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

This has been hands down the best purchase in 2020. My grandmother (96) fell and was moved into a nursing home. Due to Covid restrictions we were not able to visit. Calling her on the phone was difficult, she could not hear us well and was confused easily. I ordered the portal + to stay connected. It was the most amazing feeling to actually see her and talk to her! We had a long conversation and I could literally see her face light up. We have FaceTimed everyday since! She has been able to talk to both of her sons and each grandchild and great grandkids. The touch screen set up made it so easy for her to call me and for her to use. The nurse told me that she used it so often she was “going to wear it out”. I am forever grateful for the portal +. It has been a blessing.

Absolutely amazing video calling experiencing. My parents dont use Facebook much but with the product they can see most recent photos posted to Facebook automatically on the device. Think of all the electronic photo frames that go useless and boring since they show same stuff over and over, and imagine how much better it can be when it shows fresh photos instead. Hardware definitely is top notch and Im looking forward to see what software improvements come to the product.

Wowww es increíble lo súper recomiendo para las video llamadas grupales

The portal is very easy to navigate, I use it to talk to my granddaughter who can navigate through with ease as well and she will be 6 on Jan 22. My son wanted one for Christmas, so each house has one and we all enjoy it!!

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.

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

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.

Love it recommended it to family and friends!!!!

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.

Overall the product works well for face time activities. Downloading apps is not possible it seems - which is a huge disappointment as they say you can do this. Otherwise seems to function fine.