The SwannBuddy 4K Video Doorbell lets you use your phone to see who is at your door and uses AI-generated voice messages to greet visitors when you’re not available. It supports wireless or wired installation, delivers sharp 4K video with a head-to-toe view of your doorstep, and offers free cloud and local storage options. Integrations are plentiful, but some features, such as intelligent alerts and rich notifications, require a paid subscription on top of the doorbell’s $199.99 price. For $100 less, the TP-Link Tapo D225 Video Doorbell offers sharp 2K video, free intelligent alerts, and ample integration opportunities, so it remains our Editors’ Choice for video doorbells.
Design and Features: Well Beyond Basic
The SwannBuddy 4K Video Doorbell has a black face with white sides. It measures 5.5 by 2.1 by 1.2 inches (HWD) and is a bit smaller than the TP-Link Tapo D225 Video Doorbell (5.9 by 1.9 by 1.5 inches). The enclosure has an IP56 weatherproof rating, ensuring protection against rain and dust damage.
The doorbell face houses a 4K camera with a 165-degree vertical field of view and a 1:1 aspect ratio, four small infrared LEDs for black-and-white night vision, a PIR (passive infrared) motion sensor, an ambient light sensor, a microphone, and a doorbell button surrounded by an LED light ring. The LED ring glows red when the button is pressed and the camera is recording or streaming, shines blue while charging, flashes blue during the pairing process, and flashes purple when the battery is getting low.
(Credit: John R. Delaney)
There’s a speaker on the bottom edge of the enclosure, and around the back are two wiring terminals. Behind a rubber cover, you’ll find a microSD card slot with a preinstalled 32GB card for storing video locally, a Set button for pairing, a Reset button, and a USB-C charging port. The TP-Link Tapo D225 also accommodates SD cards but does not come with one in the box.
The SwannBuddy comes with a USB-C charging cable, a mounting bracket and hardware, theft deterrent stickers, a user guide, a chime box, and two AA batteries for the chime box. The chime box is white and measures 2.6 by 2.6 by 0.9 inches. It is meant for indoor use and offers six different chime tones that can be selected using the Set button on the top of the enclosure.
For connectivity, the SwannBuddy has a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi radio. For power, it includes a non-removable rechargeable 6,500mAh lithium battery that can last up to three months between charges, depending on usage. If you’d rather not deal with recharging the battery, you can use the two wiring terminals to hardwire the doorbell to your existing doorbell wiring. By way of comparison, the Tapo D225 doorbell is rated to last up to eight months between charges on battery power, and can also be optionally hardwired for continuous power.
In addition to the 32GB microSD card, the doorbell includes free 24-hour rolling cloud storage. If one day of cloud storage isn’t enough, you can subscribe to a Swann Secure+ plan. The most affordable plan, called Extra, gives you 60 days of rolling storage for a single camera for $3.99 per month/$39.99 per year. It also unlocks features such as intelligent alerts (for cars, packages, people, and pets), rich notifications (with an included thumbnail image for quick monitoring), priority customer support, and a lifetime warranty rather than the standard two-year warranty. The $9.99 per month/$99.99 per year Unlimited plan gives you everything from the Extra plan for an unlimited number of cameras. The $19.99 per month/$199.99 per year Pro+ plan offers everything from the Unlimited plan as well as 24/7 emergency response dispatch and professional video monitoring services.
(Credit: Swann/PCMag)
The SwannBuddy 4K works with the Alexa and Google voice assistants and supports IFTTT applets that provide interoperability with scores of third-party smart home devices, but it doesn’t support Apple’s HomeKit platform.
It also features Swann’s SwannShield AI voice assistant, which can answer a doorbell press when you are unavailable (the doorbell must be set to either away or night mode). Using its Swann Security mobile app (free for Android and iOS), you can select a demeanor (polite, assertive, disinterested) and one of eight dialects, including Australian, British, Axon (sharp and energetic), Cipher (smooth and mysterious), Vortex (deep and strong), Halo (smooth and futuristic), Neon (bold and modern), and Nexus (clear and reliable). You can also enter delivery instructions, register residents who live in the house, and view transcripts of AI-generated conversations.
The SwannBuddy uses the same companion app as the Swann CoreCam Pro Spotlight Security Camera and other devices from the brand, and appears in a panel on the live view screen. Tap the panel to open a screen with a live stream and buttons for taking a snapshot, recording a video, initiating two-way talk, sounding the siren, muting the speaker, playing a prerecorded voice message, changing the video quality setting (low, medium, high), and selecting an aspect ratio (original, 4:3, or 16:9).
At the bottom of the screen are five more buttons. The Activity button opens a screen where you can enable Do Not Disturb for push notifications and view charts of daily and weekly activity categorized by event type (car, doorbell ring, motion, package, person, pet). Tap the Playback button to view thumbnails of recorded video, play the video, share it, or delete it. The Live View button launches a live stream, and the Modes button opens a screen where you can toggle between home, night, and away modes. Here, you can also create schedules to have the doorbell enter one of the three modes at a specific time on specific days of the week.
Finally, the Devices button takes you to a screen listing all of your installed Swann cameras. Tap any device to view its Wi-Fi signal, battery life, and time zone. Other options let you configure SwannShield settings, enable a battery-saver mode, configure camera and motion settings, set up detection zones, and format the SD card.
Installation and Performance: Easy Setup, Useful AI Responses
Installing the SwanBuddy doorbell is easy. I started by downloading the mobile app and creating an account. Once the doorbell battery was fully charged, I tapped Pair Device on the app’s devices screen and, when prompted, used my phone’s camera to scan the QR code on the back of the doorbell. I tapped next and entered my Wi-Fi credentials (SSID and password), then verified that the LED indicator was flashing blue. After several seconds, I was prompted to enter a name for the device and specify where it was purchased, and then I tapped done to complete the pairing process.
At this point, you can activate the 90-day free trial of the Secure+ Unlimited plan or skip it if you prefer. To pair the chime with the doorbell, I pressed the Set button on the chime until it beeped, and a voice prompt instructed me to press the doorbell button. I held the doorbell button for three seconds until the chime LED stopped blinking, indicating that the pairing was successful. To complete the installation I took the doorbell outside and attached it to my house siding beside the front door using the included mounting hardware.
The SwannBuddy 4K delivered sharp video in testing. Colors appeared nicely saturated, and black-and-white night video was clear and showed good contrast. As with most doorbell cameras, there is a slight fisheye effect, but it did a good job of capturing a head-to-toe view of my doorstep. Motion alerts arrived quickly, and Alexa voice commands to stream video to an Amazon Echo Show smart display worked as intended.
The SwannShield AI voice response feature worked reasonably well and usually responded instantly, but every so often, it would take up to 10 seconds to reply. When I rang the bell, the AI voice would say, “Hi, what’s up?” or “Can I help?” When I asked if John was home, I’d get a response such as, “John’s not around right now,” or, “He’s busy and can’t come to the door. Catch you later.”
When I asked for a name that was not listed as a resident, the response was, “Wrong house. Try two doors down.” This is an oddly specific choice when it could simply say, “There’s no one here by that name,” or something similar. When I told it that I had a package to drop off, as if I were a delivery driver, it offered my preferred response, asking that I leave the package on the steps.
Verdict: Plenty to Like If You’re Willing to Pony Up
Crisp video footage, free local and cloud storage, and intelligent automated answering are all good reasons to consider the Swann SwannBuddy 4K for monitoring and communicating with visitors to your doorstep. It delivers excellent 4K video with a head-to-toe view and it offers AI-generated responses for when you’re not available to answer the door. That said, the SwannBuddy sits near the top of the smart doorbell price range, and you’ll have to spend even more on a subscription to unlock all of its features. For half the price, the TP-Link Tapo D225 Video Doorbell offers sharp 2K video with free intelligent alerts and longer battery life, so it’s our Editors’ Choice winner.
SwannBuddy 4K Video Doorbell
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The Bottom Line
The SwannBuddy 4K Video Doorbell camera delivers sharp video with useful extras like AI greetings, free storage, and robust third-party device support, but it’s pricey and you have to pay extra to unlock some features.
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About John R. Delaney
Contributing Editor
