The new Portals
The 15.6-inch Portal+ is still available in the line, but the official price is now $279. The Standard Portal with the 10-inch screen drops by $20 to $179, which isn’t a huge dip, but both products still likely have room to move when the holiday shopping season kicks into gear. The new Portals, however, drop the barrier for entry into Facebook’s platform quite a bit. The portal Mini, which sports an 8-inch screen, is just $129 and gets you most of the features from the standard Portal. The $149 Portal TV doesn’t have as screen at all. Rather, it connects to your TV and turns the biggest display in your house into a connected smart screen. Across the board, Facebook has added a switch to each device that allows users to turn off the camera by itself, or kill both the camera and mic completely. It’s an obvious nod to the understandable security concerns buyers may have about putting a connected camera in their homes, especially one made by Facebook Facebook hasn’t released any hard sales numbers for the Portal devices at this point, but this kind of refresh and new product announcement requires a fairly serious investment that reflects the company’s growing interest in video chatting.
What else is out there?
The larger Echo Show with a 10-inch screen has a 10-inch screen and more powerful speakers, as well as a built-in Zigbee hub, which allows it to connect to a wide range of smart home devices to integrate them with the Alea voice assistant. Just last week, we reviewed the Google Nest Hub Max, which lines up directly in competition with the Echo Show. The Hub Max commands the same $229 price tag, and while it lacks some smart home flexibility from the Echo Show, Google’s offering has facial recognition and the ability to track you as you move around the room, which you’ll also find in the pricey Portal+.
