Facebook is the latest company to get into the smart speaker game. However, similarly to how Apple marketed their HomePod as a high-end speaker first, Facebook is marketing the Portal as a video chat device.

There are several unique features that the Portal has that make it a strong contender as a smart display for your home. So I’m going to go through the design and features of the Portal and at the end I’ll you know if it’s worth buying or not.

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Facebook Portal – Hardware

Starting with the design it comes in either white or black and is dominated by its 10” screen. It has a resolution of 1280 x 800 and great viewing angles; for what it’s made for, it is perfect.

The screen sits atop twin speakers that are very clearly tuned for voice over anything else. Music or videos sound ok, but lack bass, so I wouldn’t get it to be your primary kitchen speaker, however it is loud enough to fill the room, and more importantly it is loud enough that you can don’t necessarily have to keep the volume on max to hear the person you’re chatting with.

Above the screen sits a 12MP, 140 degree fish eye camera, which is the star of the show. At the very top of the enclosure you have three buttons, Camera/Microphone shutoff, and volume up/down.

Facebook states that when you press the camera/microphone shutoff button that the circuitry physically disconnects the camera so that there is no way of it being tampered with. This is a strong move in regards to privacy (which will be addressed later), and one that is both appreciated, but also necessary.

Overall the build quality is decent, it’s not super cheap plastic, and feels solid; but I can’t help but feel that it looks like a first gen product. It mainly just appears big and bulky, like it was inspired by the beluga whale. It’s not ugly per se, but it tends to stand out in the room and compared to the Google Home Hub and Echo Show I definitely think it’s the worst design (though admittedly not by much compared to the Echo Show).

Facebook Portal – Software

Let’s step back to the camera. Like I said, it’s the star of the show. The quality is excellent, though obviously this will vary depending on your internet connection. But beyond just the camera, is the software the camera uses to make the video chatting experience a class of its own.

Thanks to the 140-degree field of view, the Portal has no problem always keeping you in frame. So, as you walk around your kitchen or room, the camera can track you and keep you in frame so the person on the other end never has to wonder where you went. It also does a great job of zooming in and out depending on how close you are to the Portal, and if other people enter the room, it will automatically zoom out to fit them in the frame.

Facebook is heavily advertising this as a communication / video calling device before anything else; and for good reason. There really isn’t any other video calling experience like it.

The calling is currently only users on the Facebook platform, which is approximately 2 billion people, so you’re probably covered. When you start up the Portal, you sign in with your Facebook account, and it will show your most common contacts on the main screen, and allows you to initiate calls to them with either the built in AI or by tapping on their face. They can answer on their phones, computers, or whatever device they’re signed in to Facebook on.

There are also story mode features that overlay graphics while you tell a story, as a way of connecting kids with family members, like grandparents reading a bedtime story to their grandkids. At first glance they might seem gimmicky, but I found them to be quite immersive, so I’m sure families will really enjoy that feature. I just hope that they update them regularly, because I’m not sure any kid wants to hear the Three Little Piggies on repeat.

As for the rest of the software that can be found on the Portal, the screen saver can be set up to show a slide show of photos that you’re tagged in, or that you and your friends are tagged in. A perfectly reasonable setting that I assume most people will like. Alternately, you can just have pictures of landscapes and the like.

Facebook Portal – Smart Home

If you scroll over, it will show you the smart home portion of things. Here you can go through the different applications that the Portal supports and there aren’t many. You’ve got the usual suspects like Pandora, Spotify, Youtube, which work fine but aren’t great.

I’m personally not a big fan of using the touchscreen on these smart display devices, since I really would prefer to use them only with voice. If I’m going to use a touchscreen, I’m going to just use my iPad.

Voice activation is good enough, but YouTube for example is web-based, and not a native application. Let me tell you, it’s garbage. This is more a fault of Amazon and Google, but it’s still detrimental to the end user who gets a bad experience.

Smart home compatibility is almost equal to that of any Echo device. Since you sign in with your Alexa / Amazon account, anything you have configured in the Alexa app continues right over on the Portal. I was able to use all my Hue lights with no issue, including custom scenes, my Ecobee thermostat also worked fine. However, my Arlo security camera feed didn’t work.

There were certain subtle differences in Alexa’s abilities on the Portal vs the Echo Show that I have. For example, when I have it do my Flash briefing, it only plays the audio portion of each segment. So on the Echo Show I’ll see a full news video clip, whereas on the Portal I only get the audio.

This sort of Alexa-lite implementation on the Portal is just a huge let down. It’s also borderline deceiving, because any potential buyer is going into it assuming it can do all the same things their other Echo devices can do, but that’s not the case. I’m not entirely sure if this is Facebook’s or Amazon’s fault, but it’s shitty either way.

Possibly my biggest grievance, and this is true of the Google Home Hub as well, is that the screen saver is a slideshow on pictures, and you can’t enable suggested topics or prompts like you can on the Echo Show.

My favorite part of the Echo Show is the random news stories and trivia headlines that will cycle through the screen, encouraging me to engage with it; whereas on the Portal, the most I’ve seen is hints at creating timers and basic functions like that.

We have yet to see how invested Facebook is going to be in this device, I don’t think it will sell particularly well; but software updates for WhatsApp and Instagram functionality would be nice to see.

A cycle of your newest Instagram stories or posts would be pretty cool I think, and perhaps even creating Live stories. WhatsApp seems like a no brainer since it’s owned by Facebook and supports video chats.

Facebook Portal – Privacy / Conclusion

This brings us to the Golden Question.

Should you buy the Facebook Portal?

Just based off the information we just went over, it would seem like a reasonable purchase, even if it is $199. This price puts it in the same category as the Echo Show or Lenovo Smart Display. The Facebook Portal offers the best video calling experience you can get; however the smart home skills are lackluster.

BUT we haven’t gotten to the privacy issues yet.

Facebook states that everything is end to end encrypted, and all the AI tools run locally on the machine. They don’t hear or see anything you do while on a call.

However, they also collect metadata, such as who you call, when you call them, and how long you talk for.

This is the current stance, and is obviously subject to change.

But we’ve also come to know that Facebook is horrendously irresponsible with your private data. If all they used your data for was to sell you random products like Google or Amazon that would be one thing, but they’ve proven to be far worse than that.

Maybe one day they will redeem themselves, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

For that reason alone, I cannot recommend anyone get the Portal for their house, no matter how good the video calling experience is.