Facebook Portal

amazon Facebook Portal reviews

The Facebook Portal is an attractive, Alexa-compatible smart display that works better as an office video conferencing solution than a personal communication device.

Facebook’s new $179 portal checks out many wishlist items we had for last year’s model. The video calling smart display now lets you make WhatsApp calls and show Instagram photos, and it works well with Amazon’s Alexa. But with the company’s constant political drama, placing a dedicated Facebook camera in your living room can still be overwhelming for many. However, that equation changes when we talk about getting it into your office, and Facebook may have (unintentionally) made one of the better corporate telecommunications devices you can buy.

Modeling, Design, and Setup

The Facebook portal currently comes in four forms. We tested the 10-inch, $179 Portal, which looks like a digital photo frame (and behaves like one, most of the time). There’s also an 8-inch Portal Mini, $129, which has pretty much the same capabilities but is smaller. Last year’s 15.6-inch, $279 gate is still on the market, and it’s the best choice for a small meeting room. There’s a $149 TV set-top box that will turn any TV into a big screen for Alexa and video calls.

Portals come in beautiful black or white, are nicely built, and are easy to install. The included stand contains the power cord, which plugs into the wall using a dedicated power adapter. The 10-inch model measures 7.03 x 10.23 x 5.56 inches (HWD). There’s a 13-megapixel camera on the front, as well as a 10-inch HD display. Between the front tweeter and the rear woofer, it boasts a total of 10 watts of audio power.

You set it up by attaching it to a 2.4GHz or 5GHz Wi-Fi network and entering your Messenger or Whatsapp account details—you need a Messenger or Whatsapp account to make it work. The default home screen shows your Messenger contacts. You can flag some photos as favorites, affecting the photos you see in digital photo frame mode.

As a digital photo frame, Portal can display your Facebook photos, your Instagram photos, Facebook photos from your favorite contacts, and photos you upload directly through the smartphone app. You don’t need to use all or any of these categories. It can also make you talk to people it identifies as currently online, another option you can turn off.

Video calls

You can call any Messenger or Whatsapp contact by saying, “Hey Portal, call (contact)” or select them from the contacts on the screen. They don’t need a Portal; they can use the phone. You can also make multiparty calls here. With Messenger, you can add up to six people; with Whatsapp, you can add three. You can’t get past the Messenger/Whatsapp barrier.

The most interesting feature of Portal is still the Smart Camera, which I think is the personal Ken Burns effect. The camera pans and zooms to find you as you move around the room, fitting you better than you have to. If one person in the group is talking, the camera will focus on them and then shift the angle to complete the cinematic effect. No other smart display can do this.

Portal then stacks cool AR features on top of your conversations. You can wear a mustache, have a lazy cat sit on your head, or turn into a dragon or werewolf, all for fun. The cooperative AR game challenges you and your interlocutor not to smile or try to catch you by moving your head to catch the falling cat. It’s all silly and childish, but that’s fine in my opinion because much of the device’s goal is about connecting kids with their distant relatives.

The four mics are also designed to pick up whatever sound is in your room, which is great when you’re the only one making noise in the room but not so great when you’re not. The mics make distant speakers sound much closer; They also make it easy for people to speak elsewhere in the room. I had no problem with Portal hearing my voice, whether for voice calls or to give Alexa commands, from 30 feet away in a quiet room.

I called two friends using Messenger on their phones, another Portal at the same office, and an Official Portal at Facebook. All is fine except for the call to Facebook, the Bluetooth problem, and the audio lag compared to the video image. Facebook says those shouldn’t happen and thinks I’m having a hardware problem, but I wonder if it has more to do with network issues between my corporate network and Facebook.

The Portal has an “app” page. These include Facebook Watch, which contains many trivial videos that you don’t want to watch; a standard Android web browser; a small collection of Facebook games including Words With Friends; iHeartRadio, Pandora, and Spotify; and Story Time, the Portal’s interactive app.

The browser allows you to create a YouTube link to call the YouTube page on your desktop, so you can sign in with your Google account and display YouTube videos. There’s no email or calendar connection, and you can’t make regular phone calls or send or receive text messages (even in Messenger or Whatsapp).

Alexa support

I’m not a fan of devices with multiple voice assistants, and Portal has this problem. It’s an Alexa device for sure, but it also has the much less successful “Hey Portal” voice assistant. “Hey Portal” is supposed to fire up apps and answer simple queries like the time and weather, but honestly, the only thing it’s good about is initiating a video call because Alexa can’t do that. “Hey Portal” queries are also actually recorded and reviewed by Facebook’s contractors to improve the company’s speech recognition unless you are opt-out.

However, switch to another tech giant’s software, and you’ll have a great time. The Portal acts as an Alexa smart device, so you can request Alexa functions or skills and see the results reflected on the screen. You can order tunes from Amazon Music by playlist or song; you can check stock prices from TD Ameritrade or request recipes from AllRecipes. The smart home skill that displays the camera image on the smart screen also works. In many ways, Portal is like an Echo Show.

There were some hiccups in the Alexa implementation. Skills using the syntax “requires action skills” must be divided into two parts: “open skills” and then “requires acting skills.” You also don’t get Amazon’s Drop Incalls or the ability to request Amazon video content on display.

As a speaker, this is not a sonic masterpiece. There is bass, but very muddy. Facebook has optimized room-filling volume without harshness or distortion, but a comfortable voice on a video call isn’t as demanding as broad-spectrum music. Both classical and electronic music lacks the richness of the Portal, but at least they don’t sound too jarring. At maximum volume, it doesn’t distort and is too loud to sit comfortably close.

The options when you’re not using the main speaker are a bit weak. There’s no wired headphone jack, and I had an uneven experience using a Bluetooth headset — video calls to Facebook came out tinny and distorted than the headset. However, I didn’t experience that with music or other calls.

where can you get a Facebook Portal online

Facebook Portal – Smart Video Calling 10” Touch Screen Display with Alexa – Black: Buy it now

Portal from Facebook [Gen 1]. Smart, Hands-Free Video Calling with Alexa Built-in: Buy it now

Portal from Facebook. Smart, Hands-Free Video Calling with Alexa Built-in (Gen 1): Buy it now

Facebook

But don’t forget that this is the Facebook Portal.

Facebook has pivoted to “privacy” over the past year, committing to encrypting Messenger connections and reinforcing that WhatsApp remains encrypted. But there is still deep suspicion of a company whose revenue is based on behaviorally targeted advertising and has done a notoriously bad job of preventing its public News Feed from being overrun by erroneous, politically extreme content.

Following negative news stories about Facebook, how it uses and abuses data feels like a full-time job. Some recent hot headlines: Facebook may have misled much of the media industry and wasted tens of millions of dollars in marketing by claiming “redirect to video” based on inflated video viewing data in two years.

Many times, Facebook employees have reminded me of how the Portal is “built for security.” End-to-end encrypted WhatsApp calls. Messenger calls will also take place in January. The camera switch “shuts off” the camera, preventing Facebook from turning it on even if it wanted to. You can set the device not to send “Hey Portal” queries to Facebook, and you can set the device to require multiple authentications.

Best for the Workplace

In my opinion, the most exciting aspect of the Portal is that it will work with Workplace accounts starting in December. That makes it a great, easy-to-use solution for employee conferencing from far away.

The Workplace is Facebook’s business product, and so far, it has managed to avoid the various problems Facebook’s consumer product has. Companies pay to use it, companies own their data, and that data doesn’t leak and isn’t used in the broader consumer product.

With the ability to make seven-party group video calls, the 15.6-inch Portal + can be every remote worker or small remote office’s best friend. Turn this mode on to “in office” and turn it off to “out of office.” Use it to listen to music when you’re not in a meeting. Freedom to move around your home office while in a meeting. Don’t worry about faulty PC-based solutions or the nightmare of configuring Poly. It’s a great corporate connectivity solution.

Compare and conclude

In an imaginary world where Facebook is non-confrontational and benign, an Alexa-compatible smart display showing your Instagram photos, playing YouTube videos, and making Whatsapp video calls would be a problem.

But Facebook is not uncontrolled and benign. Any year it looks like it leaked or lied to someone. It amazes everyone. It freaks me out, and I’m always in it. One of the Amazon Echo Show models, or even the Google Nest Hub Max, seems less of a hassle.

On the other hand, if your company uses Workplace, the Portal is among the best mobile options we’ve seen and one we recommend. It’s a pretty interesting dichotomy, much like Facebook itself.

Advantages

Shows Facebook, Instagram, and uploaded photos.

Easily call friends using Messenger, Whatsapp, and Workplace.

The solid capabilities of Amazon Alexa.

Defect

Facebook’s increasingly questionable reputation.

Bluetooth was choppy on one of my test calls.