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

It is easy to set up

First off, it deserves more stars if ALL you need is to call (whatsApp) another person. Kids or parents. If you are looking for a device for your home office - stay away. Pros: - looks great. Good quality screen (rotates) and a camera - connects to Bluetooth devices (e.g. keyboard, mouse, etc.) - easy to use Cons: - no 3rd party voice or video calls supported. No jabber, no Alexa calls, no skype, no sip, no google. Nothing. - device recognized by a phone as a bluetooth speaker. You cant use it as a speakerphone with you cell. - you cant call a regular phone number (even with a fee). - it doesnt support Webex meetings. Helpdesk says that theyre working on it, but no ETA. Webex (via website) does not recognize microphone / speaker, or camera. No MS Teams support, no google meet. - do you want to use it as a photo frame? Only with your facebook photos. - very few applications. 10? Useful? 2-3 max. - no email client, no calendar. Yes, you can open outlook 365 or gmail in a web browser but this is not the case. - Alexa on this device is handicapped. Most of commonly used functions not supported. - Although it is an android device, you cannot install apps from the play store. Actually you can - but you cant access them after the installation. This is the first time I decided to return an electronic device. I am done with it 3 hours after unboxing. Ugh.

My two sons and their in-laws all have one, so we got one for Christmas. We put it on a shelf in a bookcase facing the big couch in our family room. What a simple, wonderful way to see, hear and visit with family ... especially grandkids ... more often! And so simple to use ... Just touch the image of the person you wish to see and chat with, or just tell Alexa to call so-and-so! Fantastic picture and sound quality. And the camera follows you if you need to move around the toom. Theres more ... you csn load it with family photos. This is truly a must hav ed item! We love it!

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.

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

My husband & I really love it! There are many things you can do with it.

This product is excellent. We purchased it for an elderly family member at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and it has helped her to feel included in family get togethers. The speaking features make it so she does not have to type on it, which is perfect for those with limited eye sight. It is very large, and the rotating feature makes it easy for people all of levels of technological knowledge. Excellent product

Cannot make calls to a computer without installing messenger first, unlike current way where you can without issues, also, even after installing it, they will keep getting the call on their phone instead of the computer. Also called to a tablet, and seems rotation wasnt working, tried multiple times and kept having issues, returning it, seems a great idea, but far from mature :( Added a picture of how it looks on a tablet. Update: I kept it and bought one for my mom, seems thats gonna be the only way to check how it works when you call portal to portal, seems calling a phone or a tablet is not the ideal way to use this, I was hoping it would just call any other messenger no matter where it was installed (PC/tablet) without issues, so far not that good, not ideal to buy a portal to each one of the people I wanna talk to, but at least will try it, I was expecting something better than Skype, but not so far. I like the video and sound of the device, not that many apps so far, but as I saw it advertised, I think it is more focused to be a video chat approach like Skype, will try with 2 portals and see how it works.

It’s ok

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.