Surrounding the cylinder are four arms that help the device float and stay upright. One of the arms contains the power port and on/off button, plus a Bluetooth button used to initiate pairing with the Bublue mobile app. The only additional component is a mesh filter that is located under the filter basket. This filter, in turn, is held within a circular frame, which keeps it in place. In total, the device consists of five pieces, a fact that will become more important later when I talk about cleaning.

All in all, the robot is quite tall and needs 1.5 feet of water depth to operate.

Sorry, no solar power

Your first task with the BuVortex V5 is to charge its 7800 mAh battery, since – and this is essential – the unit does not have a solar charging function, a standard feature on traditional pool skimmer robots. The unit takes a considerable four hours to charge and is specified to run for three. I got about four hours of runtime during my testing.

Photography: Christopher Null

The mere lack of solar power can be a deal breaker for most. (It is for me, at least). When I use a pool skimmer, I typically drop it in the pool and run it for a week or more, letting it sleep overnight when the battery is dead and turning it on again in the morning when the sun comes up. The beauty of solar power in a skimmer is that you don’t have to think about it. I can’t remember the last time I plugged mine in. The only time I take the skimmer out of the pool is to clean it periodically.

Even with four hours of operation, operationally the device makes little sense. Imagine the times when you need a skimmer the most, especially during the fall when the leaves continually fall. Four hours of skimming won’t make a dent in a day’s worth of debris landing on your pool’s surface, and even if you diligently retrieve the robot, recharge it, and run it a second time, you’re still only accounting for a third of a 24-hour period. While no skimmer is perfect, with BuVortex there is simply no way to prevent most leaves from ending up on the pool floor or, at best, a wall skimmer.