DiveX Blacktip Scooter

The Blacktip DPV series by Dive Xtras introduces a professional grade scooter at an affordable price.   With three tube lengths to choose from, these DPVs are a great match for recreational and technical divers alike. 

Rejoice!   Gone are the days of needing a cold $5000 to buy a professional grade scooter.   Dive Extras introduced the BlackTip series of scooters in 2019, and they’ve been rocking the scuba world ever since.    The price out of the door for one of these babies is $1800 – $2299 (plus batteries) depending on which body tube you choose, and that is definitely a less painful purchase than the traditional $4000 and up. 

We tested the Blacktip Tech, and man, were we impressed.

Product Tested
Dive Xtras Blacktip Tech DPV

Product Description
High performance underwater dive scooter.

Features include:

  • LED display for speed, battery level, & errors
  • Balanced tube floats neutral & trim
  • Runs on two DCB batteries. 9Ah or 12Ah
  • Range, as tested: 123 minutes
  • 210fpm cruise speed. 238fpm boost mode
  • Depth Rating: 400 feet
  • Length: 28.5 inches
  • Weight: 28.5lbs

Cost
$1799 US (Plus batteries)

The Review:

By Bosco

I’ve been having a blast with my Blacktip Tech.

On day one with the scooter, I  decided I couldn’t wait for the weekend, so I ditched work and took it for a solo shore dive.   My target dive site was about 1 mile off shore and 90 feet deep.    About 30 minutes into the dive and about a mile off shore the Blacktip stopped cold.  No power indicator or response from the trigger.   About 30 seconds later it started up, and just to play it safe, I turned the dive.   About 5 minutes later it died again.   What the hell?  After a couple of minutes of underwater swearing and constant trigger pulling, it started up in a horribly slow mode, with not enough power to even pull itself along, let alone my fat ass.  Are the batteries dead?   Who knows –  There’s no display on the LED!  I did some quick math to see what my deco options were.   Plenty of air, so let’s stay down.  Well crap.  This is going to be a long swim.  I old schooled it home, and about an hour later when I was just minutes from shore, it started up normally again.       

"Well crap. This is going to be a long swim"

-- Fat Diver

 A conversation with Dive Xtras tech support convinced me to try it again, and I had similar problems on dive #2.   DiveX said to send the tail unit back to them and they would ship out a replacement ASAP.   I’ve put more than a dozen hour+ dives on the replacement, and it’s been great.   DiveX reported back after they inspected my original scooter and said there was a manufacturing defect in the electronics VESC.

I’ve done some amazing dives with my Blacktip.  I’ve played around quite a bit with adding goodies like lights, GoPros, and gauges, and then tweaked the weighting to get it balanced and neutral after the gadget additions.   I typically dive side mount with steel 85s, an AL40 deco bottle, plus the usual reels, lights, etc, and this thing pulls me along with little effort.   I typically cruise at speed 4, which gives me roughly 75-90 minutes of runtime on my 12Ah Dewalt batteries.  I have not done a true calculation, but I believe I travel at about 170fpm in speed 4.  It would be really great to be able to be at a speed of 5 or 6 for the whole dive, but this would require the longer Exploration tube with 2 additional batteries.   That makes for another $800 in cost, a little more weight, and more space on the boat to transport it.    Nah.  I’ll stick my with Tech tube.

Dive-Xtras provides runtime charts for all of their scooters, and this is what I translated it out to in table format for speeds 2 through 6.  This table shows runtimes with 2 Dewalt 12.0Ah batteries:

Speed 2 = 240 minutes (2.2amp current limit)
Speed 3 = 123 minutes (3.8amp current limit)
Speed 4 = 75 minutes (6.2amp current limit)
Speed 5 = 59 minute runtime (9.6amp current limit)
Speed 6 = 44 minute runtime

Would recommend this scooter?
Recreational diver: Yes
Technical diver: Yes

How was Dive Xtras tech support?
Excellent!

We equipped our scooter with Dewalt 12.0Ah batteries for maximum runtime.   We typically cruise in 4th gear and get between 75 and 90 minutes of runtime.   We also fabricated a compass and depth gauge mount, lights, and a couple of GoPros.

Pros

  • Affordable price
  • 3 tube lengths to choose from.
  • History of quality products from DiveX
  • Powerful and fairly long runtime.
  • Powered by everyday power tool batteries which makes for low initial cost easy replacement.
  • Great support from manufacturer.

Cons

  • No built in mount for gauges or GoPro
  • Runtime on Travel & Tech models is somewhat limited unless you stay in lower gears.