Customer Ratings & Reviews

This is my second time I purchased swann security products. My last set were still working but were only 720p and I just wanted to upgrade to clearer picture quality. Very easy to install, ran everything through the crawl space so that the wires wouldn’t be visible and to protect them from direct sun light. You can turn on camera lights and alarm from the mobile app to try and scare off anyone out there as well as take snap shots and record video directly to your mobile device, Besides the HD recording. I recommend this to anyone looking for a simple, easy to install security system.

I love this camera, and have a high quality. Detect every single motion .

Pictures are ok, more like HD quality, not 4k. The app sometimes will fail to load on the first try-- have to close app then relaunch it in order to work. One of the camera will not turn to night mode if there's a light source (porch light) close by it, even tho it's midnight time. Adjusting the settings didn't help. Conversely, another camera won't flip to day time, but retains the purple color on greens and shrubs. Have to manually unplug the camera power adapter to reset it. See photo. Overall, just an ok product.

This is a nice system! I think its worth the full price, but I see it on sale a lot so might as wait for a sale and get an even better deal! The install was pretty straightforward. We put the 6 outside our house and other than 10-15 minutes in the attic, the install was easy as pie! We ran over 360 feet of wire for these cameras and the only wires you see are the 2 feet of wire we pulled from wall to my command center. My biggest complaint is that the software if pretty hard to learn and theres no easy way to get to a manual for reference.

Cameras are good. If you put them under a gutter get them low enough so the infared doesnt like bounce? back to darken the night vision. Any bush branch movement will send you an alert. Cables are only 60 feet, so if the cameras outside, to in the house dvr. you'd better be close. Youll need more cable. The DVR runs really hot. Really needs to have a clear instruction manuel. If you have an all in one computer, you need a seperate monitor. Good monitoring system, but overpriced for what you get.

I recently updated to this system from an older DVR still swann system. I figured I could upgrade just the cameras and DVR since my original 8 camera system that was installed 5 years ago was BNC cable. First of all, swann is a excellent brand, however it’s older models DVR suffer from poor app supposed for the the iPhone. Customer service is pretty good, takes a while to get them on but they’re very helpful. This new model has a newer app the “swann security” app and it’s a whole lots faster with the substream so you get very little lag once you fire up the app on the iPhone and start streaming live video. Since this camera has both a LED light and sirens it’s cool that the live stream works quick because the whole point of having the light/siren is to be able to activate it when I want. So through the app there’s a light/siren activator button, however, at home on the actual DVR system the menu does NOT have an option to activate alarm/light at will, you would have to program the system to do it which doesn’t make sense to have the siren/light option and not being able to active from the DVR itself. The 2TB HD and new DVR menus are much friendly than the older systems def worth the upgrade from 1080p cameras to this one.

A must have for home safety!! Outstanding quality, performance, clarity and zooming in abilities. You can add these to any device cell phone, laptop or iPad for access. 50 ft wiring I ran into my garage for connection.

The package comes complete with everything you need. excellent image quality. I am happy that I chose these cameras and the brand is 100% recommended.

I just bought a home and wanted some extra security besides my trusted boxer dog that I have for when I'm at work. I end up cancelling my appointment with ADT security which would've cost me a bit more money every year for them to provide me with adding cameras in and around my property. A friend told me he had bought a set of Swaan Defender cameras and he could monitor his home when he was away. So I bought the Swaan Defender eight camera package and did the installation myself. Couldn't be more happy and satisfied with my purchase at Best buy.

Great! - Went from a wifi-based Zomo system to this. Pros - Crystal Clear Pictures Easy to use Mobile App Great motion detection Definitely Recommend Cons - Complicated Windows App to setup Mobile Notification process can be annoying, wish it had a notication by period option (where all notifications for X minutes where sent periodically)

Overall, these cameras are really nice. I’ve had these cameras for just about a month installed and they’ve been working phenomenal. Having the app on my phone and being able to see what’s going on in my household when I’m not home it’s really helpful. The quality of the resolution is really good.

Works great and has a clear picture and works with other cameras

This is not wireless so if your not good at wiring things together get someone to help! App is easy to use

From my TV, from my cellphone and from my laptop!! I am always in the loop of my house and my family. I bought this one with 16 cameras to cover even the backyard of my house, the whole street and the basement as well. Stay safe you all.

Omg i cant even tell you how great these are. And i love that i can watch live feeds from my phone and they have great area coverage and day and night vision video quality it great. My neighbors really appreciate that they cover their homes as well.

So the biggest thing you have to know about this camera system is that it is extremely high quality. The 4k resolution is fantastic and the clarity is bar none. The app is horrid though. I was able to set this system up right out of the box. It can be a little intimidating at first, but the instructions are very clear and very intuitive. You place the camera and have to run the cables all the way back to the hub to connect it all. You connect an HDMI to your TV and an Ethernet cable to a router. Then you power all devices with the power supplies. You connect the included mouse and walk through setup step by step. Very easy. It is actually an easier setup than wireless devices because you don't have to link them all to your Wi-Fi. I was seriously up and running the whole system (not including camera mounting/wiring) in less than 10 minutes. The quality of this system is unlike any camera system I have had before. You select 4k resolution if you have it available and it just pops off the screen. The cameras work very well and have night vision that is also clear. I really don't have a bad thing to say about the cameras and their clarity/reception. Then there's the app. It prompts you to install the Swann Security app to control your system remotely via your smart device. This is where Swann really drops the ball. After installing you create a mobile account which is very easy. You scan the QR code to link your system to your account and that is a breeze. That is where the fun stops. The camera resolution defaults to a medium quality, which is bad, then lags when you change it to high resolution. The first time I tried looking at one of the cams it worked OK, minus the lag. You can turn on the LED light of the cam and even set off an alarm. I exited the app and re-entered it only to have multiple issues pop up. Trying to reopen for the first time it said "failed to connect to device". I exited and came back in and it was fine, but would not load any of the camera's images. Now the system is hard lined to my router so I know connectivity is not an issue. I then exited and opened again and was able to view one of the cameras. I then changed the app resolution to high and the image froze. I could not imagine that this will be quality experience in the long run unless Swann updates the app to correct these issues. I think this is one of the best quality systems you can own for camera security, but the app interface leaves much to be improved on. What you capture as far as image goes however is worth the money.

I was looking to replace my 1080p wireless cameras with a wired system. Wireless system are susceptible to hacking and jamming. You can buy wireless signal jammer on the internet which will completely disable your wireless camera for a short period. This is a nice system for the price and the deterrent feature is the first I have seen on cameras. I have videos where someone came up in the yard between 2am and 4am and the light and siren went off and they looked like deer in a headlight before taking off. It has also stopped people from turning around in my driveway on a dead end street. DVR system has all the features you would find on high end systems costing much more. Detection by motion and IR work well.. probably too well. IR is supposed to prevent system from recording events caused by the wind or sun but even at a low sensitivity level, I still get a lot of false positives. The 4k cameras are decent but only slight improvement over my 1080p cameras. You can only read a license plate at no more then 20 feet away. My 1080p could read license plates at that distance. Night vision is just average. Camera with no light can barely make out the rode and bush 30 feet away. With the driveway camera and streetlight, I can see over 100 feet away but in both cases, night vision cannot make out features of person even at 15 feet away. Motion capture of person is blurry.

After installing and using the Swann Enforcer system I have found the overall system performs fairly well but there are some shortcomings especially in the mobile app. Below I have tried to list out everything that I really liked about this set up as well as the items that I felt were problematic. This system uses analog cameras and bnc cables – old school cctv, the downside is they aren’t as flexible as most of the newer digital wireless cameras or even ethernet based wired camera systems (NVRs) but on the plus side this system is far less expensive. One thing to keep in mind when looking at these 4k camera systems is that the resolution you see on your phone app is not 4k. What you see on your phone is the substream video at a far lower resolution. The actual default resolution sent to the mobile device is 362x240 with a max resolution of 704x480. Quite a difference from the 4k resolution of 3840x2160 which is the mainstream video that is stored on the DVR. Because the mobile device’s screens are small the image is still quite sharp even at the lower resolutions. To actually gain all the benefit of the 4k cameras you need to be looking at 4k monitor attached to the DVR via an hdmi cable. Also when recording in 4k the frames per second fps drop to 8 which means the image can be very choppy when viewing anything that is moving fast. If you lower the camera resolution to HD 1980x1080 you can then record at 15 fps so it’s a trade off of resolution vs frames per second. Luckily Swann gives you the ability to vary each camera’s resolution and frames per second so you can configure the cameras to meet your requirements. What I liked about the system: - Swann provides good documentation on getting the system initialized and its relatively straight forward. If you don’t feel comfortable installing the cameras and system Swann also provides information on how to contact professionals to do the installation. - The information provided for configuring the cameras within the DVR application is fairly comprehensive and the downloaded manual offers even more details. I highly recommend looking at the manual and checking out on line videos for additional help. - The 4k video images are clear and there are options to help enhance the image quality. - The Motion detection worked well and setting up the motion detection zones were easy. - Setting up alerts and email notifications was simple and they work really well. - The Enforcer alarm and blinking lights definitely draw attention when set off. - The night vision is bright and clear but not very colorful under normal night lighting. - The mobile app was easy to use but its slow opening and buggy as explained below. - Swann uses “modes” which allow you to set up different configurations for home, night and away. - The camera head can be rotated and angled on the mount to meet nearly any type of installation. - No additional cost since the video is recorded and saved locally on the hard drive. What I don’t like about the system: - The mobile app takes a long time to fully load. First you get the Swann home page and spinning wheel, then you get an image of a DVR and the spinning wheel, then you get camera icons and the spinning wheel then eventually you get your camera images. The app usually takes between 15 to 30 seconds to display images. This is using an Iphone 12 pro on my home wi-fi network using the default substream of 360x240 resolution. Comparatively another wired system I own takes 5 seconds consistently to load. Both my wireless doorbell and wireless outside camera take about 15 seconds to activate and load images so the Swann app is the slowest. - The mobile app doesn’t work correctly on all settings. Using the app I configured a camera’s motion detection and hit save. When I went back to check the setting I found that it is back to the default setting with no explanation as to why. Because of this issue I do all my configuration directly in the DVR. - The mobile app doesn’t include all the options that are available in the main DVR configuration page nor does it match or mimic DVR configuration screens. - The cameras have a small viewing angle of 90 degrees. Many of todays newer cameras have a 130 degree or more viewing angle which means they see a wider view of what is in front of it. - These cameras use BNC type cables with Siamese power taps and they can be a pain to run through the house. The cables provided are approved for in wall use so you cannot expose the cable or connections to the outside environment. - The supplied wired mouse is cheap and limits the distance you can sit from the controller. - There is not a pc app that works with this model. I tried to get the Swann Home Safe View app to work on my windows pc but it does not recognize the DVR. When I checked the Swan support page it does not show the DVR8-5680X as being compatible with the Home Safe View app. - The mounting hardware and the screws to lock the camera head to the mount are cheap and you can strip out the heads without much force. - There is not an all camera Alarm On/Off setting in the Mobile App. There are times when I would like to be able to Arm or Unarm all the cameras at once with a single button without having to use one the three mode settings. It does have a Do Not Disturb but that is not the same as being able to arm/unarm all the cameras with a single button. - The cameras do not have microphones so they do not record any audio.

Video play back is easy and the setup was very simple . Pictures are clear with night vision and when light turns on color is great

Very similar but not as good as our Lorex system. Lorex had a very good picture quality night and day and had a wide span of viewing! Swann on the other hand day vision is good night vision isn’t the best one of our cameras is very dark at night but is suppose to have a night vision setting.