The best underwater drones and ROVs

The best underwater drones open up exciting possibilities in aquatic exploration. Also known as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), these mini remote-controlled submarines allow you to capture footage much deeper than the typical 40m/130ft limit for scuba divers. Beyond capturing video for entertainment and education, they’re great for inspecting your boat or enhancing your fishing trips.

We've put our experts to work, to curate the list below, of the best underwater drones and ROVs available. We explain the differences between them, and highlight their key features to help you make an informed choice.

However, if you're rather use a drone over the water than under it to aid your fishing, read our The best drone for fishing instead. I even once tried an aerial drone you could land on water, but it doesn't make the list (sometimes ideas are better than execution!)

Top picks

Adam Juniper

With over 20 years of expertise as a tech journalist, Adam brings a wealth of knowledge across a vast number of product categories, from home security cameras, to 3D printers and, above all (see what we did there?) drones. Well, usually above all, though he's also put them in water, in this case on purpose! He is also the author of a number of books including The Complete Guide to Drones, The Smart Smart Home Handbook, 101 Tips for DSLR Video and The Drone Pilot's Handbook.

Best underwater drones and ROVs 

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Best for most people

The Chasing Innovation Gladius Mini is supplied in a nice backpack; like one a photographer might use to carry a body and lenses, with a laptop in a separate bay. Setting up is reasonably easy – an included towel means you can set the drone down on sharp coastal rocks safely.

On the downside, the protective caps for the 50m or 100m tether cable are easily lost, but otherwise, the drone is solidly built and can be thrown into the sea after setup, and can easily take a few knocks underwater.

The bright color is easily spotted too. Smart features include depth-lock (like altitude hold on a flying drone), and there is 64GB storage to record. The five thrusters make the drone quick to respond – useful as you need to tilt the body up or down to look around. You can lock the pitch, but the camera (and accompanying 1,200-lumen lights) cannot be separately turned, making this a real pilot’s craft, and fun with it.

The thoughtful app is easily operated, and VR compatible, and the 4K camera produces great results. Our only complaint is that in rougher seas, the image stabilization could be better. Overall, though, it's a great product.

Best for power

The Fifish is available as a standard V6 and the V6S includes the robot arm accessory. On its own, this is a good quality ROV with a 100m maximum depth and tether to match. The controller is reminiscent of a drone controller, with a space for a phone as a monitor. It's easy to use, and the posture lock (‘hover’) maintains position accurately, but we did wonder why the pad was plain white – a touch too generic. It does have a lock-depth button (like hover), however, which is useful to have easy access to.

In fact, many of the features – 4K camera and dual 2000-lumen lights – are more costly elsewhere and this may be the most wallet-friendly way to add a robot claw with over 5kg (11lbs) gripping force to your underwater expeditions.

This will be ideal for positioning other equipment remotely or attempting to grip and lift sea-floor discoveries. There is also now a sleek black ‘Expert’ edition of this drone with 6,000-lumen lighting and the option of on-shore power for longer missions, and other accessories on offer including sonar sensors. We must admit we liked the option of VR head tracking (the drone ‘looks’ with you) and appreciated that a cable reel was in the bundle.

Best value

This is in many respects a smaller version of Chasing’s Gladius Mini. It’s certainly the same striking yellow, and pleasingly incorporates the maneuverable five-thruster design. This makes it possible to tilt the body (and, by extension, the camera) up and down. If you think that might make it hard to control, worry not – the depth lock feature is retained from its bigger brother too.

So how has Chasing sliced the price so low? Firstly the camera is a more modest 1080p, supported by only 250 lumens of light (at shallower depths this shouldn’t be an issue). Secondly the umbilical is significantly shorter, though the surface end is actually a floating Wi-Fi buoy, so you can throw it in the water and, so long as you’re within Wi-Fi range of it (admittedly not far given the water), you have control, maximizing the use of the 15m (50ft) tether.

Finally, that control is all on-screen using the app, so there is no physical controller unit. That means you’ll need to be cautious of getting water on the touch screen. But on the plus side, the battery is contained in the drone and the only element you’ll need to charge, and the 720p live feed is ideal for piloting with. For most, this will be all the underwater drone needed, and the app is well-featured, even supporting live streaming to social media. This could make a boat trip more fun, or even add educational value to exploring lakeside pools.

Read: The best underwater housings for cameras and phones

Best for explorers

Traveling underwater is not a friendly environment for the high-frequency radio used for the live video feedback on aerial drones. So the PowerRay is provided with a 70m (230ft) umbilical cable that gently rests behind it, as it's propelled by its two horizontal props. The body also features a central vertical thruster to make changing depth a straightforward process that won’t cause tangling of the communication cable.

The depths can be a murky place, even the first few meters, so the Ray adds two dimmable 450-lumen headlight lights to illuminate your subject, which can be captured in 4K (30fps max) or 4,000 x 3,000-pixel stills. With a maximum ISO of 1600, the camera is more than capable in the depths the PowerRay can manage, though the 1/2.3-inch sensor could be bigger in a perfect world. 32 or 64Gb SD storage is provided depending on the version you choose, or you can put your own card in.

There is a PowerRay Explorer which is the basic video shooting drone, and a more expensive PowerRay Wizard edition which adds the PowerSeeker sonar device (which can detect the underwater landscape and use temperature data to identify fishing hotspots), bait dropper, and a carry-on friendly travel case and Zeiss VR One Goggles, which provide an alternative means of exploring the depths from the deck.

The latter isn’t just good fun, it makes enjoying the 1080p live feedback easier than on your phone screen on a bright day, although the price differential between the Explorer and Wizard versions is considerable in some stores.

Best for content creators

Chasing is a big brand in the ROV world, and the M2 makes it obvious why. The eight corner-mounted thrusters are operated from a joypad-style control, so piloting through the water at a nifty 3 knots is an accessible experience to all.

The built-in camera is an ƒ/1.8 12 megapixel affair with a 1 / 2.3 CMOS and electronic stabilization so the motors shouldn’t disturb your footage. The 152˚ field of view is pretty wide. Video can be caught at 4K 30fps (up to 120fps is available at 1080p) but if you’re keen to capture with a GoPro there is a mount.

There are some exciting accessories for the M2, not least a robotic arm and a powered tether reel, or E-Reel, which will keep the tether out of the way automatically. There's also a swappable battery. If we could change anything, the lights would be further from the lens and brighter (they're 2 x 2000 lumens), but on the plus side, there are accessory rails.

Best for coral

The BW Space Pro might not be the fastest of the drones here, but it is a quality product built with photographers in mind, which is why it's offered with a range of different cameras, including a 6x zoom lens (the benefits of which, in water, are open to debate). The aperture is, relatively speaking, at the wider end (f/1.5) for underwater drones, which is a noticeable plus. The Pro version also brings AI object-tracking.

Some of the manufacturer's stability claims are perhaps slightly overstated; the four thrusters make tilting 45 degrees each way possible, but the Gladius Mini does the same with an extra thruster for stability. It’s also worth mentioning that predecessors with similar branding cannot even do the tilt, so be warned if you're searching around for cheaper versions online.

Still, the robot has a sturdy frame that can be thrown into the water from the bank without worry, and subsequent control is via the Dive App (iOS/Android) with depth hold and auto-adjusting lighting (maxing at 1,380 lumens each from both headlights). Included in the box is a joypad-like remote with a (slightly flimsy) phone clip. Optionally, a larger mini-tablet grip controller is available too.

Best for range

This is a real traditionalist's underwater explorer robot, which is not only very capable but looks the part too. It's not actually quite as big as it might seem at first glance, though; viewed from above it’s about the size of a letter.

Control is via a generous 300m cable, supplied on a reel, and an iOS or Android app (unless you opt for the Ground Station). There is none of the design elegance of the PowerVision products; this is a device designed not in reference to aerodynamic drones and consumer products, but professional ones.

In order to give it the strength to do a job, the body houses four thrusters, meaning you can get enough force and direction behind the robot arm to lift up to 10kg of objects from beneath the waves. You might choose, for example, to assist environmental projects by lifting debris or litter, or you might fancy beating coastal (metal) detectorists by grabbing valuables before they wash up on the shore.

You can see what you’re doing from the camera, though oddly the focal length is such that the hands themselves are too near to be in perfect focus – not to the extent it’ll slow you down, though.

You can also record in 4K UHD onto the camera, which provides 1080p live feedback as you explore the depths, illuminated by two 1000-lumen LEDs. ThorRobotics can also provide specially tailored versions with a 'Ground Station,’ or even longer cables.

Alternative ideas

If you feel you’d like to get down there with the glories of the deep, rather than just pilot a camera, then the Trident underwater scooter is the device for you. Built with a sizeable lithium battery to pull you along through the water, along with some simple controls, the S2 builds on the success of their IndieGoGo-launched first generation.

Photographers are not forgotten though; there is a GoPro camera mount on the front so you can record your trip just by screwing on your underwater camera in its housing. It's nice to be saving on a camera you might well already have, plus you need only upgrade as you choose.

The Trident is driven simply by squeezing the triggers on each arm – it’s almost too easy, which is why there is both a kids mode and an app that allows you to enable a ‘parent mode’ and remotely monitor your kids while preventing submersion. In normal use, it can dive, but if you let go it floats, even with a GoPro attached, which alleviates a few concerns.

Moocor’s fishing cameras offer an alternative to an underwater drone, sacrificing the control offered by thrusters and joysticks for the significantly lower investment required to dangle a camera below the surface. This should be enough for many, offering a perspective on fishing which you might have only imagined before. Set it up correctly and you’ll see the hook just before the lens.

If your primary purpose is a peek below the surface for fishing or just interest, then a big advantage to this is a relatively small and light battery – here 4,500mAh – can offer around six hours of power. On the downside, 1280 x 720 resolution, while offering a good view, certainly isn’t up there with 4K or 1080p, so you won’t be able to use the video for professional purposes. We would have also preferred to see a more modern codec for the video file.

See also: Best underwater fishing cameras

How to choose an underwater drone

Choosing a drone to explore beneath the surface isn’t the same as picking your ideal aerial drone. While, on the plus side, you’re unlikely to be forced into a weight category by aviation authority regulations, flying drones do have the advantage of traveling through the air, where radio waves travel relatively freely. Water isn’t a friendly environment for remote control, and certainly not video signals, so you’ll need to work around a tether cable. Ensuring this doesn’t encroach on your video is a skill you’ll need to practice, though of course boat inspections and the like don’t require quite the same caution.

• How low can you go: Knowing the depth your ROV can safely reach is important; more so if you're looking to explore the ocean than have fun in the pool and near the beach. The length of the tether is important here too.
• Maneuverability: Some ROVs use extra rotors to turn more quickly and to enable rolling on the center axis, which gives you more options – this is sometimes called a vectored capability.
• Fishing: If you’re into fishing, then a drone can help identify a good spot before you cast your line. Some drones also have the option of accessories like sonar detectors which can really boost your catch.
• Tether management: Though a tether is essential if you want to view live video previews from the depths, not every manufacturer supplies a reel – an essential management tool.
• Battery life: In general this is notably longer than flying equivalents, but it should be remembered that with a speed of a few knots it’ll take longer to return home (if you have to pull on the tether, there are obviously risks, but it is a fall-back).
• Content storage: How will your drone record video and images? If it uses your phone as a monitor, will the app work and will there be a handy file transfer feature?

Frequently asked questions

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Something that might surprise you is just how able modern drones, even light ones, are able to cope with a sea breeze. Check our guide to the best beginner drones too, or just think about more traditional waterproof devices like action cameras.