Customer Ratings & Reviews

Very clear picture and rest to set up Only downside is the app, lag time in notifications, and some times the channels will cross feed. Actual DVR recordings are very clear.

This system seems to be a really great alternative to expensive monthly monitoring from a third party. You really only need RELIABLE internet. In windy conditions, there may be some interference such as there was for me the last two days. It looks good, cameras feel a little cheap, but they work. It is wired, also, I thought it was wireless. Being a single woman, with no experience hooking anything like this up, it sat in a box for a while until my brother was able to help me install it. The wiring kind of made it difficult to spread the cameras across the whole house / garage, so I only installed two at the most visible points outside and one inside the garage where the cables would reach. There seems to be enough space on the DVR for what I need, only been up for a few days, but still plenty of space left to record. I'm thinking that if I review the footage and clear space maybe once per week, it'll be fine. Good enough picture, haven't used the colored lights yet, tested the sound and it is pretty loud! App interface is fine, this is the first system like this that I've owned, so I'm not sure about how to review the tech specs with nothing to compare to, but I'll review again after it's been up for some time.

Getting everything setup from a hardware perspective was easy (outside of actually running wires of course). You almost have to try to improperly connect everything. In regard to the software (the DVR unit), when I first booted up the unit and went through the setup I had a good 45 min wait while the firmware upgraded. After that completed, it was easy enough to get going. There is no paper manual, so unless you've used one of these before, I suggest you spend the time to download the user manual and watch the multitude of videos that Swann has posted online. The audio setting in particular with this unit is *important*, as it's not defaulted properly to use the camera microphones. I don't know if I'd say the actual interface is intuitive, but I've had to deal with worse. If you're really going to get into proper use though, setting up schedules for certain actions etc, you should plan on a day (or more) of digging deep. I did call into support to get some help at one point and that went poorly at best. Their support is setup such that you don't wait in a queue, but get a call back. Nowadays when everyone (and every cell phone) is setup to screen unknown numbers, that ended up with me calling 3 times before actually talking to someone. Once I did, I was provided incorrect information even after providing device model numbers.

These are fine cameras. Before this set, I was using the Amazon Blink cameras so that’s my main comparison point. Installing these was a bit of a pain for me. I had to fish wires through the attic, which mine isn’t really readily accessible so that made the installation challenging. Comparatively, the Blink cameras were extremely easy to install as they are wire-free. The quality of these cameras is excellent. Definitely better than the Blink cameras, as well as the fact the camera feed is 24/7 rather than just motion-based. The quality of recording at night is great. Very clear and precise images and have not had any issues with false detections. My main complaint at this point is these cameras are so finicky about internet and they’re sure to notify you each and every time they’re struggling with it. I have very good internet and a nice router, everything else in the house has internet and works perfectly but these still give me notifications. Which would be less annoying if it was just one notification, but it’s one for each camera, so 8 notifications. My Blink cameras sat in the exact same place and only very rarely had problems, not to mention they were on Wi-Fi and these are literally wired.

The cameras work pretty well, and it's all pretty much "Plug and Play", and the mobile app is OK, but try downloading videos and then playing them on your computer and you will waste hours of your life. They seem like compatible video files MP4's and AVIs but I can't get them to play on either my Mac or Windows with the standard video playing/editing apps. You have to download a specific app to play the downloaded files, which I can't get to work on my Mac. I'm not even sure if once that happens I'll be able to do what I want which is cut down a 20 minute video to a 20 second video (the only 20 seconds the perp was on video) or even have a format to share with others that they can actually watch and no who to look out for in the neighborhood. Worthless.