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

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 like being a hands free device, I like when it chases me around the area and I like the crisp screen. I dislike that sometimes have to shout Hey Portal to be heard and I dislike when it gets lost in some rare occasions. Overall, I like it and I wish it keeps evolving.

This system has already broken twice. Yes portal customer service replaced it, but same thing keeps on happening. The frame picture feature is worthless, no matter how many pictures you upload it always shows the same ones. I wish I would have realized before I purchased it. Tons of people complaining of the same problem all over the internet. On spotify there is no option to write down the song or artist you are looking for which makes it super inconvenient.

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.

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 have Echo, Google, and Portal Smart displays, several of each, and, for photos, the Portals are the best. The other features are ok on the Portal but not as refined as Echo or Google. I was quite surprised with the sound quality of the Portals. Very happy with the Portal Plus.

It is good for video call. have very good feature of focus as we move. Screen quality is also good. alexa works fine but other integration like youtube etc is not as expected. i mainly use it as photo display and video call. both works fine.

Portal is great! Amazing clear camera that follows you and pans out to include others as they enter the room. We can now celebrate with my parents who are 3000 miles away! It really is like they are in the same room! Sound quality on the Portal + is nice too, as are the Alexa features that are built in. Calls are encrypted and there is a camera cover as well as an on/off switch for the microphone. For the crazy conspiracy theorists out there that choose to return this simply because of the Facebook name....better return your Smart TV, turn off all your cell phone apps, return anything Ring, Alexa or Google related..... better yet, maybe you should consider living off the grid because the future is here!

This is our 3rd portal we love it so much. We gifted our other 2 to our niece and nephew who visited on different occasions. Like my son, they were obsessed with it dont have Amazon where theyre from. Were able to keep in touch with our family via messenger and Whatsapp while all being logged into our separate accounts. The photos of our choices are displayed on the screen when its not being used. Im also able to join zoom for our club meetings and change my background. My son and I call his cousins and read stories to them. There are so many to choose from. We also have lots of silly filters and cool backgrounds to use while on the videos calls. The camera follows you wherever you go, and you can change that if you want to. The audio gets so loud. And the portal is very solid!! Highly recommend it.

It’s amazing, but sucks that it has to stay plugged in! Would make such a difference if it was a little more portable. The zooming & tracking technology is an awesome addition to video chatting