In a stay-at-home world, a self-contained display-and-webcam combo device made specifically for sending and receiving video calls—videophones, if you will—feels like both an extravagance and a necessity. On the one hand, you probably already have a computer with a webcam lying around for work and/or school. Your phone probably has similar capabilities. On the other, you don’t want to sit in your workspace all day, and using a phone isn’t great for long, leisurely conversations with friends and family. Suddenly, a flexible camera-enabled screen made for kitchens and living rooms seems a lot more appealing.
A Portal Go, the more casual of the company’s two new video-calling devices, fills the flex screen role nicely. With an extra-wide 10-inch display, a 12MP webcam with a 120-degree field-of-view, and strong stereo sound, it has everything you need for a very comfortable, easy-going video-call setup. It offers access to a limited app library, facilitating some secondary uses, including a portable smart speaker, digital photo frame, and web-enabled cookbook. (There’s a web browser, too, opening the doors to a much wider range of tools.) Though there’s certainly room for growth, the Facebook Portal Go certainly makes a strong case for a whole world of devices that I’d mostly written off.
The Facebook Portal Go’s design and features
When you see the Facebook Portal Go with the screen off, it resembles a big doorstop. Measuring 10.10 by 7.44 by 3.00 inches (WDH), the wedge is covered with a grey fabric that gives it sort of a housewares kind of vibe. That’s by design, of course: The Go is the casual Portal as opposed to the less mobile, but more powerful Portal+—and meant to blend in with couches and cushions and countertops.
Casual, in this case, also means portable. The Portal Go features a 44 Watt-hour battery, allowing you to carry it around and position it independent of power. It weighs just 3.23 pounds and even has a built-in handle, so it’s very easy to lug it around the house or even bring it with you on a trip. Still, finding it a home near an outlet would be a wise decision, as it should only last through 5 hours of video calls or 13 hours of audio-only calls.
How does the picture look?
The Portal Go’s display is one of its quirkier qualities. The 8.5- by 5.31-inch screen outputs at an extra-wide 800 x 1280 resolution. That technically counts as HD, but it isn’t quite as sharp as what you’d get with a PC, TV, or flagship smartphone thanks to relatively low pixel density. If you decide to watch Netflix, YouTube, or any other streaming content, it will likely downshift to 720p, making it less than stellar for video content.
Still, most content looks fine on the screen. Photos generally look sharp and bright in digital photo-frame mode and in the photos app. Images from the web look similarly “precise.” (It likely helps that you’re often looking at the 10-inch screen from far away compared to a phone or PC monitor.)
A camera that looks around
The Portal Go’s 12MP camera doesn’t capture the standard head-and-shoulders pictures of a PC webcam. It features a 125-degree ultrawide field-of-view, allowing for you to capture much more of your surroundings, and/or easily fit multiple people on the call. It’s no replacement for a great PC webcam; Sitting the Portal on my desk, it captures my whole upper torso and much of the office behind me—much more than the precisely positioned and tightly cropped stream from PC webcam. Plus, the ultrawide lens creates a fisheye effect if you set it too close. That’s not flattering for anyone.
That said, it thrives in public spaces like living rooms and kitchens. If I set it on my living room coffee table, it can capture my whole couch, allowing three people to comfortably hang out on a call. In a small-to-medium kitchen, you can probably fit two to four people in a shot. Most webcams are meant to capture a single person sitting at a desk so, if nothing else, this gives you a wider range of options.
The Portal Go is designed to be a “set it and forget it” camera solution. You can’t adjust the camera’s focus or framing beyond moving the device itself. The camera adjusts itself. The Portal Go can use its ultrawide lens to lightly shift and pan its picture, centering around the subject(s) of a video call or photo booth session. The camera also features adaptive lighting, which changes the color temperature to match the lighting in the room.
What about the Facebook Portal Go sound?
Surprisingly, the Portal Go really excels in the audio department. It features two 5W stereo speakers on either side and a 20W subwoofer, which provides a surprisingly crisp sound and booming bass. It makes for clear audio in video calls but really shines when using the speaker for music via the Spotify and Pandora apps, or another web-based music player. It’s no replacement for a home theater system, but the Portal Go can absolutely keep up with (or, more likely, replace) an audio-only smart speaker.
Going the other way, the Facebook Portal Go uses a four-mic array to pick up accurate chatter within its larger than average viewing range. The quality is clear but easily muddied by any background noise. (Not surprising, considering there’s no boom or means of limiting ambient sound.) In addition to using it for calls, the Portal Go supports both the Facebook virtual assistant and Amazon Alexa, so you can get the full smart speaker experience. In general, I found the mics picked up my random requests to hear the weather and bite-sized news reports so long as I’m in the same room.
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