Swann CoreCam review – an outdoor security camera with onboard storage, but is the whole package?

Swans: graceful, serene and unobtrusive, and the static view Swann Core Cam is no exception. There is the option to turn on the siren and have it honk like a goose whenever it sees a person, but sadly no option for it to wrench a burglar’s arm off with swan-like viciousness.

I tested it out in my urban garden, which is full of cats and foxes, though rarely at the same time. It was very easy to set up. But was it one of [the best outdoor cameras]? We’ll come to that in a minute.

Made by Swann, an Aussie security cam company which was taken over by the Chinese-American Infinova Group in 2014, its website boasts that it has ‘a presence in over 40 countries on 6 continents’. Are there no Swanns on Antarctica?

Specification

Pricing

The Swann CoreCam costs $155.99, which is £118.99 – not a great price considering you can currently get the Ring Outdoor Camera Battery (Stick Up Cam) for a full price of £89.99 (and likely less during the sales).

The potential for saving is whether you're happy with on-device storage or you like the convinience (but ongoing cost) of the cloud. It costs £3.99 a month or £39.99 a year after the 90-day free trial. For multiple Swanns camera, you have to fork out £8.99 a month or £89.99 a year for the Unlimited plan (Ring, by contrast, is $4.99 / £4.99 a month on the basic tier, or $7.99 / £7.99 for multiple.

Build and handling

The Swann is all the Ss: solid, sturdy, sleek and shiny. It feels good in your hands – though, as it’s a smart home security cam, you’re probably not going to be fondling and stroking it that much. And if you do, the neighbours will think you’re a bit weird.

Performance

I’ll level with you: it might be my Wi-Fi, which the Swann app says has a strength of between 67% and 71%, but there’s an average delay of about ten seconds when I open the app before it’ll show me the live view. It’s frustrating, especially if you hear a loud noise outside and want to know if somebody’s there.

On the flip side, the CoreCam retains battery very well. Three weeks after installation, it still has 50% battery left, and it arrived with 83% – possibly because I’ve had the ‘Battery Saver’ function ticked. When I untick it and turn all the settings to Max, it only drops another 20% in battery in ten days. That kind of stamina is impressive.

You can switch modes when you’re away from the house or asleep for the night, and even set schedules, but I’m a homebody so didn’t use this feature much.

The audio was quite tinny, but that’s fairly standard and I wasn’t expecting Dolby Surround Sound.

I initially thought, ‘Wow, the image is fuzzy!’ but then I realised that Live View quality was set to Low. When I set it to High, the clarity was amazing – literally all you could ask for from an outdoor cam. I blinked when I read that it was only 1080p. The night vision was good too.

However, it only fills half the phone screen in portrait mode. If you rotate your phone sideways, the app won’t fill the frame in landscape mode – it just means you’ll view the original image but sideways, which isn’t ideal. There is also the option of viewing the image at half the standard size, which confused me. Perhaps it’s for people who have several Swann devices, so you can view them all on one screen? I only have the one Swann cam, so don’t know.

I could hear its siren from inside with the bifolds shut, but it wasn’t quite loud enough when outside to alarm a trespasser. It sounds quite indirect and isn’t piercing – any intruder might not have thought it was aimed at them. ‘You twawkin’ ter me?’

My other gripe was that, when the neighbour’s cat ‘swanned’ into shot, the cam often thought he was a person and sent me a ‘Person Detected’ notification. I’d watch the footage and nope, it was the cat. He’s a bit of a chonky boi – a fat cat, if you will – but I’m not sure anyone could mistake him for a human. He won’t be starring in Cats: The Musical anytime soon.

Sample video

The image clarity is impressive, though the frame rate is 15fps like other Swann cameras tested by DCW.

Overall verdict

There seemed to be a few areas in which this cam fell short. The siren was more passive-aggressive than active-aggressive, there was a delay to the live view, and the cam mistook domestic pets for homo sapiens. However, the image clarity is great, the night vision is decent, and the battery lasts longer than most of the competition. If you can get this cam at a reasonable price, by all means go for it, but I personally wouldn’t buy it at this price.

Adam, who reviewed the Swann Tracker indoor cam, points out that the appeal of the Swann system is more in the built-in storage (so you can side-step subscription fees), but even he said that was "slightly let down by the software" and things don't seem to have improved

Alternatives

The Ring Outdoor Camera Battery (Stick Up Cam) is either cheaper or – during an Amazon deal season – much cheaper, though you'll definitely need the subscription while the Swann does offer some functionality without.

A system like the EufyCam 3 S330 is worth a look if you're committed to the 'no ongoing costs' idea at any initial cost, and it boasts true 4K and a base station so you get real remote access just like having a cloud (no fishing out MicroSD cards!)