Sublue Vapor Pump-Jet Underwater Scooter for Divers

The Sublue Vapor is a pump-jet underwater scooter, the kind of diver propulsion vehicle you hold onto while it pulls you through the water. It is listed for freediving, scuba and snorkelling, with 46 lbf of thrust, a 4.3-inch screen showing your depth and water temperature, and depth alarms that a pool toy does not have.

Who this suits

Divers who need to cover ground: a long reef, a wreck on the far side of a site, a shore entry with a swim before the good part starts. Finning in full gear costs air, and a scooter turns that effort into bottom time instead. The rows list freediving, scuba and snorkelling, and state it can pull more than one swimmer at once, so a buddy without a scooter can hang on.

Skip it if you want something light and simple for a shallow house reef. With 46 lbf of thrust and depth alarms you have to set correctly, it assumes a user who already manages their own depth and ascent rate. Skip it too if you dive technical: nothing on record points at decompression or overhead environments.

Thrust and speed: 46 lbf, 10 km/h

Maximum thrust is 46 lbf, which is 21 kgf, at a top speed of 6.21 mph, or 10 km/h. In water, 10 km/h is quick enough that you feel it on the mask skirt and on your regulator hose, which is why the top setting is for crossing open water rather than cruising a reef.

Propulsion is pump-jet rather than an open propeller: water is drawn in and pushed out through an enclosed channel. The practical upside is that there is no exposed blade next to your hands, your hair or your buddy's fins.

Three speeds, and how long each one lasts

Those are continuous figures. Sublue also quotes up to 60 minutes of intermittent use, which is closer to a real dive: bursts of throttle between stops to look at things. Plan on the continuous numbers if you intend to hold the trigger the whole way across.

The battery is 13,000 mAh and it comes out of the body. That detail changes a dive day more than any of the speed figures do, because a charged spare in the boat bag turns one session into two. A standard charge takes 3 hours, or 1.5 hours on the fast charger.

The screen, and two depth safeguards

The 4.3-inch LCD shows battery, speed, direction, water temperature and depth. Depth on the handle you are already gripping is worth more than it sounds: your eyes stay forward, instead of dropping to your wrist while a machine drives you along.

Two settings use that depth reading. The depth alert lets you set a maximum depth and warns you when you hit it, which matters most for freedivers and for anyone scootering out over a wall where the bottom simply stops being there. The depth change rate setting watches how fast you are going up or down and alerts you past the rate you have set.

Sublue's reference figures are a maximum descent of 18 m/min and a maximum ascent of 9 m/min. Nine metres a minute is a slow, deliberate ascent, and a scooter is exactly the tool that makes it easy to beat that without noticing you have.

The Vapor has micro-positive buoyancy, so it drifts up slowly instead of sinking if you let go, and you are not fighting it downward while you hover.

App and camera mount

It pairs with Sublue's app and shares depth, temperature, rate of depth change and location, so a run can be reviewed afterwards rather than remembered. A universal action camera mount is built into the streamlined body, and it takes most action cameras.

What the listing does not say

No weight, no dimensions, no depth rating and no list of what ships in the box. Those matter for a device this size, and a battery this big is a matter for your airline. Ask the retailer for the shipping weight, the box contents and the battery's watt-hour rating before you book a trip around it.

The bottom line

A strong, well-instrumented scooter: 46 lbf of thrust, three speeds running 45, 30 and 18 minutes, a swappable 13,000 mAh battery and depth alarms that respond rather than just display. For a diver who wants to see a big site without spending their gas on the swim, it does the job it claims.

It is not a beginner's toy, not a technical diving tool, and not a small thing to travel with. The data behind this page tells you nothing about its weight or its depth limit, so ask before you commit.

Specifications