Facebook has made a big announcement regarding its Portal family of smart home products. The original Portal and Portal+ have a new fresh look. Facebook also announced a smaller version called the Portal Mini, and a smart camera to connect to your television called Portal TV. If you’re interested in learning all about Facebook’s new line of feature rich smart displays, just keep on reading!
Facebook Portal and Portal +
You likely already know about the Facebook Portal 10.1″ and Facebook Portal+ 15.6″ (both with Amazon Alexa and a ton of other useful features), but now Facebook has added some key new members to the family. These new additions are discussed individually below, but each new Portal model basically gives you the same great features and benefits as the others, only in different sizes.
For instance, both Smart Camera and Smart Sound (features that adapt to your movements during video phone calls to keep you always in frame and clearly being heard even when moving around) are available on all models. You can easily turn both of these off for privacy at any time.
Then there’s the Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp compatibility of all models, photo display capabilities, and many other features that you will enjoy no matter which new Facebook Portal device you choose. Let’s briefly look at each new Portal model so you can see what you’ll be getting.
Portal 10″ (2nd Generation) with Alexa
The Facebook Portal 10.1″ is a beautiful update to an already excellent smart display. Among its features are the ability to be placed in either the landscape or portrait positions, thus enhancing Facebook’s Superframe feature (a feature that displays your Facebook and Instagram photos, as well as those from your smart phone’s camera, when you’re not in the middle of a video call).
This feature also shows which of your Facebook contacts is currently available online and provides birthday reminders for them, helping to prevent you from forgetting anyone’s birthday.
Another great thing about these new Facebook Portal models is that their screens can adapt to the lighting and colour in any room. This way, your photos will always look great, no matter the lighting conditions.
Portal Mini 8″ (with Alexa)
The new Facebook Portal Mini is every bit the portal to the vast reservoir of knowledge known as the Internet that earlier (and larger) editions of the Portal are. At just 8 inches in screen size, the Portal Mini gives up nothing but a little bit of size, meaning it easily fits into places that its larger cousins may not. As the compact version of the facebook Portal, this model is basically the one for those who know that good things come in small packages!
Facebook Portal TV
With Facebook Portal TV, now you can do all the cool things that any Portal device can do, only bigger! And that’s because your TV serves as the screen for this new incarnation of the display. With it, you’ll be able to make Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp video phone calls to family and friends in massive (and amazing) quality, view your photos as if they were hanging in an art gallery, and use the built-in Amazon Alexa voice assistant in innumerable ways—including voice based web searches and hands free control of your compatible smart home devices.
Other benefits of Facebook’s Portal TV include the full privacy of easily disabling your device’s microphone and camera, as well as the cool Story Time feature, which integrates you into all of your child’s favourite stories by making you one of the main characters. This AR (alternate reality) visual effect may be seen in action in the main image at the top of this page.
For a comprehensive look at all the new and existing Facebook Portal models, visit Best Buy’s Portal Hub and check out what’s available today!
