (and don't click on the thumbnails either as they will start the streams); to get around this, when you want to stream, left-click on "Download" instead and watch the Windows Media version.

The Men and the Action

The muscular, mostly smooth guys of High Octane have a consistently appealing look about them: young men but not twinks, muscular but not huge, and just enough ethnic flavor to keep our interest. The settings are mostly indoors, but there's a nice smattering that are outside by the pool, at country houses, on boats, even one set in a prison and another at a riding stable. These detailed little movies usually have "establishing shots" that show a model entering a building, or his reaction to a look or a touch. If this weren't enough, there is often a soundtrack of moody and sensual orchestral music for each scene.

Occasionally we found some of the scenes lacked passion, which we've noticed before with gay-for-pay European models, and it doesn't help that they don't speak English. While all the scenes feature good descriptions of the action but there are no model stats or interviews.

The overall viewing quality of the videos is good with noticable loss of quality on upsizing. They're all well filmed, with a good number of camera angles, and of close-up and medium shots, and the cumshots are almost always caught.

Video Details

The site features almost 230 video scenes, averaging 20 minutes in length. It updates with a new scene every week, but there are daily updates between all the Man Sex Pass sites. There is DRM on the videos: you can watch them only as long as you are a member.

Image and Other Content

The image sets are found in two areas: Solo Photos and Action Photos. In the Solo area you'll find 110 image sets averaging 15 high quality digital pictures each. In the Action Photos area you'll see 101 image galleries, averaging 30 images each. These images are quite large and show with excellent clarity. There is a multi-speed slideshow, but no zip files available.

For bonus content click the button called "Men Live" to get Raging Stallion's scheduled live sex shows and "XXX Cinema" for almost 40 plug-in feeds.

User-friendliness

Aside from the usability issues, the trial that this site offers is very cut-down; you can only view a dozen videos and if you want more you have to pay for a monthly membership. The site does not tell you this before you put your money down for the trial.

Summing Up

High Octane features good quality -- but not sizzling hot -- Euro porn. Although it lacks the raunch factor of the US-based Raging Stallion videos, this is still well-shot and sexy material, a part of the five site Man Sex Pass.

1 day: $4.95 (limited trial) (rebills @ $24.95)

30 day: $29.95 (rebills @ $29.95)

Visit High Octane Now!