Is a Facebook Portal a good smart display for your Grandparents?

Second article comparing [[Smart Displays for Elderly]]

Hardware

It's a good looking thing!

The Facebook portal is the most visually distinctive of the three smart displays I tried. It's a thin device, and the box reflects it. It looks a lot like a traditional photo frame, and even has a little gap around the border that I really like.

The stand makes way for the portal's coolest party trick, it's ability to flip between a portrait and landscape layout. I really enjoyed flipping it back and fourth, and the portrait layout makes it a better fit in some places where the Hub and Alexa can feel a little awkard, like on the side of a computer table.

The buttons on the Portal are the most satisfying of the three to press. The privacy shutter is also the best of the three. When closed, the portal covers the camera with a shutter. A third step disables both the camera and microphone. The privacy toggle is visible when facing the screen, and has a red highlight to indicate it is disabled. This might make sense given the complete lack of trust most people have towards Facebook.

The speakers felt pretty comparable to the other two devices - not great, not terrible - which I found quite impressive considering the small size of the device.

The biggest weakeness of the portal is its display. It's large and bright, but feels like the lowest quality of the three. I can't tell if it's he pixel density, the hardware, or something else, but it feels cheap compared to the other two. I also noticed that animations felt a little less smooth compared to the Nest Hub or Alexa, although they were still perfectly acceptable.

The screen has an ambient sensor and will switch to a darker night mode when the lights are off, but it does an awful job at this compared to the other two devices. This single issue is enough to disqualify it for my purposes, as I will be installing the display in the same room my grandmother sleeps in. What I find maddening is that the display can be manually set to a lower brightness, after which it does seem to be a little less jarring at night, but as far as I can tell there does not seem to be a way to automatically dim the screen at night and brighten it in the morning. A fix could be just a software update away, but until then I can't imagine having one in the bedroom.

Setup

Setup is where the Portal shines compared to its competitors. The portal is a totally standalone app and doesn't require a companion app or phone to set up. You plug it in, enter the WIFI password, and then log into your Facebook account via the onscreen keyboard.

You do need to create a Facebook account for your grandparents if they don't already have one, but this was a surprisingly straightforward process. Facebook only needs a name, email address, and password to create an account; it asks for a lot more, but you don't need to give it anything else.

Of the three devices, the Portal was the only device that didn't require a smart phone with a phone number to set up or activate.

Video Calling

Video calling is another area where the portal shines. The camera is very good. It has a very wide field of vue, but it smoothly zooms in and pans to focus on your face. All three devices off this pan-in functionality, but the Portal does it best of the three in my opinion.

Actually making a call is also pretty straightforward. It takes a couple taps to make a call from the display. Calling from the Portal is quite a bit easier from the Google Home. One tap on the screen shows you a list of your favorite contacts. Tap again and it asks you how you want to call them. Then tap a third time to call. This is faster than the Google Home and easier.

You can call the Portal via Facebook Messenger, and it behaves just like any other Facebook Messenger chat. I personally find this way better, as I'm still a fairly heavy Messenger user, unlike Google Duo where my Grandmother is my only contact. This could also be a downside, however, if you don't like Facebook and have chosen not to have an account.

Photo Album

The Facebook Portal does a pretty good job as a photo album.

You can have the Portal show photos from your Instagram and Facebook account, which may not make too much sense if you are managing the portal for a grandparent. However, you can also upload photos to the portal via the Portal app.

The Portal app is quite simple, but does everything it needs to do. You can select photos from your phone and upload them directly to the portal. I ran into a number of bugs when working with shared alubms, but it seems to behave a lot better when you are logged in as the owner of the portal; it's a bummer, but not the end of the world.

UI

The UI is where the Portal really falls apart as an elderly smart display.

Facebook chose a really different approach from Google with the Portal, and it has its pros and cons. I think this makes it a much worse display for the elderly, however.

Using the Portal, you get the impression Facebook is planning on building an app ecosystem out of this thing. There is an app store and you can add apps to the homepage. It really feels like a standalone product that is part of a growing ecosystem, which it kind of is if you look at the lineup.

The problem is that this really complicates the UI, and there's nothing you can do to simplify it.

When you interact with the portal, the first thing that you see is a long stream of notifications. These can't be disabled. Then you see a widget that shows your recently used apps; this cannot be dismissed or customized either, and the icons always reorder as you click them, which I'd imagine would be quite confusing.

You can change the font size up to a very large size. Google doesn't allow you to do this, and it's very thoughtful of Facebook.

The most maddening thing is that the Portal requires you to enter a PIN, and you have to enter it all over the place. My Grandmother has dementia, and the second she gets to one of these password promts she is going to be stuck

Avoid this

Between the screen that doesn't dim well at night and the PIN codes, I think the Portal is an interesting device with a lot of potential, but an absolute no-go for grandparents in its current state. I don't think it would be too hard for Facebook to get there, however. They need a way to disable the PIN if you trust your household. Ideally, a little more customization - or rather, the option to simplify - would be awesome. The hardware could do with a little upgrade, especially the dimming screens.

I'm actually the most excited about the future of the Portal as a smart display for the elderly, becuase it looks like Facebook will be opening this up to being able to build apps designed for the elderly, which I think will be huge for this kind of market. If there is anyone at Facebook who is interested in this, I would love to talk to them about it.