Facebook Portal Plus - Smart Video Calling 15.6” Touch Screen Display with Alexa - Black

So we bought the smaller portable one for my MIL. And got this one for us since we have 4 bouncing kids. It has been a life saver being able to keep in touch. Being almost 7K miles away during this pandemic has made things difficult. But FB portal is easy enough that those less inclined about TECH van easil use it. No more forehead and chin shots anymore

My grandbabies moved out of state and I got 2 of these to keep the connection. We call each other all the time and its so easy to play games. We even get Alexa in on the fun, my grandkids will tell Alexa to play a song and we all just dance all around the house and just like its suppose to the Portal follows us. Sometimes we have to be sneaky when were trying to play hide and seek so Portal doesnt follow us and give up or location before the other peeson is done counting. If you need to stay connected this is an amazing option.

I just got the device. Made a few calls, call quality is great! Camera follow is OK but not great (doesnt follow fast enough, or becomes pixelated for a couple of seconds). The worse part is everything else, which is a bummer since the device is huge ad expensive, so I was planning for it to replace my Amazon Echo as well. Main issues: * Audio quality is not that good on high range, and the sub range is much better and stronger, so it feels uneven. * AI is super week. If its the Superframes (screensaver) algorithm of choosing my Facebook pictures, or the quality of the assistant, even lower than the stock Alexa. I hope all this gets better in time. * Lack of applications. Besides Spotify and Facebook watch there isnt anything much there. So bottom line, I with I would have bought the smaller set and use the device to just phone calls.

There was no dislike, I love everything about Portal, because it does numerous OF things

At the time, it was a good low price. Unit does have some bugs in it. Need to reboot at times. It does alot of stuff more than when it first came out which is good! I think further upgrades are no longer since this 1st generation is now discontinued. Good picture quality and size. I like the option for portrait and landscape viewing.

I kinda really liked the portal in a way but in another way I find it not very functionable and it doesn’t leave your picture on for very long I find that you have to really go in several times to get it started plug it in unplug and plug it in and unplug it I paid such a lot of money for something that I can’t even use and I’m really really disappointed with it I’ve called Customer Service and asked him about it about the portal why doesn’t the picture all the time stay on and they told me that I needed to go in and take care of it with the settings which I’ve tried to do but it doesn’t seem to work so right now I am very very disappointed and I do not recommend it hopefully when they make a new one it will be better I’m out $195 for something that doesn’t even work and it really really disappoints me I wish that I could get a refund and it would be greatly appreciated I’ll even send the portal back I still have the original box and everything if someone could reach out to me that would be great my name is Tammy Cavers I purchased this item in January 2022

First, I think this is a great idea and an exciting product A simple, turnkey piece of hardware for doing Facetime with some great features. The problem is, its a product by Facebook who is only really known for their social media application, not for specialized hardware devices. And theres a world of difference between those two worlds. As applications go social media applications are not terribly demanding nor highly sophisticated programs compared to many other applications. Especially when theyre written in such a way as to function in the browser world. Specialized hardware applications, on the other hand, must take into account not only the dedicated application that runs on it, but also the hardware and device interfaces that allow it to connect the the outside world. This is the stuff that can become very tricky when trying to make those complex hardware interactions appear to be very simple and bulletproof. Given how easily this type of thing has become in these day of WiFi connected smartphones, computers, laptops, and streaming devices its easy to overlook that complexity unless youve been in the hardware world for a while. And this is where this device fails. Right out of the box when this device fires up it presents the user with a list of available WiFi connections. You select the one you want and youre asked to enter your password for that network. It sounds simple, but if it fails you dont get much information about why it failed, so troubleshooting it is a problem. The device doesnt come with any information about where to call for support, so unless you know how to do a Google search and find the support site, youre stuck. Once you get in touch with the support line they run you through some very simplistic troubleshooting steps such as a reset of the device and power cycling your WiFi router (which affects anyone or anything else that happens to be using that router at the time). After those few simple steps it gets beyond what the first level of support can provide and they escalate it to the more advanced support group who, in my case, simply emailed me to send it back to Amazon and get a replacement. Given this experience I determined they really werent ready to be operating in todays more sophisticated hardware environment quite yet and simply sent it back for a refund. The device came with very little in the way of documentation of support information. If youre trying to make it appear to be simple, then it must be bulletproof. Otherwise, its just frustrating and not worth the time. Especially for the price theyre asking for it.

We really like our portal but it needs a little more fine tuning. Even in a normal volume room it has a hard time hearing you. There has been several times we have needed total silence before Portal or Alexa can respond properly.

The portal was recommended by a friend. I have regular conversations with friends that are far away, and the portal makes it seem like you are together chatting in your living room- or cooking together for that matter. The camera on the screen moves with you! I would highly recommend this for those who are having regular video conferencing with family, friend or work. Its like being there. You must have a FaceBook messenger account, but those you call dont have to have the machine. I havent connected to Alexa so cant rate that feature.

Great product, video calling my friends is fun, specially when my mom and my sister live far away