New video calling smart speakers will start shipping next month
Facebook has announced two new video calling smart speakers, the Portal Go and Portal Plus.
One is a new line, the Portal Go. The Portal Plus is an update to an existing video caller, with some interesting changes.
However, of the two the Portal Go is more likely to grab your interest. This is a smart speaker with a screen, made for video chats, but it also has a battery — something not usually seen in smart displays.
It’s the first Facebook Portal that lets you carry the thing around the house without worrying about trailing power adapters.
A grip indent sits on its back to make the process feel natural, even though this is a wedge-shaped 1.4kg gadget, not a slim and ultra-light tablet.
Battery life is rated at five hours for video, 14 for streamed audio, and the Portal Go sits on a charging plate when not running off its own battery. There’s no need to unplug it in the normal way to “go portable”.
Other Portal Go features are largely familiar. It has a 125-degree 12-megapixel camera with the usual Portal ability to crop into and follow the people on a call, so it looks as though a cinematographer is working on your video chats.
The Portal Go has a 4-mic array, a 10-inch, 1280 x 800 pixel, screen touchscreen and sliders to block the camera and disable the microphones.
There are two 5W drivers for audio and a separate 20W subwoofer, so you can expect the sound to offer a healthy amount of bass.
Portability is the only headline-grabber here, but it does set the Portal Go apart from Amazon’s popular Echo Show 8.
That is perhaps the closest rival in terms of price, as the Portal Go+ costs £199.
Facebook’s Portal Plus
The Portal Plus is much less of an impulse purchase at £349, and is not a straight upgrade from the last-generation smart display with the same name.
This new version has a smaller screen, 14 inches across instead of 15.6. However, Facebook has increased screen resolution from a Full HD 1080p to a QuadHD one – that’s 2160 x 1440 pixels.
It appears to have a camera similar to the Portal Go’s, with a 12-megapixel sensor, although its effective field of view is slightly wider at 131 degrees.
The old Portal Plus let you twist the display by 90 degrees, for video chats similar to what you’d see when holding your phone upright. But the screen now tilts a up and down a bit instead.
We would not be surprised to hear if this change was made after Facebook found relatively few Portal Plus owners actually used the feature.
The price seems bold when the Portal range reportedly sold quite poorly until coronavirus saw us all stuck at home for months.
And even then sales likely didn’t touch Amazon’s, as suggested by the deep discounts of the range over its lifespan. However, Facebook may aim for a new audience with the Portal Plus.
Support for Microsoft Teams is coming in December, and Portal for Business will let companies remotely manage Portals sent to their employees.
Portals are going Pro. We’re not in love with the concept, but a Portal+ will certainly offer better image quality for your work meetings than the average laptop webcam.
The Facebook Portal Go and Portal Plus are available to pre-order now and will start shipping from 19 October.
