2019 Seabob review

Playing with toys isn’t a hugely manly pursuit, although James Bond has always been fond of fondling his gadgets. However, sometimes you come across something that’s so much fun you will literally wrestle with your children for a go.

The Seabob – described in some quarters as the Porsche or Ferrari of underwater scooters – is one of these things.

I watched my 12-year-old son instantly grasp the concept of being towed along, and then under, the water by these battery-powered, fit-in-your-car-boot fun ships – the way you steer it by leaning your body, or make it dive with a roll of your wrists – and all I could think was: “Bugger him, when can I have a go?”

When I did, I found myself chortling childishly, just like him, and shouting things including: “I want one! Can we buy one?”

An entry-level Seabob starts from $15,990 if you to buy one from Seabob's Australian distributor, Gold Coast-based jet ski specialists JSW Powersports. That's a little bit more than the price of an entry-level jet ski, but a jet ski is nowhere near as compact or capable of taking you under the water – unless you forget the bung.

The Seabob comes with a 1.8kW/h, 48-volt battery (made by California-based electric car disruptor Tesla, apparently), which takes eight hours for a full charge – this gives you up to 60 minutes of non-stop use – while an optional fast charger will take as little as 90 minutes.

The Seabob is available as three different models – the entry-level F5 with 2.5kW of performance and up to 480 Newtons of thrust via four power settings, the mid-spec F5 S with 4.0kW of performance and 680 Newtons of thrust via six power settings, and the F5 SR with 4.5kW/745 Newtons via seven power settings.

Top speeds of each model come in at 14km/h over the water and 13km/h under, 20km/h over and 18km/h under, and 22km/h over and 20km/h under respectively.

What you see is what you get, with a torpedo-shaped handheld unit wrapped around a safely hidden “E-Jet” power system that uses an impeller to suck in water and drive it out of the back of the unit, and some batteries.

The Seabob is 1152mm long, 507mm wide and 372mm high and weighs 35kg out of the water, or depending on the model up to 14kg  in it. It has an automatic depth cut-off at 2.5 metres, but is safe to take up to 40 metres deep.

You can take a passenger with you, but only if you don’t mind tying them to you with a harness, or letting them hang off your neck.

Why have this over a jet ski? It's a lot less bother to launch a Seabob out of a larger motor yacht's tender garage, and it will even pack away in smaller sports yachts.

Or under it, which is where you’ll want to spend a lot of time. To be fair, belting along the top of the water, salty brine splashing in your face, teeth bared as you whip up through the six gears on the Seabob is fairly awesome fun.

But there’s just something about the effortlessness and slickness of turning your little scooter into an underwater craft. You just feel so much faster and almost weightless as you belt along below the surface, much like a seal.

Even in Sydney Harbour, with little sea life or coral to gaze upon, it really was magical to zip along at speed under the waves.

As much fun as it is to see how fast you can go, the real hoot about a Seabob is turning it at pace, because you have to lean into the water and become at one with the machine, just as you do on a fast motorcycle. Only wetter.

A Seabob ain’t that fast, though, with a top speed of 20km/h over the water, or 14km/h under it, but those speeds would feel pretty quick if you were doing it face down on a skateboard.

That’s a bit what it feels like with your chin just above the water. Get your position right and the weight comes right off your arms, so you can zip along for quite some time without feeling worked out.

You fire up the unit with two buttons, check the battery-power remaining (in 90 minutes of vigorous testing, with a bit of back-slapping and laughing, we used about 60 per cent of the charge), and then accelerate away using a throttle lever that fits into your right hand. If you let go of the throttle, for any reason, the Seabob stops and floats, waiting for you to go again.

The Seabob is tremendous and instantaneous fun. It’s also so simple to use that your grandkids, and your grandmother, would quickly get the hang of it.

Yes, it would make a handy adornment to your motor yacht's garage, but at the other end of the spectrum it’s also portable enough that you can stick it in the boot of your car, which isn’t something you can say of most water-based toys.