The SwannOne Smart Home Control Kit enters the market of a growing competition of starter packs that are designed to make your regular home into an IP-enabled, smarter house. Looking at the features and specs on paper, this home control kit looks similar to most smart home kits already out in the market. It even focuses on home security, just like one of its competitors, the Panasonic Home Monitoring Control Kit. SwannOne’s kit aims to deliver a seamless design, interface, and features to bring about advanced home-monitoring features. Sadly, it falls short for its promises.
The SwannOne Smart Home Control Kit Promises Plenty but Delivers Few
Within the package of the SwannOne Smart Home Control Kit, there’s the SwannOne Smart Hub, a SoundView Indoor Camera, Motion Monitor, two window and door sensors, two smart key fobs, and a Smart Plug. All in all, it sounds like a generous package. However, this is one of the more expensive home smart starter kits in the market. Panasonic’s home control kit is costs far less and it has an equivalent amount of hardware.
Setting it up is a fairly simple task to behold. Each tech does not need to be attached on walls, window frames, or doors with screws, however it is possible to do so. Instead, the kit will include special adhesive strips right inside the packaging. As an additional bonus, the SwannOne Home Control Kit is one of the few cross-platform smart-home systems in the market.
The kit is compatible to be connect to Kwikset, Nest, and Phillips hardware. Therefore, you can use a Nest Thermostat, and even a Kwikset SmartCode Deadbolt Lock and connect it to the SwannOne’s hub.
To control the system, users would have to use a web app which works on both mobile and desktop systems. The app has an intuitive menu which will offer shortcut icons to commonly used features. There are a lot of icons which should mean that the home kit has a ton to offer. But sadly, this is not the case.
The icons do not work, and half of the icons that you will click inside the app will only let it bring up a message that says “upgrade your account to use this feature.” This does not bode well for the system since it already has a hefty price tag to begin with, and it’s asking for more money for it to be used properly.
Overall, the SwannOne Smart Home Control Kit offers mediocre features and are the ones that are more likely seen within other competing smart home systems with smaller price points.