Portal by Facebook vs. Echo Show?

Devices & Integrations
1

Does anyone have the new Portal by Facebook? Wondering how it compares to the echo Show since it has Alexa built in and is cheaper at just $149. Am I missing something, is there something the Show can do that Portal cannot, because portal has the added facebook capabilities so seems like a better deal to me.

2

Differences are the same as any other third-party device with Alexa built-in. There are some additional things that an actual Echo can do.

  1. The portal has to use Facebook messenger to make its calls. So you can only call other people who have Facebook messenger, and you have to trust Facebook‘s privacy policies. (Insert laughter here :sunglasses:)

The echo can call any domestic phone number that your own mobile phone can call, although it won’t actually be using your phone, it’s a VOIP connection. But it means you can call businesses or new contacts or people who don’t use Facebook.

  1. The drop in feature is not available on the portal, so you can’t use it as an intercom. You can use an Amazon device as an intercom.

  2. you can’t use echo buttons with it, and they have become more useful now that they can initiate an echo routine.

  3. there are some specific music services and some specific video features which are available on Amazon devices which are not available on the portal. But the exact mix is changing all the time. You just have to know that you’ll get more options with an Amazon device.

  4. Almost certainly Facebook is going to sell information gathered from the cameras that it has in your home, because it sells everything it knows about you. My favorite really horrible example is that when you give Facebook a phone number to use for authentication if you forget your password, it will then sell that phone number along with other information it has about you to other companies.

Forget for a moment the fact that Facebook did that, since they’re under pressure to turn it off and maybe they’ve turned it off by the time you read this post. The fact that they thought about doing that is enough to make me choose not to do business with them.

2 Likes
3

That is a good point about trusting facebook with any data

1 Like
4

We should also add that the show has a zigbee coordinator built into it, As well as limited local voice operation, so it does have a whole set of smart home features that the portal does not, although if you have smartthings you probably wouldn’t use it except maybe one or two for an emergency back up system.