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

The device functionality is actually pretty cool, when it works. But be prepared - it’s terrible in a mid-range WiFi area. You basically need it to sit right next to your router, which limits where you can actually use it. We placed ours in our kitchen, only one room away from our office where the router is, and all day long kept hearing pulsing sounds from the Portal as it disconnected and reconnected to the network. At first, Portal’s customer service was responsive and helpful, until I sent them a video of the problem and they handed me to one of the “technical experts” who basically repeated the same troubleshooting process as their frontline staff. Subpar product with subpar customer service. Wouldn’t buy again.

Works really well for chatting with parents and friends that are far away (esp. during a pandemic it turns out). Auto tracking works well, audio is good during video chats. Using it for listening to music is adequate. Definitely wouldnt consider sound quality for music amazing but is pretty good.

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.

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.

Was not what was advertised. It was supposed to be new and it came in a plastic bag with no power cord or anything else.

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.

I bought this for my grandfather just as coronavirus started to become a real concern. I wanted him to be able to video chat with the family when we werent able to visit him. Unfortunately, his retirement community went on lockdown before I could deliver it. So until I can get it to him, we are using it in our home. I have a 5year old and a 16 month old. Video chatting with them via phone is hard for the people on the other end of the screen. They are ALL OVER THE PLACE and hard to follow. The portal has a nice wide field of vision that keeps them in frame most of the time However the BEST feature is the automatic face detection and camera tracking. It follows the girls all over our living room, keeping them in frame so their grandparents can always see them. It isnt 100% perfect, but it is a huge improvement over not having ng this feature and just trying to follow them with the phone. Surprised - I thought this was a pointless product, but now that I have one, it is the only way I want to video call Fwiw, the Alexa and FB assistant I tegratio s are nice, and the speakers are quite good quality (and powerful). We listen to Pandora, Amazon music, and lots more on here daily. I will probably buy one of these to replace it once I give this one to my grandfather. There are really great for connecting with family.

This Facebook Portal Plus system was introduced to my wife by my eldest son. Soon after this we bought the system and have been using this almost daily. We have 3 grandkids and they all love to call us for us to tell them stories almost every day. Later my daughter had her own portal so now our grandkids and we alternately tell stories almost every day. This has excellent Alexa and Portal voice commands features. We read our emails and surf the internet using voice commands. The screen is big enough for watching movies on demand.

I love the way the camera follows you around. I bought one for my daughter also, and she can carry on a conversation while preparing her dinner. Its almost like being in the same room with her. The picture quality is great. I also like that I can have it show me the news if I miss it on television.

Sometimes the voice recognition algorithm thinks it should turn on the device and a picture appears. It shuts off nicely when asked to however. The system works great with our family in Washington DC. They have one too, and we love the fact that the camera behaves well in all types of light and can follow and zoom to keep us in frame. Great product!