Customer Ratings & Reviews

Gift for my mom, she loves it, uses it for everything

We are enjoying this tv very much. Picture is great.

Good product, it works great for video calls Camera moves great

Great overall product love watching videos recipes ect..

So far, I'm liking this product. I originally purchased the Amazon echo but apparently, I cannot use messenger. My family is miles away and this is the only way we communicate now on a daily basis. I love how it follows you around, and how clear the connection is. Highly recommended.

I brought my mom and my niece mom one for mother's day so they can stay connected with my mom's grandbaby. They both love it because the camera follows my niece around. I decided to purchase me one. Hopefully updates can happen where you will be able to do more on the device but for now, i live it. Group calls is cool too.

Good quality camera and fun for the whole family!!

Good product for beginners. Easy to use. Kid friendly.

Excellent price. This was a gift for my Mother who was having issues using her phones DUO and only had facetime. Since I do not have apple products I could not see her during COVID-19 (we live across the country from each other). This was an excellent purchase.

Good thought behind the product and very useful when grandparents want to connect to their grandchilds. But 8" screen size is too small. Going for a bigger screen would enhance the experience. I would recommend one with bigger screen.

During Covid, when my parents couldn't travel out of state to visit my siblings and their grandchildren - we bought this for them to be able to be "present" on Christmas morning. They were thrilled - it definitely eased their separation anxiety.

I bought a bunch of these for Christmas gifts and the family members I gave them to love them. I don't own one myself, so I can't say much else about them. These two were on back order so two of my kids had to wait until after Christmas to receive them.

Bought one for myself and my in laws to use and it is very simple and easy to use and they are able to use the portals easily. The way the camera adjust and you are able to close the camera off when you aren’t going to be using it. If there was a way it did not need to be plugged in all the time would be great

I gave it as a gift and both recipients loved it. And so do I. It makes visiting with long distance friends and family so easy and a feeling that you are there with them. In this difficult time, we all need to feel close and connected.

There is not much options in apps and while my pictures are switching always appears a screen with tips. Is so inconvenient. And why the screen turns off? Why not show the time or keep the pictures rolling? The sound is good.

My portal mini video calling is a different way of calling my contacts on facebook. The voice quality with alexa I love talking to her, She is very helpful, I rate portal is a excellent product for everyone to you especially if you live alone.

The first time you use a Portal device for a call, the automatic camera panning and zooming stands out immediately as a great and handy feature. This tech has been available previously for enterprises, but to have it in a home device just goes to show how much tech companies can not offer at such a low price point. So, let's start with that - since in this Portal mini there is no physical movement of the device itself, it does the panning by actually zooming in and then focusing on a part of the frame. Which overall works well, the camera quality is good enough that even when Zoomed in and cropped, the video is good enough for video calls. And the AI does a pretty decent job of finding living things in the frame, it sometimes gets confused by stuffed toys shaped like dogs though :). But I am not going to count that against them. On the same topic, there is also "Spotlight" by which you can choose a face that you want the Portal to focus on specifically. Works great with kids, or if you have a lot of people in the room but you want it to focus just on you for the call. The way it works is you tap the screen, it shows "yellow" frames around the faces it can recognize, you tap on one of these frames and it turns green and locks onto that face. And then that person can move around and the camera will try to keep them in focus. If you move around too much, and the camera loses sight of you completely, it doesn't really remember it was supposed to focus on you when you come back in. Which is a bummer especially with kids who run around all over the place. Hopefully that's something they can fix/add in future updates. Overall, the call quality is great, the microphones pick your audio clearly even from across the room, and when multiple people are talking, and the speakers are loud and clear. Some other features that the Portal has focused towards kids are the in call effects (think ARmoji on a call), where it will automatically apply effects on your face or the background, or even modify your voice - this ranges from turning your face into a dragon, which actually spits fire when you open your mouth. Its a hit with the kids, but very very addictive, to the point that they would rather have these effects running than talk to the person on the other end. So, be careful how much you expose them to these. In the same vein is the Story Time app. The Portal also has Alexa built in - which you can choose to enable or not. When setup, this can basically act just like any other Alexa Echo device, I did infact unplug my echo because the Portal took over all of its usefulness. Apart from Alexa, Portal also has its own voice "assistant" - basically you can give it commands using the wakeup word "Hey Portal". You can make Portal call people or search for them, or change the volume, turn off the display etc. One completely baffling omission is that the Hey Portal command for making calls does not work with WhatsApp calls. So, yes you can link your Whatsapp to Portal as well (its a Facebook company), you connect it just like you would web.whatsapp.com - scan a QR code that shows up. Once connected, it automatically shows you all your WhatsApp contacts, so you can make audio or video calls. So, I have no idea why this is not integrated into the voice command for making calls. If you try, Portal just instructs you to walk over and touch the screen like its 2012. I am being a bit facetious, but I am really hoping Facebook work on fixing this in the future. There is no reason why WhatsApp is being treated differently. There are some added benefits to Portal to Portal calling, like the panning and zooming on both ends and things like Shared Effects. But even as a standalone this really works well for video calling. But adding to the misses I have listed above, are the shockingly low number of apps you can have on the device. You are pretty much limited to basic web browsing, weather and photo albums/photo booth (if you are into that). Another annoying "feature" is the fact that the power cord is also your stand. which takes away placement flexibility. You can place it in a landscape or portrait setup, but the stand will always be there. If I really want this to be stuck up against my shelf wall, I can't do that, because the stand will be in the way. If the power cord was separate, I could have removed it, but alas! Elephant in the room - Privacy. Facebook on their end have promised that none of your private data leaves the Portal. They even have physica slider to turn off both your Mic and Camera (with a shutter), or just the Camera. You get an option during the setup to either allow or not the sharing of voice command data, when you interact with "Hey Portal". But if you enable Alexa you are at the mercy of Amazon!

A connected device is required for this unit to work. If your phone is off or out of network they device will not ring or notify for any inc9ming calls. Thought would work for my grandparents but...

This item is easy to set-up if you do not mind being under facebook's control. It sets up fine but has some interaction issues with connectivity and clarity. But what do you want for $70?

I bought this as a gift for my wife and she likes it for her Facebook calls with friends every weekend. Not much use for it other than that. I would recommend a tablet instead for the money.