Review on 📸 Facebook Portal Plus - 15.6" Touch Screen Display with Alexa - Smart Video Calling - White by Jennifer Washington

Update: 01/22/2021: It's been 1.5 years and Portal+ is still running fine. My original comments still stand. Video calling is the main purpose and the best use case. It's still noisy and the camera is amazing moving to where movement or voice can be heard. Works at a distance of 25-30 meters. We have it turned on all the time, so the portal will be updated from time to time. We had to do a few reboots in those 1.5 years, but overall it works. They added a feature that I like: I can now create a "superframe" folder in my Facebook account and tell the portal to only show those photos in a loop. So now I have control over what is shown and when. I put a small number of photos in this folder and change photos regularly. I still hope that the other 2 features will appear in the near future (remote management, auto reply). I got Portal Plus about 9 months ago. It works great as a video chat device. The main benefit I saw was the large display, speakers, and voice control. This is used for grandparents who are computer illiterate and somewhat hard of hearing. The speakers are loud so you can really hear me. The volume can also be adjusted for people who are not so deaf. This volume was definitely needed. When they video chat with me, I can also hear them well, so the microphone is very sensitive. That means they're close to kitchen talk (30 feet away). The display is larger than the tablet and we put it in landscape mode (portrait mode is also possible). Our goal is a device that just sits there and doesn't need attention, like a landline phone. Several calls are taken at the same time, ie video conference, so at most we had 3 people calling at the same time. All 3 were shown at the same time. The other thing that helps the illiterate is that they can simply reply by saying "Hey, portal reply". We didn't want them to touch the device or make a call. "Superframe" is what they call the display of images when they're not on the phone. So we load it with a series of images and it cycles and displays the images somehow. Not just what I upload, but also what I add to their Facebook account. It is unclear to me when and which images are displayed. It's easy to answer if you only have a few photos, but if you have hundreds and more I don't know which ones will be chosen over time. So I add photos to her Facebook account about every week and hope to add more. Lots of other features, but it did our main job. Some features I hope will come in the future are: 1) remote management - so I can program/configure as needed 2) auto reply - so I can test them and they don't have to do anything to reply 3) Superframe is the ultimate control over what and when frames appear. Click USEFUL if you find it helpful.