Magellan Switch Up Review: Multisport GPS Watch with HR

Our Verdict

The Magellan Switch Upward is a comprehensive GPS watch that maps running, cycling and hiking routes, simply you'll accept to deal with its archaic, clunky design.

For

Interchangeable between wristband and bike mountain
Customizable activeness profiles
Piece of cake-to-use online interface

Confronting

Bulky design
Doesn't automatically save recorded activities

Tom'due south Guide Verdict

The Magellan Switch Up is a comprehensive GPS watch that maps running, cycling and hiking routes, just you'll have to deal with its primitive, clunky design.

Pros

+
Interchangeable between wristband and bike mount
+
Customizable activity profiles
+
Piece of cake-to-employ online interface

Cons

-
Bulky design
-
Doesn't automatically salve recorded activities

For the rugged adventurer in all of u.s., the Magellan Switch Up wants to be your versatile tracking device. Dubbed a crossover lookout man, this gadget tin fit into a wristband or wheel mountain, using built-in GPS to map running, cycling and hiking routes. It's also waterproof and compatible with ANT+ and Bluetooth accessories, giving you the option to rails everything from cadence to centre rate. At $129, the Magellan Switch Up gives you many features for the money, and an excellent online portal in Magellan Active to look back at your progress.

Design

You could injure someone with the Switch Upwardly if you're non careful. Out of the box, it'due south a rectangular block with a display and five buttons on its side. The device attaches to a big base on the top of the wristband, making the entire wearable large and beefy. Its trunk measures two.3 x i.7 x 0.vi inches, and the tall profile really makes the device stick out. It'south also weighty, coming in at 2.5 ounces, which is much heavier than the 1.v-ounce Garmin Forerunner 15 and the one.75-ounce TomTom Runner sentry.

The Switch Upwardly comes with a wristband and a bicycle mount, and so you can attach the device to either i depending on the activity. The wristband is styled like a traditional watchband, and it's like shooting fish in a barrel to wear. Only adept luck trying to get the Switch Up out of the wristband in one case information technology'south snapped in. I spent a few minutes pulling and trying to get my fingernails under its crevices before I was able to pull information technology out. On the plus side, this ensures that the device won't fall out on catchy hikes. However, that snugness can be a pain when yous just want to charge or sync the device.

More: Best Fitness Trackers

The Switch Up is water-resistant upwards to 165 feet, or 5 ATM, just like the Forerunner fifteen and the TomTom Runner.

Setup

Although you lot tin can immediately use the Magellan Switch Up out of the box, it'due south best to customize a few presets first. In Settings, you tin can set personal information and device attributes, but the about important matter is Activity Profiles, which are preferences for all of the activities y'all'll rail using the Switch Up. All 10 activities are pretty specific — y'all can track everything from road running to mount biking to pond. For each action, you customize what you want the Switch Up to bear witness you — such as time and pace, automobile interruption and car lap features — and alerts for when you attain a ready calorie, distance or cadency goal.

Once you've selected those preferences, y'all tin can set the first activity you will runway as "active." From that indicate on, all of your activities will be filed nether that category, until you lot set a different active activeness.

Interface

The top two buttons on the right side of the Switch Up are scrolling keys and, when long-pressed, act as the info and carte du jour buttons. The bottom-right button turns the device on and off. On the left side, the ii buttons are used to select or go back, besides every bit start and terminate an activity.

The default home screen displays action fashion, showing you the time, distance and average step of the activeness you're currently completing. If you haven't started a new action however, those values will remain at goose egg until you begin.

Different other GPS watches, such as the Garmin Forerunner xv, the Switch Up automatically begins searching for a GPS indicate when you turn it on. For the best results, turn on the device outside right before you're about to commencement; the GPS will locate yous faster and more accurately.

Once the Switch Up'southward GPS acquires a point, you can press the lesser-left button to begin an action. Then, you're off — the device does the residuum for y'all while you train, sending y'all beeping and vibrating alerts for the milestones you've set.

Press the aforementioned bottom-left push to intermission the action, and long-press information technology to end. The Switch Up doesn't automatically save your activities, then when you end a session, make certain to select Save & Reset.

Overall, the Switch Up is easy to utilise, once you get the hang of its buttons. All of them, except the ability push button, have two functions, so it can be disruptive at starting time to know which one to push and how to push it.

GPS

The GPS in the Magellan Switch Upwards is fairly accurate, but information technology tin can be finicky when you lot're trying to choice upwardly a signal. In New York City's Wedlock Square, the Switch Upwardly failed to locate me, even when I was on the border of the park with a clear blueish heaven above. The Garmin Forerunner 15 located me in the same area, within 3 minutes, and it held the signal while I jogged effectually Union Square.

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I had more luck in Brooklyn. In the Sunset Park neighborhood, information technology took the Switch Upwardly virtually 2 minutes to notice me. Just north of at that place, in Park Gradient, the device located me inside 10 seconds.

The Switch Up too has a born barometric altimeter, which improves the overall accurateness of its GPS mapping and elevation estimations.

Magellan Active

To wait back at your workout sessions, you can sync your recorded activities to Magellan Agile. This online dashboard gives y'all a comprehensive breakup of your data in a clean and unproblematic interface, with your total activity stats in a height bar on the home screen, including the number of activities, total distance, elevation, duration and calories.

Right beneath that is a list of all of your individual activities. Click on any of them to go to a breakdown of that session. These session pages look like to the abode page, merely they feature a map of your location and a bar graph showing step, meridian and temperature change over the course of that activity.

You can hover over the bar graph with your cursor to meet a plethora of stats for every betoken of your conditioning, including time, altitude, stride, tiptop, temperature, calories, breadth and longitude. I appreciated how easily Magellan made this data bachelor, without making the folio overwhelming or cluttered.

Correct beneath that bar graph is a button that lets yous enter Maximize View. Here, the GPS graph takes over the browser screen, with the bar graph at the top. If you lot hover over the graph, an indicator pops up in the map to show y'all exactly where you were at that signal in time. This view is superconvenient if you notice something peculiar in your workout stats and desire to pinpoint where you lot were when things started to change.

Overall, I love that Magellan Agile gives me the option to see equally much or equally little data as I want, and information technology does so in a friendly and elementary-to-use interface. Withal, I wish I could get all of this same functionality in a mobile app.

Performance

The Magellan Switch Up did a good job of tracking my jogs. Sometimes, the GPS route looked like jagged squiggles for the first few hundred feet, but overall, the routes were authentic, as were the superlative estimates. When I looked at the map of my jog from my apartment to the subway in Magellan Active, the elevation map followed my mostly downhill route, showing me breadth, longitude, vertical speed and temperature measurements for every indicate.

Ane of the Switch Up'south best features is the Activity Pacer, which you can employ to set a goal distance and time if you lot're grooming for a race. As you run or bike, the device shows you your current stride and gives you a target pace to work toward, so you lot tin can achieve your goal altitude in your desired time. Information technology also shows y'all an estimated terminate time as you railroad train, and then you can keep track of time just by glancing downward at your wrist.

The Switch Up is likewise ANT+ compatible, meaning you can use it with Emmet+ middle-charge per unit monitors, foot pods and wheel pacers to track as many stats as yous demand.

Battery Life

The Magellan Switch Up can last up to viii hours while actively tracking your workouts using GPS. That's similar to the 7 to 8 hours of battery life promised past the Garmin Forerunner xv and the TomTom Runner watch.

I wore the Switch Upwards for four days, tracking jogs that were betwixt 10 and 30 minutes long. Later on that, the bombardment life was down to 52 per centum. For those who demand the extra juice for long hikes or cycling trips, Magellan sells a bombardment-extender pack for the Switch Up. It costs $39 and adds a whopping 16 additional hours to the device's battery.

Bottom Line

The Magellan Switch Up is a solid GPS watch that will serve you well in even the nigh rugged activities. I particularly loved how much information the Switch Up puts at your fingertips with Magellan Active. Nearly any fitness metric you could want to track is there, and with the device'south Ant+ capabilities, you can wear connected accessories to get even more data.

I but wish that the Switch Upwardly's GPS located me more quickly, and I hope the device gets a much-needed slimmer blueprint update. The $139 Garmin Forerunner 15 has a devoted wristwatch pattern and a quicker GPS. Nevertheless, the Magellan Switch Up is a skillful choice if you lot're looking for an cheap GPS watch that tracks a plethora of data and isn't confined to your wrist.

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Follow Valentina Palladino at@valentinalucia. Follow Tom's Guide at @tomsguide and on Facebook.

Valentina is Commerce Editor at Engadget and has covered consumer electronics for a number of publications including Tom's Guide, Wired, Laptop Magazine and Ars Technica, with a particular focus on wearables, PCs and other mobile tech.