
That said, it thrives in public spaces like living rooms and kitchens. Plus, the ultrawide lens creates a fisheye effect if you set it too close.
Facebook portal Pc#
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. 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. The Portal Go’s 12MP camera doesn’t capture the standard head-and-shoulders pictures of a PC webcam.

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 Photos generally look sharp and bright in digital photo-frame mode and in the photos app. Still, most content looks fine on the screen. 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. 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. The 8.5- by 5.31-inch screen outputs at an extra-wide 800 x 1280 resolution. The Portal Go’s display is one of its quirkier qualities. The Facebook Portal Go doubles as a digital photo frame. 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.

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. The Portal Go features a 44 Watt-hour battery, allowing you to carry it around and position it independent of power. 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.Ĭasual, in this case, also means portable. 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. When you see the Facebook Portal Go with the screen off, it resembles a big doorstop. SEE IT The Facebook Portal Go’s design and features (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.
Facebook portal portable#
It offers access to a limited app library, facilitating some secondary uses, including a portable smart speaker, digital photo frame, and web-enabled cookbook. 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. Suddenly, a flexible camera-enabled screen made for kitchens and living rooms seems a lot more appealing.Ī Portal Go, the more casual of the company’s two new video-calling devices, fills the flex screen role nicely. 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. Your phone probably has similar capabilities. On the one hand, you probably already have a computer with a webcam lying around for work and/or school. 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. We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs.
