WaydooSubnado Underwater Scooter Black and Red Special Version

This is amazing, and I love the underwater scooter. For the value, it is worth it. It allows me to free dive and conserve energy and oxygen when in the water. I have used it in open waters and even in pools. It is super easy to use when you read the directions, and it looks pretty durable. I love it

My initial impressions of the Subnado was that it's solidly built and is made of great-quality material. Taking it out of the box, it had a good heft to it and definitely gave a "tech unboxing" vibe over an "outdoor accessory/toy" feeling. Which is a good thing (to me).Bare-bones assembly was pretty straight-forward, as I didn't have any interest in messing with the (many) accessories this comes with just yet. Just snap on the handle and link up the controller connector (wire running out of the handles) to the contacts on the Subnado. There's some greasing that needs to be done, but I'll get into that later.I was pleasantly surprised at the softness and ergonomics of the handle. It felt good to hold and the grip was comfortable. The trigger placement is great too - the trigger itself is just a tad small, but that may be because this is advertised for use by children as well. I briefly switched it on just to make sure it was in working order, and all looked good, so I set it up to charge.Near the back of the Subnado body is a safety label - it has a few good reminders, which I always welcome on consumer-grade tech… especially expensive and potentially risky (self-injury) tech like this Subnado. Warnings/pictorials include a reminder to ensure to turn off the device before servicing (charging) it, the meaning behind a couple of the non-typical battery indicator patterns, and general safety stuff (e.g. not letting long hair get near the propellers). I originally thought this label was meant to come off before use, but it seems it is meant to stay on. A small thing, but worth noting.As mentioned earlier, there's a good amount of accessories included with this, though to be honest, I haven't felt a strong desire to get into them yet. Some nice ones worth noting include the wrist-mount with hand grip (if you wanted to one-arm it and do a 'superman' across the pool), optional tether, and mounting adapter for attaching this to a pool float.So on grease, I felt it necessary to briefly go over its importance: do NOT skip this step or skimp on the application. There's plenty provided to get a good coat on the necessary areas. Coming from an industry that necessitates some level of gasket or O-ring greasing to help with maintaining a proper seal, I cannot stress the importance of it here. To an extent, the grease helps to cover any tiny openings or voids that could allow water in within the gasket or O-rings, but its main reason is to ensure those things do not get sheared out of position during tightening or mounting. Think of how a rubber band would rub between your hands, bare, vs. being coated in a semi-slippery grease. In one, it'll twist in on itself multiple times, and on the other, it'll almost want to stay completely neutral.In short: use the grease; get good seals. There's only two areas (the port cover for the USB-C port and the controller connector interface), so it doesn't take long to do. With this device costing what it does, the last thing you want is water ingress damaging or ruining it. No manufacturer will cover user-inflicted damage, whether due to an accident or simply neglect. On that note, it would have been helpful for Waydoo to provide more grease. The tube provided is a bit small, and would have been ideal if it was larger (think of a Neosporin tube). Because best practice would be to replace the grease on frequent-access areas (like the charge port cover) every time it is removed, at minimum. Still, the tube is at least good for long-term storage, and preferable to those tearable 'grease packets' that I've seen some other brands provide.Now, on usage: I started off using the Subnado in a relatively small swimming pool, and this thing has more than enough power to zip me across quickly. Probably not a great representation of what it can do "full send," but it's the experience I've had with it by this point (~a week in). It's a lot of fun, has a good kick, and so far, pretty good battery life. I've put it through two rounds of use (probably 15-20min each, but closer to maybe 8-10min of actual, continuous runtime) and it's down to 7 of 8 cells on the battery indicator. If it's like any other type of device with a battery indicator, I take this to just mean that it is working on depleting the current cell.So to recap - the build quality is there, a healthy number of accessories are included, and the functionality is great (so far). Time will tell on the long-term durability. The price is a tad steep at the $500 MSRP, but if you can get it on sale for $400 or so, it will sting a little less.

It was fun for the whole week it lasted. Reached out several times for a replacement and no one ever got back to me.

UPDATESo after a rep from Waydoo reached out to me, they replaced the main unit. (The original was dead and gone). I took the new one down to 60ft and it struggled a bit to pull me on its normal setting, but you can switch it to High Gear and it works quite well for significantly less time. That being said too of these mounted in tandem or on your tank would very likely be sufficient for recreational Scuba purposes. Most DPVs for tech diving start at $3k, so for a third of the cost you could probably use these for recreational Scuba. Remember that when you Dive with a DPV of any kind, you must not exceed a distance you aren’t capable of swimming. But these are fun and do make Diving a little easier.OLD REVIEWI bought this on a chance, only saw the reviews from people with free products. I am a Dive Master as a side job and go diving at least once a week, and I figured I'd take a risk and get this in case I have a diver that struggles to keep up or has a disability. I never expected it to be as good as my sub gravity DPV I use for caving, I thought of it more as an assistive device. But even kicking myself, it felt was struggling to pull my slender 145lb self. On the only dive I used it, I had charged it till the sound played per the instructions, cleaned and lubed the O ring and sealed it per the instructions, and dove to 80ft it seemed fine at first, but after three minutes it's thrust dropped significantly. I completely the dive 30 minutes later trying to use it intermittently, but it was not having it. On the shore I inspected it and it didn't seem to have any issues, but at the Hotel I discovered water had penetrated the charger plug. I tried letting it Dry out and charging it but it doesn't want to. I'm going to give it a few more days in the rice bucket, but I don't have much hope. The listing says it is rated to 197ft so I don't know why it would have any issues in the first 10ft, or even down to 80ft. The only other Issue I had is the weight, it's not very light and you have to account for that. It's not super heavy and won’t drag you under, but it will mess with your trim. I will update if I save it or cut my losses.