Swann - PRO SERIES HD 8-Channel, 8-Camera Outdoor Wired 500GB DVR Surveillance System - Black

After 2 weeks from installing the cameras water went inside one of the cameras and another one start recording only black and white. I called customer service and opened ticket they asked me to send them pictures where I have the camera and they said it should not be exposed directly to the sun. After sending them everything they started ignoring my emails and never responded to my emails. It is not worth the money if in 2 weeks 2 cameras started giving problems.

This is a good product for the value, although I had one camera have the IR Filter issue being stuck, I contacted Swann and they had the product RMA'd rather rapidly. For me, the product has already paid for itself. The first night after installation, I captured evidence of individuals trying to break into several of my vehicles and the video evidence gathered from the Swann video camera was quickly sent over to the authorities. The process of extracting the recorded video from the DVR to a USB drive was very simple and quick. I set the DVR to record at the highest possible resolution and the individuals were easily identifiable. I installed the product myself and it took a weekend and a 1-man crew to install all 8 cameras in the exterior of the house and the wiring. The cameras are enclosed in a plastic, water-sealed case that seems to do well for protecting the internals from the elements. I opted not to mount them in direct sunlight the best I could. The DVR interface takes a little getting used to but once you're over that hump, it's smooth sailing from there. It comes with a 500GB hard drive but is upgradeable to a 4TB capacity. Overall, this is a good product for the price, especially if you got it on sale or as a Black Friday deal. The only issues I ran into were the included wires not being of adequate length, I had to buy my own, and after the first night, one of the cameras IR filters would not switch off so it was recording in night-vision all day long.

Instruction only tell you how to set up wifi and how to hook up cables. My advice on running cables through your walls is run them from camera to box, not box to camera. Purchase a $12 wall phish from home Depot. It will save you a ton of time. I tapped wire to fish and could push it 20' into attic. Picture is great during the day. Set picture to mainstream for best picture at night. It's a good starting camera and the 500gig hard drive has been recording for a week and still has plenty of room. I have it set to record motion.

Good all around system for inside or out, 720HD gives good pictures and with night vision and some planning, vision of the comings and going will be covered. I placed them out side for coverage around the house, garage, driveway and entry doors. They are hardwired camera's, in my book are best over wireless, only way to take these out is cut the wire so, concealment of the wire is a must. Once connected and you start up the DVR everything is automatic, just set-up a user password and the defaults are set to record by motion, you can have all 8 views up as the same size or a few choices, like one bigger view of the camera of choice with the rest around the sides. You can even set it the every few seconds to minutes the change between the view as a full screen view. To change, click and hold the view, drag to the bigger view and the two views switch, double click for full screen, easy as that. Lot's of other features.....

Install wasn"t too bad. 2 person install took about 2-1/2hrs. Installed by drilling 1"holes in the eaves for the cables. I was in the attic while my helper fed the cables from outside. Setup was a breeze. Phone app works great.

Jumped through all the hoops with Arlo software and firmware problems and the Nest cam basically turning into a web cam without their unreasonably expensive cloud support/software. Even with a very high-end home wifi network and a 50mbps fiber internet connection the latency with both of these systems was excessive. Also lacking was any real flexibility in either of the software platforms to manage the cameras. Wanted to like em, but no joy and I returned both. The lower end (720p / 500GB DVR) 8 camera Swann system was sitting there on sale for not much more than either of the wireless cams..., for EIGHT cameras, a 500 gig DVR, all the cabling, and what turned out to be a very comprehensive software platform giving extreme flexibility over camera settings, event triggering and notification, scheduling, playback, live view from all cams 24/7 that doesn't use ANY internet bandwidth unless you are remotely accessing the system, and all I had to do was spend the time to wire it..., which actually took less time than what I spent fighting the shortcomings of the other two systems. For the money, this is definitely a five star system. The only shortcoming was the short cable on the mouse which was remedied by getting a $10 wireless USB mouse..., which I would recommend for anyone buying one of these systems. A weekend DIY project for a homeowner, or an easy job for a cable, telco, or Geek squad person if you don't want to mess with the installation. Lastly, I wasn't at all disappointed by the 720p resolution and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the app. One additional note about this system is that the cameras are video only but there is a provision for adding a microphone to the channel 1 input. No two-way talk back, though.

I have an electrical background so the instalation of the cameras was easy. Hooking up the dvr was easier yet. The only issue I had was the firmware was outdated so I couldn't live view from my phone, tablet etc.. I called tech support and they got it all figured out in a timely manner.

Don't forget to read the whole manual and not just the quick start. My husband could not figure out why alerts and live stream were intermittent, turns out we missed a step to setup online. Asides from that it was very easy to setup. The app is very user friendly as well allowing for real time viewing. Quality both at night and day are excellent. My only complaint though is the sensitivity for motion detection is easily set off by passing headlights on the road, even on the lowest setting. Getting an email every time a car drives by after sunset gets annoying very fast! Also there's no audio.