As a novice diver, could you recommend a suitable underwater scooter?

[Stella0928]

As a novice diver, I recently want to buy an underwater scooter. After comparing several brands, I am currently hesitating between several SUBLUE products. Has anyone used SUBLUE's underwater scooter? Is this brand trustworthy?

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If you have other suitable products, please recommend them to me. Thank you for your reply.

 

[grantmac]

Scooters really expose where your fundamental skills such as buoyancy are lacking. While also creating opportunities for getting rather lost.
The bare minimum scooter I'd recommend is a DiveX Black Tip and only after really mastering those skills.

 

[rduquesnoy]

Scooters which require to use both your hands are personally a big no for me. I want one hand free at all times (to equalize, adjust my buoyancy, to be able to check my pressure gauge etc.).

Besides that your basic skills have to be solid before adding a DPV/scooter. Otherwise small problems you might have with buoyancy for example can become a big issue really fast.
My dive organization organizes DPV workshops on a regular basis where first 2-3 hours of theory is shared after which it is possible to participate in a one on one guided DPV dive. I have seen so many people lose buoyancy, crashing in the bottom and losing awareness for all other things except for the DPV. And some of those divers claimed they had 1500+ dives.

I would recommend getting your fundamental skills very solid before you even start thinking about a scooter.

 

[lermontov]

do you have any friends you can borrow one off - scooters are easy to use but it takes a while to really get it fine tuned- if you want to just play in the shallow (say 15m ) and you pick up things quickly then it wont take long to get the hang of it - buy a cheap entry level one

 

[Wibble]

If you're a novice, then you could have a pool toy that pulls you along with two hands. These are cheap and a lot of fun.

However, if you're after a scooter for longer distances then, as everyone above has said, you must sort your core skills out as scooters exacerbate issues, especially navigation.

The cheapest serious one-handed "technical" scooter is the Blacktip around $2k. Most technical scooters are over $5k. Pool toys are well under $1k and come up second hand as people get bored with them.

 

[NothingClever]

@Stella0928

Welcome to SB.

This is your first post so an introduction with some basic info would help us calibrate our responses.

I think we should be proficient divers in the five fundamental skills before adding in an expensive and complicating tool.

 

[rongoodman]

Why do you want a scooter?