Pros & Cons
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- Reliable skimming performance
- Easy to clean
- Impressive battery life
- Historical cleaning reports
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- Finicky retrieval process
- No remote control
If you find yourself spending way too much time skimming your pool with a net, the BuBlue BuVortex V5 ($369) can help. Simply drop this unique-looking robot pool cleaner in the water, and it will motor around the pool sucking up leaves, bugs, and any other surface debris. It uses dual motors for propulsion and suction and to avoid getting stuck on ladders and other obstructions, and it comes with a companion app that lets you select a cleaning mode and view a history of cleaning cycles. We wish it came with a remote control (either standalone or in the app) to let you manually steer the device around the pool for spot cleaning, but it works well and costs less than the $519.90 Betta Flex or the $399.99 Aiper Surfer S2 Cordless Robotic Pool Skimmer.
Design: It Looks Like a Drone for Your Pool
The BuVortex V5 is an odd-looking device. It has four 1-inch float modules attached to a cylindrical container. The float modules serve to keep the top of the basket level with the surface of your pool and also help with navigation around the edges. The container holds a pair of motors, a debris basket, and a filter. A sensor on the side of the container uses gyroscope technology for smart mapping and navigation. The V5 is designed to cover up to 538 square feet of surface area. It has an IPX8 waterproof rating, measures 15 by 13 inches (HW), and weighs 11.5 pounds.
(Credit: John R. Delaney)A removable collection basket with a round mesh cover sits in the center. The mesh cover prevents captured debris, like leaves and twigs, from escaping back into the pool water. When you remove the basket, you’ll see a round filter that captures finer particles such as tiny bugs and smaller leaves. Both the filter and the basket can be easily rinsed out with a garden hose. The skimmer’s dual motors provide a respectable 2,061 gallons per hour (GPH) suction rate while propelling the V5 around the pool. You can choose one of two cleaning modes: Normal mode uses one motor to suck in debris while the skimmer moves along its optimized path, and Corner Boost has the skimmer park at the pool’s edge and use two motors to pull in debris from the surrounding area.
The top of one of the floats holds a round onboard control panel, which contains a power button, a Bluetooth pairing button, an LED ring, and a proprietary two-pin charging port protected by a rubber cover. The V5 has a 7,800mAh battery and can run for up to 180 minutes (three hours) on a charge, and Bublue includes a wall charger with the device. By comparison, the Betta Flex has a 32.56Wh cell (approximately 8,800mAh), but it has solar panels, so it never needs charging. The Surfer S2 Cordless Robotic Pool Skimmer also has solar panels, and while Aiper doesn't specify how big its battery is, it claims 35 hours of operation on a charge.
The LED ring glows solid green while charging, blue when the skimmer is working in Normal mode, orange in Corner Boost mode, yellow when the battery is low or when the skimmer is self-parking, and flashes yellow when the cleaning cycle is complete. A solid red LED indicates an error.
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(Credit: John R. Delaney)The V5 uses embedded Wi-Fi (2.4GHz) and Bluetooth radios to connect to your home network and to your phone. The Bublue mobile app (available for Android and iOS) opens to a home screen that displays a picture of the device, its name, and the charge status. There’s also a counter that tells you how long the current cleaning session has been running. Near the bottom of the screen is a cleaning mode panel. Here you can select Normal and Corner Boost modes and use the Back button to send the V5 to the side of the pool for retrieval.
Tap the three lines in the upper-right corner to access the settings screen. Here, you can enable Bluetooth, rename the device, update the firmware, and view cleaning records that show the total time needed for each session.
Setup and Performance: A Simple, Reliable Skimmer
The V5 arrived fully charged and ready for action. I downloaded the app, created an account, and tapped Bluetooth Connection when prompted. The app immediately recognized the cleaner, so I entered my Wi-Fi credentials, gave the device a name, and was ready to go.
(Credit: Bublue/PCMag)It did a thorough job of removing leaves, twigs, berries, and other assorted debris from the surface of my 16-by-32-foot pool. In Normal mode, it traversed the entire surface, picking up debris along the way, and in Corner Boost mode, it parked at different locations for a few minutes before moving on to another location. Each session lasted close to three hours, and when the job was completed, it parked at the side of the pool waiting to be removed and emptied.
(Credit: John R. Delaney)Removing the V5 from the pool was fairly easy, but I had to use two hands to keep it level as I was pulling it out to prevent larger leaves and other debris from escaping back into the pool. Cleanup was as easy as removing the basket and filter and rinsing them out with a garden hose.
Final Thoughts
Bublue BuVortex V5
The Bublue BuVortex V5 is a wireless robotic skimmer that offers basic smart controls and admirably cleans the surface of your pool so you don’t have to.