Bublue BuVortex V5 Pool Skimmer Review: An Impractical Cleaner
Bublue BuVortex V5 Pool Skimmer Review: An Impractical Cleaner
Bublue BuVortex V5 泳池清洁机器人评测：一款不切实际的清洁工具
Rating: 5/10 评分：5/10
FUN: Innovative concept. Decent performance, though only in the short term. Reasonably compact. Inexpensive. 优点： 概念新颖且有趣。性能尚可，但仅限于短期使用。体积相当紧凑。价格便宜。
TIRED: Lack of solar charging makes it impractical for most pools, where skimming needs to be nonstop. Cleanup requires significant time. Limited battery life. 缺点： 缺乏太阳能充电功能，使其对于大多数需要全天候不间断清洁的泳池来说并不实用。清理工作耗时较长。电池续航有限。
Pool skimmers, which flit along the surface of the water, constitute a small but stable subsection of the pool robot world. While their effectiveness varies, all of them work more or less the same way, cruising around the pool on a catamaran-like body, scooping up leaves into a basket that sits between the two propeller-powered hulls. 泳池清洁机器人（撇渣器）在水面上穿梭，构成了泳池机器人领域中一个虽小但稳定的细分市场。虽然它们的清洁效果各异，但工作原理大同小异：它们通常采用类似双体船的船体结构在泳池中巡航，将落叶收集到位于两个螺旋桨驱动船体之间的篮子中。
Until now. Enter the Bublue BuVortex V5, billed as “the world’s first active absorption skimmer.” I don’t have a clue what that means, but the simple explanation of how it works can be found in the “vortex” part of the name. Rather than gathering debris into a mouthlike chamber, the BuVortex creates a tiny whirlpool that draws nearby debris into it, sinking leaves and trapping them in an underwater basket. 直到现在，Bublue BuVortex V5 出现了，它被称为“全球首款主动吸附式撇渣器”。我不太明白这个概念的具体含义，但从名字里的“Vortex”（涡流）一词就能简单理解其工作原理：BuVortex 不会将杂物收集到类似“嘴巴”的腔室中，而是制造一个小漩涡，将附近的杂物吸入其中，使落叶下沉并困在水下的篮子里。
The device exemplifies, without question, the weirdest concept I’ve ever seen for cleaning the surface of a pool, but of course I had to wonder if it was so crazy it just might work, so I put it to the test in my own pool for a week, giving it free rein to collect both standard organic debris and synthetic leaves. 毫无疑问，这款设备是我见过最奇特的泳池表面清洁概念。当然，我很好奇它是否会因为“太疯狂”而反而有效，于是我在自己的泳池里对它进行了为期一周的测试，让它自由收集普通的有机杂物和人造树叶。
The 11.5-pound Bublue BuVortex V5 is built around a central cylinder about a foot in diameter that houses the vortex-creation system. Above that sits the filter basket, in two parts, including a bit of netting that prevents trapped debris from escaping the whirlpool once it gets sucked in. 这款重 11.5 磅的 Bublue BuVortex V5 围绕一个直径约一英尺的中央圆柱体构建，该圆柱体内部装有涡流产生系统。上方是两部分组成的过滤篮，其中包括一层网，防止被吸入漩涡的杂物逃逸。
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 sits underneath the filter basket. This filter, in turn, is held inside a circular frame, which holds it in place. All told, there are five pieces to the device, a fact that will become more important later when I discuss cleanup. Put together, the robot is quite tall, needing a full 1.5 feet of water depth in which to operate. 圆柱体周围有四个支臂，帮助设备漂浮并保持直立。其中一个支臂包含电源接口和开关按钮，以及用于与 Bublue 移动应用程序配对的蓝牙按钮。唯一的额外组件是位于过滤篮下方的网状过滤器。该过滤器被固定在一个圆形框架内。总而言之，该设备由五个部分组成，这一点在我稍后讨论清理工作时会变得很重要。组装完成后，这个机器人相当高，需要至少 1.5 英尺的水深才能运行。
Your first order of business with the BuVortex V5 is to charge its 7800 mAh battery, as—and this is essential—the unit has no solar-power charging function, a standard feature on traditional pool skimmer robots. The unit takes a sizable four hours to charge and is specified to run for three. I got close to four hours of runtime during my testing. 使用 BuVortex V5 的第一件事是为其 7800 mAh 的电池充电，因为——这一点至关重要——该设备没有太阳能充电功能，而这在传统泳池清洁机器人上是标配。该设备充电需要整整四个小时，标称续航为三小时。在我的测试中，我获得了接近四小时的运行时间。
The lack of solar power alone may be something of 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 have it run for a week or more, letting it sleep overnight when the battery is drained and firing it up again in the morning when the sun is out. The beauty of solar power on 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 periodically clean it. 仅缺乏太阳能充电这一点，对大多数人来说可能就是个“劝退”因素（至少对我而言是这样）。当我使用泳池清洁机器人时，通常会把它扔进泳池里运行一周甚至更久，电池耗尽时让它在夜间休息，第二天太阳出来时再自动启动。太阳能撇渣器的妙处在于你完全不用操心。我不记得上次给我的设备充电是什么时候了。我唯一需要把撇渣器从泳池里拿出来的时候，就是定期清理它。
Even with four hours of running time, operationally, the device makes little sense. Imagine the occasions when you need a skimmer the most—during the fall, especially, when leaves are continually falling. Four hours of skimming won’t put a dent in a day’s worth of debris landing on the surface of your pool, and even if you dutifully recharge the robot, you’re still accounting for only a third of a 24-hour period. While no skimmer is perfect, with the BuVortex, there’s just no way to prevent most leaves from ending up on the floor of the pool or, at best, in a wall skimmer. 即使有四小时的续航，从操作层面来看，这款设备也显得不太合理。想象一下你最需要撇渣器的时候——特别是在秋天，落叶不断。四小时的清洁工作根本无法处理一天内掉落在泳池表面的杂物，即使你勤奋地给机器人充电，它也只能覆盖 24 小时中的三分之一时间。虽然没有完美的撇渣器，但使用 BuVortex，你根本无法阻止大部分树叶沉入池底，或者充其量只能进入壁挂式撇渣器中。
In action, the BuVortex bobs around the pool seemingly at random—at a rate of up to 33 feet per minute—though a “corner boost” mode did seem to sequester the robot more to the edges of the pool. That said, most of the leaves throughout my testing seemed to hover more in the middle, making this mode less effective in my environment. Quantitatively, the unit performed decently by the end of its run, collecting about 70 percent of my test leaves and sinking 20 percent. 在运行中，BuVortex 似乎随机地在泳池中漂浮，速度最高可达每分钟 33 英尺，尽管“角落增强”模式似乎能让机器人更多地停留在泳池边缘。话虽如此，在我的测试中，大部分树叶似乎更多地悬浮在中间，这使得该模式在我的环境下效果不佳。从定量来看，该设备在运行结束时表现尚可，收集了约 70% 的测试树叶，并使 20% 的树叶下沉。
About 10 percent remained curiously on the surface at the end of the run, likely because the BuVortex doesn’t disturb the surface of the water as much as a typical skimming robot, which causes a lot of leaves to sink. Most standard skimmers will leave my pool’s surface empty (with almost all the leaves either collected or sunk) within 90 minutes of start-up. 运行结束时，仍有约 10% 的树叶奇怪地留在水面上，这可能是因为 BuVortex 对水面的扰动不如典型的撇渣机器人大，而后者通常会促使大量树叶下沉。大多数标准撇渣器在启动后 90 分钟内就能让我的泳池表面保持干净（几乎所有树叶要么被收集，要么沉入水底）。
From a control standpoint, the Bublue mobile app is incredibly simple, offering just the two modes to choose from and an exit option that instructs the robot to return to the edge of the pool for pickup. (This works only if the battery is still charged, of course.) I did experience trouble with the robot’s initial Bluetooth onboarding—it repeatedly failed to connect during setup—but a day later, everything began working normally. 从控制角度来看，Bublue 移动应用程序非常简单，仅提供两种模式可供选择，以及一个让机器人返回池边以便取出的退出选项。（当然，这仅在电池仍有电的情况下有效。）我在机器人最初的蓝牙配对时确实遇到了麻烦——设置过程中多次连接失败——但一天后，一切都开始正常工作了。
Given that the BuVortex has to be disassembled into five pieces, cleanup can be a bit tiresome, though it’s not really challenging. The only component that gave me any trouble was the mesh filter, which is difficult to get back into its circular frame—and impossible to fully clean, as debris sticks to it with incredible tenacity. Maybe that’s a good thing. The bigger issue, of course, isn’t the cleanup complication, it’s the fact that using this robot means constant visits to the pool, back and forth, back and forth. 考虑到 BuVortex 必须拆解成五个部分，清理工作可能会有些繁琐，尽管并不算太难。唯一让我感到困扰的组件是网状过滤器，它很难装回圆形框架中，而且无法彻底清洁，因为杂物会极其顽固地粘在上面。也许这算是一件好事。当然，更大的问题不在于清理的复杂性，而在于使用这个机器人意味着你需要不断地往返于泳池边进行维护。