Facebook Portal review (2nd gen)
Our Verdict
Despite our ongoing concerns about privacy, the Facebook Portal is excellent when it comes to video calls via Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
For
- Excellent at video calls through Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp
- Innovative camera-tracking feature
- Squeamish design
- Works with Alexa
Against
- Facebook voice banana non as good as Alexa
- Ongoing privacy issues with Facebook
Tom'due south Guide Verdict
Despite our ongoing concerns about privacy, the Facebook Portal is excellent when it comes to video calls via Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
Pros
- +
Excellent at video calls through Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp
- +
Innovative camera-tracking feature
- +
Nice pattern
- +
Works with Alexa
Cons
- -
Facebook voice assistant not equally good as Alexa
- -
Ongoing privacy issues with Facebook
We didn't think much of the original Facebook Portal. Aside from our trust bug with Facebook, the commencement Portal merely wasn't a very practiced smart display, particularly compared to the Amazon Echo Bear witness and Google's Nest Hub.
The 2d-generation Facebook Portal is a much amend device, letting you make video calls non only to Facebook friends but those on WhatsApp, too. It also looks nicer than the original, and can practice more stuff, specially when you're using Alexa on the Portal. Yes, we still accept concerns about what Facebook is doing with our data, but the Portal is the best smart display if you lot desire to make calls with Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. Read the rest of our Facebook Portal review to see if its benefits outweigh its issues.
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Facebook Portal specs
Brandish: 10 inches (1280 x 900 pixels)
Camera: xiii MP, 114-caste field of view
Speakers: 10-watt stereo, subwoofer
Microphones: iv
Wi-Fi: ii.four/5GHz
Size: 10.2 x 7 x 0.8 inches (excluding stand)
Facebook Portal: Price and availability
Facebook offers the Portal in three versions. The Portal Mini ($129) has an 8-inch display; the Portal ($179) nosotros tested has a 10-inch display; and the Portal+ ($229) has a massive 15.half dozen-inch display that tin rotate from portrait to mural manner.
Both of the smaller Portals accept 13MP cameras with a 114-degree field of view, while the Portal+ has a 12.5MP camera with a wider 140-degree view. In improver, the Portal+ has ii 2-inch tweeters and one four-inch woofer, while the smaller models have less powerful stereo speakers.
Facebook as well makes the Portal TV ($149), which is essentially a webcam you stick on meridian of your television receiver.
- How to set upwardly the Facebook Portal
Facebook Portal: Design
Different a lot of smart habitation gadgets — including the original Portal — the second-generation Facebook Portal doesn't look like some wacky device from the future. In fact, it looks more similar a digital picture frame than anything else, and acts equally such when you're non using it for video calls.
In keeping with its aesthetic, the 10-inch touchscreen is surrounded by an ersatz matte border — the thing that costs so much when you go to get a picture framed. Surrounding this is a minor gap betwixt the edge and the outside of the frame, which non simply serves equally a prissy design chemical element, but also allows audio through, while hiding its actual speakers.
In the upper left corner of the Portal's front is the camera, and the top edge above this is a slider that physically blocks the Portal'southward photographic camera and shuts off its microphone. Yous tin slide the button to plow off but the photographic camera, but leave the microphone on, besides. It's a lot more sophisticated than the inexpensive plastic clip that served a similar function on the original Portal.
Along the left edge are volume controls. The back of the Portal is flat and white except for the heart, where a cloth woofer domes out slightly.
With the exception of its "foot," which extends about four inches out the dorsum right corner, the Portal is only 0.8 inches thick, and measures 10.two inches broad by 7 inches tall. Cleverly, if you turn the Portal so that it's either in landscape or portrait style, the screen automatically reorients itself.
Facebook Portal: Video phone call quality
Requite credit where it's due: With the original Portal, Facebook figured out a trouble when making video calls from a smart display. Because y'all can't deport a display around as you would a phone or tablet, you're usually stuck in one spot, and the person on the other stop of the line won't be able to come across y'all if you move.
The Portal solves that issue past tracking your face and digitally panning and zooming its camera so that you remain in the center of the frame as much equally possible. This way, if you take the Portal fix upwards in your kitchen, you can walk around and prepare a meal, and the person you're chatting with can all the same see you clearly. To date, the only other smart display that tin exercise this is the Google Nest Hub Max.
Existence the monolithic social networking platform that information technology is, the Portal lets you make calls not but to Facebook Messenger contacts, but also to people on WhatsApp, which Facebook owns. Those two services collectively account for roughly xl percent of the world's population, so there's a good chance you lot'll find someone you know.
As I accept accounts with both services, I made calls via Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and both came through abrupt and articulate. Despite my beingness in a somewhat night room, the Portal'due south camera produced a brilliant, colorful image. While the Portal'due south camera-tracking tin be a bit sluggish — there's a delay of near a second from the time yous move to the time the camera shifts — it was peachy to scout it lock on to me, eventually.
One fun attribute of video calls via the Portal are all the filters you lot can apply non just to yourself, simply to the other people on the call. My wife and I spent a few minutes gawking at the virtual cats on our heads.
As of October 2020, Facebook has too added Zoom, and expects to add more web-conferencing apps (BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, WebEx) to the Portal at some point.
Facebook Portal: Audio quality
With its 2 speakers and rear-facing subwoofer, the Portal turned out pretty good sound for its size. The Beatles' I Want to Hold Y'all Mitt streamed from Spotify was reproduced accurately with a strong bass. However, t college tones, such as Ringo's cymbal piece of work, felt a little compressed.
Audio during video calls was equally strong. Thanks to the Portal's four microphones, callers were able to hear united states of america easily, even if we were x anxiety away from the display.
Facebook Portal: Apps
You lot can add functionality to the Portal past installing apps and websites; currently, there are simply 12 apps available, including Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, FB Gaming, ABC News Live, Nutrient Network, Story Fourth dimension, and a spider web browser.
The Portal comes with xviii bookmarked webpages, which include Yelp, ESPN, Twitch, Instagram, Google, YouTube, and, of course, Facebook. In this fashion, you can view your Facebook feed, but it's not nearly every bit piece of cake to navigate as it is on a laptop or through a dedicated mobile app. The same goes for other sites such as YouTube and ESPN.
The Portal's browser is an ok workaround — it even has an incognito manner — and something yous don't get on other smart displays, but the experience isn't the best. However, you can expand YouTube videos to full screen.
The Photo Booth app lets you take both stills and video, and employ the same filters every bit you would during a video call. However, you lot can't save the photos or video, only transport them via Facebook Messenger.
Facebook Portal: Vocalization control
The Portal comes with two voice administration: Facebook'due south "Hey Portal" and Amazon's Alexa. But unless Facebook makes drastic improvements to its assistant, in that location'south very little reason to employ information technology in favor of Alexa.
Let's start with Alexa. You lot can pretty much exercise everything with Alexa on the Portal equally you lot can on whatsoever other Amazon device: Command smart dwelling products, play music, play games, and command the book of the Portal's speakers.
More than importantly, Alexa visual skills are now bachelor on the Portal, and so if you want to turn on your smart lights, a slider volition appear on-screen, letting y'all accommodate their brightness. You lot can fifty-fifty wait upwardly recipes and accept them bear witness upwards on-screen, so you can follow them step past footstep. The one matter you tin't exercise is make vocalization or video calls using Alexa, but given that Facebook wants you to use its services, is an understandable limitation.
The "Hey Portal" command can be used to start and finish video calls, play music, set timers, and get the conditions, but it's non as functional, nor as authentic, as Alexa.
"Hey Portal, play WBGO" was continually misinterpreted, equally was my inquire to stream 97.5 the Fanatic. When I asked the same of Alexa, Amazon's banana interpreted my requests accurately.
While you tin use the Hey Portal command to open the 18 spider web pages that come pre-bookmarked, yous tin can't open whatever other websites by request the Portal.
Facebook Portal: Privacy
Yes, Facebook's myriad privacy issues have still non been fairly resolved. All the same, if you're already on Facebook, yous've probable already made this calculus in your head. And, by using the Portal, yous're not giving up any more data than you would have otherwise.
Now, you can view everything that the Portal heard, and delete each recording individually, or all at in one case. You can besides opt not to accept the Portal save whatever recordings any. Selecting this option is the all-time course of action, for this or whatsoever other device that records what you lot say.
Facebook Portal Review: Verdict
Does Facebook's privacy issues still concern me? Yep. Is the second-generation Portal a much better device than the original? Yeah. Not only has the design of the device improved — information technology's much more subtle, and has a physical switch for the microphone and camera — merely its functionality is much closer to that of the best smart displays.
The Nest Hub Max is more of a well-rounded smart display: It provides y'all news and weather at a glance, has an equally impressive camera, and lets y'all stream movies and the like via Chromecast.
But the Facebook Portal does one matter exceptionally well: Video calls using Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. If y'all're on either of those platforms — and in that location's a good risk you are — and then the Portal is a smart brandish worth because.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/facebook-portal-2nd-generation
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