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

Bought this as an xmas gift for the wife and one for our son & daughter in law who live across the country. Best money I've spent in a while. They both love it. Used to video chat once or twice a week via phone to stay in touch and see the 1 1/2yr old grandson. Needless to say the phone version sucks because half the time you're looking at the ceiling or the floor. Now we video chat 5-6 times a week every night at bath time. We have ours set up on the coffee table and they set theirs up across the bathroom on the counter. So now every night its "let's go take your bath and call grandma ". We like that it auto focuses on whoever is in the room. It stays focused on the grandson as he plays in the tub but automatically zooms out to add the daughter in law in the video also if she starts talking or steps further into the room. Also not to bulky to take along if we go out to visit other family close by or if we go overnight someplace. Just plug it in and connect to the wifi and wait for the call. Now we're a part of his every day life even though they're 1400 miles away. I personally not one for all this new tech crap, but being able to see and talk to the grandbaby and family every day is well worth the investment. Plus it's easy enough I can operate it without any help.

Super easy to use and set up. My 85 year old grandfather who has never used facebook before or a laptop, ipad, smartphone or anything finds it easy to use! We did have to create him a facebook account to use this, but thats all the account is used for. Picture quality is amazing and it makes living so far away from family so much better! Only downside is it really isn't mobile. It has to be plugged in at all times to use, and there isn't a way to use a portable charger with it. You can chat with up to 6 people at a time which is nice and it really does follow you and zoom in and out when more people join in the chat. Great product!

Best item ever I bought mom who’s in a nursing home with dementia it allows us to talk to each other everyday

My dad is horrible with technology. In fact, he has trouble operating his flip phone. So I figured this would be the best way to communicate face to face with him using my phone. I had to set up a Facebook profile for him. Now other friends and family can easily call him. I wanted something where it can serve one purpose, video calling. Alexa has too many functions and I was scared he would accidentally play music at level 10 volume and freak out. The portal, however, can be set for video calling only. I practiced a few times with him, and taped a set of instructions at his head board on his bed. He was able to figure out how to use it. I will start with the cons. It recognized my voice, my moms, my sisters, and nieces voice to the point where we could whisper at it. For some odd reason it would not recognize my fathers voice even though he is speaking clearly to it. It is a struggle for him to get portal to recognize his voice when he says "hey portal". The set up was kind of a head ache but we managed to get it working. When I tested it in my office, no problem. The nursing home, on the other hand, not so much. It took about 30min messing with it until randomly it stated working. I still have no idea what we did (I'm a pretty tech savvy person). I think its just a software glitch. Now the pros It has great resolution. You can clearly see everyone laying down in bed with it positioned at the end of the bed. Sound is good. I can hear him clearly and he can hear me clearly Being able to make it for video calls only is great. Makes it easy to use with the elderly. My father can see updated Facebook pictures while sitting idle. It like a digital picture frame at the end of his bed. The camera changes poison and focuses on him if he moves around. The build quality seems pretty nice.

My parents live very far away and due to their age, they are not the best with technology. I was able to buy 2 devices on mothers day on the discount that they ran. Now I cook while talking to my mom, which is something that the distance had made impossible. The camera follows you and the sound quality is very, very impressive -- my mom can hear me perfectly no matter where I go. It's too bad that it's not battery powered and you can't disconnect and take it with you to different rooms, but the mount is slick and the touch screen is great. I keep my sound and camera turned off at all times because I don't see the need to keep it on, but it would not be such a huge problem since all of our information is already completely in the open, so this would not make it worse. I highly recommend it if you have elderly family that you'd like to talk and see in a regular basis.

This has proved to be an excellent way to keep members of my family connected (including the elderly). A video chat is so far superior than a voice chat for "being there" and my elderly mom loves that she can see three of her kids that are all in different parts of the country at once. Certainly being a a Facebook device comes with a certain amount of potential privacy baggage but to that I'd suggest that's at least partly a matter of personal responsibility. If you don't want people to know things about you, don't put it on Facebook. And to those who give the device low ratings because "It's only a video chat device", how can you blame the device or the manufacturer for that? That's all the Facebook claimed it to be. If you were expecting more, that's on you. It's like giving your car a low rating because "it only lets me drive on the road, I can't fly with it!!!". It would be entirely different if the vendor made claims that weren't true. The device is super easy to set up, the audio and video quality are fantastic. The fact that the camera automatically moves around to follow you is also very cool. And if you're afraid the thing is spying on your when you're not using it, turn it off!

Other customers should know that this device is being phased out by Facebook messenger. My father has one of the original ones bought in 2018. It has slowly been losing features so I purchased a new one for him. The one delivered was also manufactured in 2018...so it's been sitting there waiting to be sold. The same features that no longer work on dad's no longer work on the new one. It came up with a message on the device saying as of January more features will be inoperable. I returned it immediately for a full refund. I cannot believe they are still selling these when they will soon be obsolete. Save yourself the money and trouble....don't purchase this older product which will soon be phased out anyway.

I would have never asked for or purchased one of these but we got 2 for Christmas. I seriously thought about exchanging them for something else because I wasn't interested in a FaceBook camera. I decided to give it a try and wow did it win me over. We live away from all our family and video chat with them often and this device makes it so much easier. The camera being able to follow you around during a call and the fact that it's done locally on the device and none of that data is being processed by Facebook's servers is totally awesome! I believe most people will hesitate to buy this because of the mishandling of user info that Facebook is known for but this is an simple awesome piece of technology that is awesome for staying connected to love ones.

Excellent!

I shopped around and ordered various devices off Amazon only to have had to return them. This is worth the money. Picture is clear as well as sound. We love the Alexa feature too. Screen is great size. For my senior mother who has dementia and she has remembered how to answer family FaceTime calls too. Love this!!