The Swytch e-bike conversion kit: Fits 99% of bikes! Smaller and lighter than any kit! Maximum road legal speed! Range up to 30km! It’s a leader in the market for the best electric bike conversion kits that offer road legal assistance.
Swytch’s latest generation ebike conversion kit promises the world, and though I’ve added those italics and exclamation marks, I can’t endorse these claims strongly enough. Swytch Kit delivers on every level! And here’s why…
What is it?
Swytch has been selling its e-bike conversion kit since 2018 and this latest generation’s essence remains the same – a hub-motor front wheel is powered by a bar-mounted battery, and that motorised wheel kicks in when you pedal. Crucially, the Swytch Kit fits pretty much any bike, disc brake, rim brake, 700c wheel, 26” wheel, Brompton… you name it.
The big news for generation 3 is the Swytch Kit is lighter and more svelte thanks to two new batteries and a redesigned battery mount. The Air battery (blue) weighs 709g and isn’t much bigger than a smartphone (212mm x 100mm x 25mm), while the Max battery (orange, 228mm x 100mm x 36mm) weighs 1,076g. According to my scales the result is a Swytch Kit adds 2.84kg or 3.13kg to your existing bike, which does bring it in under its main competitor at the moment, which is arguably the Boost kit.
Swytch claims a range of 15km (Air, 90Wh capacity) or 30km (Max, 180Wh), with assistance coming from a 250W, 40Nm torque motor.
We’ll delve into some of those numbers later, but first a word on fitting, because ease of installation is arguably the Swytch Kit’s USP.
Fitting
From big cardboard box to converted bike, the Swytch Kit took 29 minutes to install, and I only looked at the instructions once. I would dare say anyone who knows <righty-tighty, lefty-loosey> could fit a Swytch Kit.
The wheel slots into the frame, the battery bracket clamps to bars and the wires plug together with colour coded plugs then zip-tied to the frame. The only less-intuitive part was installing the PAS – pedal assist sensor – a plastic disc inlaid with magnets that sits between the non-driveside crank arm and the BB shell, attaching to the crank arm.
The PAS disc lines up with the PAS, which is positioned on the seat or down tube such that the magnets rotate past the sensor when pedalling, which triggers the motor. It’s just like those old wired bike computers, and you’ll remember the fiddle then was lining up the magnet so it didn’t foul the sensor but it still passed close enough to trigger it.
The PAS was similarly fiddly affair, and once installed it did come out of whack and I had to rejig it, eventually putting a ball of duct tape under the sensor to stop it bending towards the frame at its mounting hinge (thereby ending up too far away from the magnets to trigger the motor). But still, the sensor had only moved as a I had clonked it with a cable lock, and ultimately the system is simple and it works.
The whole thing is controlled by a wired remote that attaches to the bars, but again it’s no harder than clamping on a front light, and like the battery bracket the clamp sizes are a default 31.8mm, but with shims to take that down to 26mm, 25.4mm and 22.2mm, so every bar type is covered.
How it works
The Swytch remote has an on/off button, mode button to cycle through data such as speed and distance, and up/down buttons to cycle through the five assist levels.
It’s hard to describe each assist level but at either end, level 1 feels like a gentle hand on your back while level 5 feels like the bike is almost pedalling you.
Swytch’s range estimates are based on riding over flat ground at level 2, and I’d say for riding around London on my converted road bike, Swytch was about right. However, heavier bikes, headwinds and hills all contrive to lower the range, and since having moved to Bristol (which is very hilly) during this test, those ranges are now closer to 13km and 25km.
Increasing the assist level eats into the battery too, such that level 5 over undulating terrain produces around 5km or 10km, battery size dependent. But as I say, at level 5 it feels like I’m just riding a motorbike. There is still the need to pedal of course, as all legal e-bikes require that power comes on only when pedalling, otherwise they would be pedelecs, and subject to insurance and licences. That said, Swytch sells a throttle control for £30 ‘provided it is used only off road’.
Power delivery is controlled by cadence plus a speed sensor in the motor that makes it cut out over the regulation 25kmh (15.5mph). Maximum power (or motor torque) is applied when power assist is set to level 5 and you’re pedalling from a standing start. Set the power assist to level 3 and slightly less power is applied to that standing start; set the assist to level 1 and the least power is delivered.
From there, power delivery is linked to cadence such that the faster you pedal, the less power is delivered (as it takes less power to maintain speed than it does to accelerate the bike), until that 25kmh cut-off speed is reached. In other words, you can get up any hill on the Swytch, the assistance it offers will just vary based on power assist level selected and cadence.
In this the Swytch Kit works like any other e-bike. Its motor power is designed to augment your pedalling not replace it, and the progressive way the power is meted out is designed to create a natural pedalling feeling. However such cadence-controlled systems do lack the pedalling sensation of torque-controlled systems, where power is meted out based on how hard you are pushing the pedals as opposed to how many times per minute they are spinning. Torque-based systems are mostly found in production e-bikes with mid-drive motors, for example those fitted with Bosch’s latest systems. That said, torque-controlled ebike conversion kits do exist, the Cycmotor X1 and Photon systems being such examples.
Here the feeling is one of an initial shove – which is pretty fun, you’ll burn off all-comers on this thing from a standing start – and then progressively smooth power delivery. In terms of noise there is an initial whine, but it’s quickly overtaken by other noises such as wind and drivetrain.
Above 25kmh pedalling is basically all you, which of course is harder than without the Swytch Kit due to its added weight, and if the battery runs flat the motor hub is draggy as it’s full of magnets. But for the riding I was doing – around town with occasional hills – I rarely topped 25kmh anyway, and for the times where I did run the battery flat my bike was still infinitely more rideable than the majority of e-bikes given the weight. Total build here is 12.7kg while full-fat e-bikes are easily over 20kg.
Efficacy
The Swytch e-bike conversion kit is good. Really good. But key to unlocking its potential is using it in the right way: it is really for commuters or short distance riders. This is obvious given the specs, but it is worth saying.
The neatest setup is with the smaller Air battery, but with a 10km commute I needed to charge the Swytch at work. The Max battery did the job both ways, but it paid to be economical with the power assist. For lazier days or laden-bike days, I’d need to recharge the Max at work too.
How this stacks up for you will be down to your specific situation, but for most people I’d wager this is a fair trade-off for such a lightweight e-bike system, and it’s made all the more workable by the fact the Air charges in about 1h 10min and the Max in around 2.5 hours. As such, I only found myself with a flat battery when I was trying to work out the Swytch e-bike conversion kits’ limits.
It’s worth noting Swytch is set to release a 3A charger for the Max battery, which will decrease charge time for the Max to 1.5 hours (claimed). As standard the kit ships with a 1A charger.
One criticism is the battery has a row of five LEDs to indicate charge status, and they were pretty off, going from two to zero lights much more quickly than from five to two. In Swytch’s defence this is a pre-production Kit so this is a problem that stands to be ironed out. Still, erroneous battery meters are common in anything I’ve ever used with a rechargeable battery, from bike lights to iPhones, so I don’t hold out too much hope. It’s something to do with the chemistry of a rechargeable battery that its voltage drops off a cliff past a certain point. But back to the Swytch kit…
Should you buy one?
Given all this, the Swytch e-bike conversion kit isn’t perfect. Older generation Swytch users might be interested to know an upgrade kit will be available, but they might also lament that it’s not as simple as just buying new batteries (spare Air batteries cost £199 and Max £299) – you need to buy the controller and battery clamp too. Then the gen 2 system, though heavier, had greater range due to larger capacity batteries, 180Wh and 360Wh, which had a 40km and 80km range respectively.
Those are Swytch’s claims and anecdotally (from my partner’s mum, a long-term convert over two Swytch generations) that range is more like 30km and 50km. But point being it’s odd to feel like a newer e-bike system is somehow worse off than its parent. However, that is again to misunderstand the Swytch Kit gen 3. It is pitching up for a specific customer that will trade some range for neater looks and lower weight.
In this, the Swytch Kit generation 3 delivers – all those claims at the start of the piece are true. However, I would like to see a few things changed up, perhaps for generation 4:
The wiring could be neater. It does need to be external for ease of installation and compatibility across bikes, but without a throttle installed the wiring loom has a bunch of redundant plugs that dangle about. I also can’t help feeling the PAS could be wireless, Bluetooth or ANT+, thereby negating the need for the long wire that runs across the top tube and down the frame.
The rubber grommet over the motor cable isn’t a great fit either, and anyone looking to change an inner tube needs to make sure they’ve not zip-tied the motor cable on before the plug socket (which is much thicker than the cable), otherwise they’ll struggle to remove the wheel as the motor cable will still be zip-tied to the fork leg.
A bigger gripe is that although the wheel comes in a variety of types – from disc brake to 26” to Brompton – it isn’t available with a tubeless rim. However Swytch says a motor-hub only kit will be made available too, which can be built onto any 36-hole rim. Still, I’d want to see tubeless rims as an off-the-peg option.
Still, these are minor things given what the Swytch e-bike conversion Kit offers – universal compatibility, easy installation, a usefully powerful motor and a useful range for commuters. Plus it’s the lightest in class, looks wonderfully neat and is very good value compared to the rest of the market. Hoping to understand the difference between a Swytch e-bike conversion kit and more standardised motor offerings? Read more in our guide to the market’s main motors here.Alternatively, if you want to read up on the Swytch Go electric bike conversion kit, which takes a slightly different approach to this ultra-compact battery kit, then we have a review for that too.
