Magellan Switch Up
The Magellan Switch’s big brother, the Switch Up is a multi-purpose GPS watch that perfectly complements runners, cyclists, and triathletes. Like the Switch, the Switch Up has unique features beneficial to all types of endurance athletes.
Activity Pacer is Magellan’s version of Virtual Partner. The big difference being it provides some guidance on how to complete the workout within your set goals, including a calculation of when it expects you to finish based on your current pace.
See what others are saying about the Magellan Switch Up
For triathletes, multi-sport allows fast and simple activity changes; the quick release mount makes wrist to bike transitions easy. And the battery extender pack – an extra battery that can be swapped on the watch – provides an additional 16 hours of battery life on top of the 8 hours with the included watch battery.
Screen customization is also a notably strong feature on the Switch Up. Not only can 6 data fields be personalized with information per screen, but the Switch Up supports 9 screens per activity. Additionally 9 different activity profiles can be set ahead of time to ensure that as you switch from running to biking to swimming, the data fields you need to see for each activity are easy to access.
Expanding on the Switch’s features, the Switch Up distinguishes itself with a built-in barometric altimeter, giving it much more accurate elevation measurements. It also has a temperature sensor and vibration alerts. And unlike the Switch, the quick release mount comes included with the Switch Up.
Like the Switch, the downsides to the Switch Up are its lack of interval and advanced workout features – this means you cannot program custom workouts on the watch. The Switch Up is also big and chunky and isn’t suitable for wearing in non-exercising situations, both because of its size and its inability to display time and date.
- Highly customizable in both data fields displayed and the number of profiles that can be set-up
- Battery extender pack – Magellan’s Switch and Switch Up are the only two GPS watches able to swap batteries
- Activity Pacer – a nice improvement over Garmin’s Virtual Partner
- No interval or advanced workouts
- Square-ish and bulky. Not a watch you would want to wear outside of exercising
Runners
While lacking interval workouts, the Activity Pacer still makes this a nice watch for intermediate runners looking for some extra motivation while training. But it’s fairly complex for newer runners and lacks training aids (like interval and advanced workouts) beneficial to experienced runners.
Cyclists
With 9 activity profiles giving you the ability to customize multiple bikes and its compatibility with bicycle accessories like a bike speed and cadence sensor and a power meter, the Switch Up is a great GPS watch for advanced cyclists.
Triathletes
The Switch Up is waterproof, comes with multi-sport – which make activity transitions simple, and works with a quick-release mount, allowing speedy wrist to bike-mount transfers.
Swimmers
The Switch Up is waterproof to 50 meters.
Ultrarunners
With its customizable data fields, barometric-altimeter elevation tracking, and swappable battery, the Switch Up is capable of tracking long-distance events in a variety of terrain, while showing very specific data.
Hikers
With its breadcrumb map and barometric-altimeter, the Switch Up is a great hiking watch.
FEATURES
Hardware
Battery-life: 8 hours exercise mode
Waterproof to 50 meters
Data Tracking
Time, Distance, Pace and Speed
Calories
Heart rate calculated calories
GPS elevation
Barometric altimeter elevation
Temperature
Workout History
Breadcrumb map
1,000 laps; 60 hours of activities
Alerts & General Features
Auto lap
Auto pause
Customizable screens
Auto-scroll
Multi-sport
9 activity profiles
Time/Distance audible alerts
Vibration alerts
Training Aids
Activity Pacer
Syncing
Wirelessly downloads activites to a computer
Facebook and Twitter Sharing
Accessories
Heart rate monitor
Foot pod
Bike speed and cadance sensor
Quick-release mount
Power meter
Battery extender pack
Other Functions
None
