Facebook Portal Mini - Smart Video Calling 8” Touch Screen Display with Alexa - White

I sent it back because I ordered the wrong product. Im sure it would work well for Facebook.

I like the picture quality and how easy it is to use.

Excellent

loved everything about this product!

Works great and keeps me in contact with my family where we are not tied to one spot on our phone/iPad and can walk around and move as the camera follows

Works so good

This product is perfect for this time in our lives. I bought one for my parents and myself. They were able to set it up and I can see how excited my elderly parents are to SEE us when we talk. They are happy they can interact with their grandkids. Both Mom and Dad can be in the picture. Plus keep up with the relatives who already have one. This helps ease the isolation.

It’s THE BEST piece of tech nobody talks about, I don’t get it. WhatsApp or Messenger video or audio calls + Alexa + Speaker from any device or computer via Spotify + Tablet mode + YouTubeTV or second screen to any streaming you may have + Zoom-style calls on Messenger Rooms + “show me front door” smart home integration + digital photo portrait etc, etc... and the list goes ON for $100!

I think this device is unnecessary and it seems buggy (at least if you start the Zoom app and use the lock/PIN feature). I did not want it, but my dad offered to buy me this and my uncle seems unwilling to chat unless we use these (I think because my dad and their other siblings do not stay in frame and this device will attempt to track the speaker). Facebooks camera and image processing are good (this is both impressive from a consumer perspective and as an engineer with some capability in this area, I am impressed technically as well). That being said, you can achieve good camera/image quality with a decent smartphone, with proper lighting and by staying in the frame! Facebook markets this device as being Zoom compatible, so it does not seem unreasonable to expect that they would support running Zoom on the device. When I say this seems buggy, I notice that if I let it sit unused for a few days, then it gets unresponsive. The first time I noticed this, it took 2-3 seconds for some screen presses to register (as evidenced by the number appearing on the screen that I had typed). I have to turn it off and turn it back on to get it to be usable. (An engineering note: this particular type of problem reflects either negligence/apathy or incompetence. Trending process/thread performance is not a difficult task on platforms such as this, especially as compared to the image processing and other software that is on the device, so if Facebook does not know that the device is having performance issues, then it is negligence on the part of Facebooks engineers. In contrast, if they knowingly market the device for a configuration that performs so poorly, then they are choosing to put out a low quality product. There is one mixed apathy/incompetence option: they trend performance internally, but were too lazy to trend performance in our homes. In that case, it is possible that they exercised sufficient competence to do basic testing, but that they did not deploy the capability. This is still a sad decision on the part of companies. High quality systems detect system performance issues long before seconds-long lags would occur.)

Update 4/19/21: Ive had this thing now for just about a year. Its awful. It is still one of the worst pieces of electronics that ive ever had the displeasure of using. Constant freezing, crashing, glitches...its awful. still highly recommend not buying. I bought this for work - we use it to train with and it sucks. I hate this product. Its glitchy, slow, and clunky. There is no way to clear the cache, cookies, history, or anything so I end up unplugging and plugging back in (because of course there is no power or restart button). Sometimes it wont register that Ive slid the little video/audio slide aside and says I dont have access to unmute or show video without me having to restart the whole thing...just dont even bother. Honestly, there are way better products. Or just buy a nice webcam and use other apps on your laptop/computer/phone/tablet. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY.