Customer Ratings & Reviews

SETUP: Setup, was easy on the NVR system itself. Walks you through it. If you choose to use the phone app, that is also extremely easy, you download it, sign in/up for a profile, then you scan the top of the device via your phone camera, and you are all setup. The cameras themselves are powered through ethernet. Setting up those cords originally can be a long process as they all have to plug directly into the NVR system and are not wireless. This is what took the longest by far for me. Then the cameras themselves are relatively easy. My biggest complaints is figuring out that you unscrew them took me a while as they just simply wouldn’t do it until all the sudden they did (which sounds crazy). The instructions in the box didn’t cover this and were for a different style camera. Also, when you are mounting them, you need to feed the wire through the separated screw base which can be a bit challenging when you are up on a ladder as it is a balancing act, making it the second hardest and time-consuming part. Then you just make slight adjustments as these cameras are NOT powered where you can move them remotely even though they look like it. It is all done manually. I also found that the view is rather limited (80 degrees) compared to some other security systems I’ve tried. Which is a bit of a bummer as you don’t get as wide of view. But the trade here is that the picture quality is better. I was actually able to read a license plate that was probably 50ish feet away on the street. But it was quite fuzzy at that point. But my previous 4K wired cameras that had a wider viewing angle I couldn’t even if it was closer. Also, colors and everything are a bit smoother with a lot less sharpness added to the image. But more on that in the picture quality section. Overall, setup is always the worst part, but this was straight forward, easy, but time consuming. PICTURE QUALITY: Picture quality is one of the best I’ve seen and I’d classify as good/great. I don’t notice a lot of shimmering (from overblown sharpness), I can zoom in and actually retain some detail from 50ish yards away, colors are punchy, playback and live view are smooth and load up reasonably fast. Good latency. I’m not the biggest fan of the night vision. As they have an infared light that highlights the very center of the image where you can pretty clearly see things. However, the edges are hard to see anything. I’d worry that if I were looking for detail at night that I wouldn’t be able to retrieve much. Going into the recordings you have a ton of options just like in the app. However, I found it frustrating that you couldn’t zoom in on a paused picture on the NVR itself but could on the app. Which is super weird to me. Making it so you need to rewind, zoom into where you know the thing you are zooming in on is going to be and then press play until it comes into view. As I couldn’t figure out a way to zoom when paused (as the option on the bar at the bottom was greyed out and scroll wheel wasn’t doing anything which is how you do it when video is playing). NVR SETTINGS/OPTIONS: It comes stock setup so only movement captures are recorded. Finding how to do continuous recording took me a bit but then once I figured it out worked well. On my previous NVR system it would give me more information on how it is deleting old information for new information once the HDD was filled up. I didn’t see any of that with this one. So, unsure what will happen once it is full. I found the NVR system itself to be relatively easy to navigate. The part that I liked the best is that you could click a specific camera and then do a quick replay. Also, navigating to your recordings was easy. But I found that options of recordings (zones), sensitivity, continuous recording, all the be hard to find. I accidentally came across zones when I first set it up to make sure everything worked, but then couldn’t find it again. I was even able to get two cameras that were from a different company to work on this system which was a happy accident. I obviously can’t guarantee that all of them will work. But found it nice that two of the cameras that were left over from my previous NVR were able to continue to be used and they even worked with motion capture. I did find some of the recordings would cut off a bit early preventing me from seeing the whole thing. But accuracy of what it captured seemed to be pretty good. Where often when I checked there was something that I could see set it off. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t get a lot of false notifications as well. Which again could be adjusted but I left it on stock as I’d rather have too much than too little. APP SETTINGS/OPTIONS: The app itself is very limited. It is originally setup to send you a notification for every camera whenever it picks anything up. When going into those recordings you have a timestamp bar, sound, take a picture, and an HD/SD toggle. Along with a several playback speed options. Playback assuming you have a good connection is quick. However, if you have a shotty connection it will be a bit slow but still give you a clear picture. You can also select the date, time period, type of events, and camera in the playback options. There is a user manual within the app itself that I didn’t spend a lot of time going through. But wish I would have seen this before I set everything up and may behoove you to look at beforehand. I did find a place inside the app to change the sensitivity of each camera, along with if you want to receive push notifications. You also have different modes (home, night, away, and schedules). But all the infrared, package, face detection, etc. options I was never able to find. Nor did my recordings ever specify if it was a package, face, etc. It was nice that I lost connection to the internet and got a notification that my system was down. I didn’t get an alert when it was back up though. Additionally, I enjoy that it will show you how many alerts have occurred each day. Due to needing to be hardwired into the NVR my internet connection isn’t super great out in my garage. So starting up a live view takes a solid minute or two. But once it is up tends to be quite responsive and I have no issues. During this time the app itself is completely frozen. Once I had a better connection to my NVR the live view and recordings started up pretty quickly. CONCLUSION: I didn’t get a lot of time to test it out. However, the first impression is quite good. It isn’t the perfect system; I still find CCTV systems to be quite archaic compared to modern tech (when it comes to how you access it and navigate). But this one is a bit ahead of the competition. It has everything I want but is still limited in what it can do (face detection, package, animals, etc. all seem to be behind a paywall of monthly subscription, even though they say face detection and vehicle detection is free but I never got those alerts, and couldn’t find a place to toggle them). But the things it can do it does well. But the main gripes of a lot of systems (too sensitive or not sensitive enough recordings, picture quality depending on time of day, etc.) continue to be an issue here. However, I would say to a lot lesser degree than any of the three or four other systems I’ve tried, easily making this my favorite and one that I would actually recommend for most people. The main three things I look for is 1. Picture quality, 2. Responsiveness, 3. Relatively easy to navigate. It checks all three of those boxes for me. Settings, fine tuning, etc. are limited or not there. So if you looking for a feature packed device, this likely isn’t it. Or isn’t intuitive enough from their software to make it so it was easily found by myself.

The Swann Master Camera set is a premium camera setup. For those who want to step up their game. I would say this can be as complicated as you want it to be. Or it can be as simple as you want it to be. I selected the simple. Typically, I just need a security camera to record when I need it to. This does that plus more. The setup is focused on the app which needs to be installed. Very simple and you can't mess that up. You follow the step-by-step guide. Eventually, you will see your camera setup. The image is clear and can be seen on any tv and device with the app. The main device is where you do all the magic. There is a ton of things you can do. Motion Detection and Censoring all work well. I had to turn the notifications off for a while. Everything worked. The Night mode I thought was the best. You get a good image and clarity within the video. My two negatives are that there were no directions on setting up the cameras. I had to go online and watch a video posted by someone else. There was so much on the app setup nothing for the camera setup. Second, this setup may be more advanced for someone who is not into security setups. Once you see all the things you can do. I'm happy to have this as security for myself and my home. This is a strong upgrade!

Pretty easy to set up for the most part. I cinnected it to my TV and its a pain using the mouse to type in passwords and such- This is my first time istalling a wired secuirty system as a female and using 24/7 recordkng at all so there's some learning curves to the settings and such.

Swann - Master Series 8-Channel, 4-Dome Camera, Indoor/Outdoor PoE Wired 4K UHD 2TB HDD NVR Security System This is true 4K and hooked to a 4k TV you can get very good pictures, real-time and zoom in very closely ( that you can read text) up to the limitation of the lens – I would say at about 20-30ft dependent on the text size and reasonable on facial. Initial setup is easy since this is a POE ethernet CAT 5e -to CAT 6 product. I used both the supplied cable which is kind of MEH and my own flat CAT6E making running the wire and concealing them so much easier. No need for extra wires and no delay for the NVR since it is a direct connect. Now as far as the Phone / Tablet App, one has to expect a delay because of the path the connection has to take and the speed of your network plus the speed of the WiFi and the latency of the Cell phone connection. Also, the limitation of the screen resolution of the device you are using. A lot of the setup must be done on the NVR as the app does not have the abilities. The quality of the cameras and NVR are good and the cameras are metal feeling very solid. The 4K picture is a good improvement over their 1080p cousins. Though not as good as 12MP cameras (12MP resolution has around 50% more pixels than 4K) they allow for a decent zoom in on the videos and capture some good detail. All in all a better solution than the 1080p style units.They both get a little warm during use. There is no microphone hook-up on the NVR, so you will have to use the app and remember there is a delay. The dome cameras are a nice clean, compact design and give a high degree of adjustments but be aware they are not motorized. They are about half the size of the bullet style cameras. They have a mounting ring that gives you good versatility for mounting. You can also flip the picture view if needed. Night vision is acceptable in the 30ft range. Be aware of splashback from surfaces when placing your cameras. In certain instances I put the IR emitter over the lens and some under the lens dependent on what worked best in the area I set them up. And there are aftermarket IR emitters available if you want some larger area clear B&W video. But the cameras are good enough in B&W that I can see clearly 100 ft away so adding an extra emitter would not make a lot of sense. Color night vision is acceptable. I am still playing with the heat, motion detection and AI settings but for something in this price range, it is impressive. You will need the manual to help figure this stuff out and the AI needs some time to learn and be trained. Even with the manual, this requires some experimentation. Sometimes the AI miss identifies things, but I am hoping I can fix that over time. The manuals in the box are generic for their line of camera systems and you need to go to their website to get the good stuff to help you with setups. They will answer questions with their email. Setting up Zones, deterrent areas, perimeter intrusion regions are nice features and you can set up privacy zones in case some non-public areas are in the view of your camera. And there are tons of rules and sensitivities that can be set up and changed. I haven’t worked with face detection as yet. One can pump off vids from the NVR to a USB thumb drive and play them on a computer system but you will probably have to download a player with a proper CODEC to view the video. Swann’s website has a link for a free player that works. The unit can also send videos to dropbox. (high-quality videos can get quite big. A added nice feature is that if you have other Swann camera systems you can add them to your app for a great mix and match dependent on your need. The PC Windows app is kind of clunky and not as good as the NVR of phone app. I installed my own wireless keyboard and mouse that uses a communication dongle. It would be nice if that was an option you could get from Swann. A nice improvement to the NVR software is that you can keep a session logged in so you don’t have to log in with a password every couple of minutes. Options I would like: • a wireless mouse /keyboard for the NVR • a microphone option for the NVR ( wireless would be ideal so you don’t have to be right on top of the NVR to use it) • cleaner interface that was intuitive • Flat CAT6 cable instead of the non descript CAT cable that is included and severely crushed.

I wish I could give this 5 stars. For the price it's not terrible either, making it about $150 per camera and that doesn't include the 2TB of storage interlinked to them all. But really, in my opinion, nothing master about this set. I've reviewed and tested quite a few Swann models now, and for this price point, I think they can do better. On sale this would be more than worth the value. I personally like the dome cameras--they have a nice aesthetic to them that don't look cheap and fake. They have a nice build quality and heft to them. Setting them up is pretty straight forward as well, where based on how they're shaped, it's easy to see how they should be set up. Camera quality is where I think Swann needs to work on things. Yes it's 4K wired, but 8MP, so only 8 mega pixels but 4K quality, meaning it's likely upscaling to reach 4K and isn't as clear as if it was 16MP for example. 2TB is more than sufficient storage, and it is a nice convenience not having to pay a monthly fee for storage. This is truly really easy to install yourself with proper planning. Overall, it works and does what it should do, but it's not the greatest, and definitely not worthy of being called master series.

I took a star off due to the cables are very flimsy. The cables being Poe are pretty important as they will be run from the base to wherever you put the camera which could mean tens and tens of feet away and might need to go through walls and other house cavities. I bought a set of 100 foot stronger cables. Another issue is why only 8 channels, today’s house are fairly large and 8 cameras are seldom enough to give good security coverage. I think for the cost that better quality should be a no braine4 to included, cheap out somewhere else but not in this important item. As I have Poe switches and Poe wireless transmitter, setup was a breeze. The connection is quick rock solid and vibrant images. Superb video quality. The dome cameras make mounting easy and the field of view is immense compared to my other cameras. The night time images are fantastic as well, detail is very good. The included 2TB is expected and so far working flawlessly. Internet cone t when out and about is so quick, so alerts to you can be viewed immediately on your phones. The Swann software I have used before and nothing new but Rick solid and so why mess with a quality software suite.