I have no idea how Portal gets such strong reviews. It’s AI is severely lacking. Misses commands from five feet away, then picks up conversations from two rooms away and assumes they are random commands. Drastically misunderstands commands and launches random things constantly. Portal is as frustrating as using spellcheck. I received it as a gift, and still feel like I paid too much! Now, several of its features have. Been handed over to Alexa, so I have to remember what to ask Portal to do vs, what to ask Alexa to do. I do notice that the Alexa commands work much better, even though it’s the same device performing the tasks. Odd.

My 92 year old grandfather who lives alone, recently got woken up early in the morning by his body trembling. He was confused and just did not feel right. It took him all his his focus/strength to go the 50ft from his bed to his couch using any items of support he could find in between. When he got to his couch he tried to use his cell phone to contact family for help, but when he looked down at the phone screen, his body was blurring his vision and he could not begin to make out the buttons on his phone. With his phone essentially useless and not able to get up off the couch due to body tremors, he turned to his portal. He voice activated it and asked for it to call my mother. Upon answering his phone call, my mother quickly knew something was off and thought he might of had a stroke. From there we were able to alert local family members and called 911. He spent the better part of the week in the ICU and hospital recovering what had happened and returned home thereafter.

We had gotten the portal for him as a gift when it first came out as a means to feel virtually closer to distant family (as the commercial suggests - which he has done multiple times a week), but in this instant, if it had not been for the portal, he may not be with us today. The technology of this device gave him a means of communication when others failed. It has done wonders - thank you so much.

Portals have very high-quality hardware; I have the portal+ and the Portal standard. I bought them to communicate with my senior parents during the pandemics and in general, the quality of the video calls is good. The problem is the complexity of the setup, you need to have a Facebook account, and elderly people may not always have an account or the skills to create one. Elderly people must understand certain concepts that not always are intuitive for someone outside the tech circle like connecting to WIFI.

The second problem is that if you want to have video calls with other people, all of them must use or have Facebook/WhatsApp accounts, forget communicating with other platforms, this seriously limits your social circle.

This equipment should be thought to be used by elderly people, very easy to setup and be quite similar to a traditional telephone. Have at least the capability to talk to any phone and if possible, have video conference no matter the platform they use.

Ease of use is the only thing holding this back from being a complete 5 star device.
- Plugging in (Downward shaped plug forces bottom plug.) FB should reduce the power requirement here.
- Connecting to the Internet. Basic find signal and enter password.
- Update. A whopping 15 minutes.
- Logging in. This needs a simple registration form so Grand Parents can get in easier.
- My wife's FB account took at least 5-10 minutes before contacts fully loaded.
Overall once in, and the Portal I found somewhat institutive. I can think of tons of features I would love to see. Especially from picture albums. Ideally something my Grand Parents can easily log into Instagram and pick who they want to see in their screensaver mode.
The video following is simply amazing. Meaning you can put this device almost any where. No worries or concern about being seen in a video. Handsfree. Place in an open area that you would sit or stand frequently. And bam this device will follow you and zoom in/out.