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

It is easy to set up

Love the size for video calls. Easy to see everyone in the room. Video calls are nice quality. Love it for talking to kids that are far away. Hate that can’t rename Alexa on this device ( grandsons name is Alex - makes it difficult to say his name, also it picks up to many cues from the tv ). Difficult to adjust volume for Alexa. Either too loud or too quiet. Strange as it is fine for video calls. Sometimes it overhears something and makes calls out of the blue. I keep the microphone and camera off and covered unless using. For video calls I would give it five stars. Love it for that.

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.

Being a technophile I think this is better quality than anything Amazon has put out. I purchased 2 portal pluss and while I wish I could call people also on Echo or Skype, the hardware is far better than Echo show (which I also own). Im not a huge fan of Facebook but the tech is sound and of great quality ( once again comparing to echo show) this is so far a better product than anything currently available and I hope that Google and Amazon take notice. The ability to transfer my call immediately to my phone is on awesome when I leave the room. Its quick and instantaneous and I dont have to think about it. If you dislike Facebook, I can empathize but great tech is great tech and this piece of hardware is fantastic albeit in this day and age I also dont like being locked in to a single communication system but I dont necessarily think thats Facebook fault. I want my hardware independent from any corp and let it speak on its own merit. We dont live in the 20th century after all.

I use this hands free in my kitchen while I’m cooking. I love the speaker on this Portal and this a very solid piece of equipment. Love the “zoom” feature and how it “pans” the room as you move about in the room. If I want to play my Pandora music the speaker is great!! If I want to engage Alexa it’s all there!

I purchased this portal about a year ago to go live to facebook, I used it a few times and it was great. Recently, I went to do a live from it and they have removed the feature. If youre strictly using this for video chats, it is great. That was not what I purchased it for so now I have a facebook portal that does not work for what I purchased it for. Shame on the maker for removing apps that people specifically purchased this device for.

Works great

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 product, because I would like to be near to my family. The product serves its purpose. In my opinion, it has good speakers, microphone and screen quality, but the apps are very limited and the interface could be better. I’ve been using over two months and no technical issues show up until now. Hope they try to improve this product software, because I believe that it has potential to be a great product.

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.