Launch and Positioning of Portal TV

Portal TV was introduced in September 2019 as part of Facebook’s expansion of its “Portal” family of video-calling devices. It joined the lineup alongside the second-generation Portal and new Portal Mini, building on the original Portal (10-inch screen) and Portal+ (15.6-inch screen) that launched in late 2018. Unlike its siblings which have built-in displays, Portal TV was a camera-and-microphone bar that connects to your television, effectively turning the biggest screen in your home into a smart video chat device.

Priced at $149 and shipped from November 5, 2019, Portal TV was positioned as a way to video call on the big screen. It sat on top of or below the TV and used Facebook’s AI-powered Smart Camera to automatically pan and zoom so that people could move around during calls and still stay in frame.

As a product it made a lot of sense, and had a huge pull from the market, as for group family calls, fitting everyone on a smaller screen is difficult, and as people sat further away from the screen to fit in shot, they couldn’t see the screen well anymore, and the audio become a problem. Every living room has a TV, especially ones with kids, which is almost always peoples pre-existing largest screen, and turning that TV into a way to speak to your family is most family’s ideal product.

This positioning made Portal TV a unique entrant in late 2019 – a time when smart displays from Amazon and Google were gaining traction – because it wasn’t a standalone tablet or speaker, but a TV accessory designed purely around video calling. Facebook essentially pitched it as a modern-day videophone for the living room, one that could bring far-flung friends and family into your home via the largest screen you own.

Marketing and Promotion

From the outset, Facebook (now Meta) put significant muscle behind Portal’s marketing – and Portal TV was no exception. The company spent heavily on advertising Portal devices on television; for example, in late 2018 (around the first Portal’s debut) Facebook poured about $48.6 million in U.S. TV ads over just six weeks to promote Portal, making it a top-20 TV advertiser in that period. By 2019, to counter consumer wariness, Facebook’s marketing took on a more playful, family-friendly tone as the Muppets were enlisted for Portal campaigns – starting September 2019, characters like Kermit, Miss Piggy, and others appeared in a launch ad and a series of commercials showing the Muppet gang staying connected via Portal. These lighthearted ads illustrated the Portal’s ability to bring people together in a fun way, with the tagline “If you can’t be there, feel there.” becoming a centerpiece of Portal’s branding.

In their marketing material, Facebook highlighted several benefits of Portal TV in its promotions. First and foremost was the Smart Camera that automatically frames and tracks people during a call, so you can walk around a room and continue talking naturally. This was often demoed as a differentiator that made calls feel more immersive and hands-free compared to a fixed webcam or tablet. Portal TV’s use of the television was touted as making conversations “larger-than-life,” perfect for group calls where everyone can gather on the couch instead of huddling around a phone.

Facebook also promoted Portal TV’s entertainment and assistant features. The device had Amazon Alexa built-in, so it could do things like show the weather, news, or control smart home gadgets via voice. It also supported a limited selection of streaming content: at launch, apps like Facebook Watch (for co-watching videos) and Prime Video were available, and later updates brought Netflix, Showtime, Spotify, and others into the fold. One marketing angle was the ability to “co-watch” content — e.g. enjoy a Facebook Watch show together during a video call, seeing both the content and your caller on the TV screen.

Portal TV’s promotional materials often showed a family video chatting on the TV while using AR masks or storybook animations, highlighting features like Story Time, which let grandparents read animated storybooks to kids over a video chat. Overall, Meta pitched Portal TV as an easy, joyful way to share moments across distance – “a most social smart device,” albeit one that required trusting Facebook in your living room.

User Experience and Reviews

Reactions to Portal TV were mixed, reflecting a tension between its strong video-calling experience and the baggage of the Facebook name at the time. Many users and reviewers praised the core experience of Portal TV: video calls felt impressively natural and high-quality. The Smart Camera was widely appreciated for making calls feel dynamic – reviewers noted you “don’t need to shout or keep your head within frame” as the camera automatically keeps everyone in view. A CNBC review called Portal TV “a great way to video chat with your family around the world”, with the caveat “so long as you trust Facebook”. That caveat loomed large in many evaluations. Facebook’s poor track record on privacy (e.g. the Cambridge Analytica scandal just a year prior) made people sceptical of placing an always-listening camera by their TV. To assuage fears, the device included a physical camera shutter and microphone mute switch, and Facebook promised it wouldn’t eavesdrop on calls. But as one 2019 review put it, “Facebook makes it”, and that fact alone was a barrier for many.

When judged purely on performance, Portal TV generally delivered well on its main promise. The ability to sit back on a couch and have a hands-free conversation on a big screen – rather than jockeying for position around a phone or iPad – was frequently cited as Portal TV’s killer feature. Video and audio quality on calls were generally reviewed as good, thanks to the wide-angle 12MP camera and an array of microphones that could pick up voices across the room. The device even handled group conversations well, automatically widening the field of view as more people entered the room.

That’s not to say the product was perfect. Some technical quirks surfaced: notably, users with elaborate home theatre setups (sound bars, AV receivers, etc.) experienced annoying audio echo issues on calls as the echo cancellation was tuned for TV speakers and sometimes struggled with audio lag from external speakers, causing the far end to hear themselves back. Getting audio to work robustly in any unknown user configuration is a hugely challenging task.

For less tech-savvy users (like some elderly parents), Portal TV’s interface could be occasionally confusing, especially when using anything beyond basic Messenger calls, for example while Portal TV supported apps like Zoom, the experience wasn’t as straightforward as on a regular PC. Indeed, reviewers pointed out that Portal TV wasn’t great as a general media hub. PCMag’s review found it “less successful as a media streamer,” criticizing the poor collection of streaming services available (at least at launch).

The consensus was that Portal TV did a good job at the service it was providing, in the background, the trust issue always remained. As Wired’s reviewer put it, the Portal was a fantastic tool that nevertheless came from a “massively influential company whose values don’t always align with my own”, making it a complicated purchase for the conscientious. This ambivalence – genuine love for the experience, unease with the provider – coloured much of the Portal TV’s life.

Discontinuation and the Sunset Process

In 2022, a few years after Portal TV’s launch, Meta made the decision to halt the Portal product line. The writing was on the wall by June 2022, when reports emerged that Meta would stop making consumer Portals and do a very short lived pivot of the devices toward business use.

Amid cost-cutting and a company-wide focus on the metaverse and virtual reality, Meta couldn’t justify supporting a consumer device that didn’t fit into the broader plan, and in June 2022 Meta quietly ended production of all Portal models, among other consumer product projects with “no fanfare,”.

The plan at that point was to sell off remaining inventory and discontinue consumer sales entirely. Meta confirmed in October–November 2022, around the time it laid off 11,000 employees, that it was “exiting its Portal business”altogether. The Portal TV, along with other Portal devices and even some unreleased hardware projects, were victims of this strategic retreat. The official reasoning was a shift of resources – Meta’s leadership chose to narrow its hardware ambitions and double down on VR/AR projects (like Quest headsets).

For existing Portal users, Meta promised to maintain support “as long as there is consumer demand” but cautioned that “supported features will change over time.”. In practice, Meta initiated a gradual sunset process throughout 2023 and into 2024/25, shutting down Portal services in phases. By the end of 2022, new sales stopped (Meta’s last day selling Portals was December 31, 2022), and an email went out to owners announcing Portal’s end-of-life status. Then came the feature deprecations. In spring 2023, users started seeing notices that certain capabilities would be ending. For example, photo and video sharing – the ability to send images or use the Portal as a photo message device – was slated to be turned off. Then Meta removed all messaging functionality from Portal devices, meaning you could no longer send photos or typed messages from the Portal. Around the same time, Meta disabled the “Facebook Live” and “Watch Together” features on Portal. These had been selling points: Watch Together allowed co-viewing videos during calls, and Facebook Live let you use the Portal as a camera for live broadcasts – their removal was a blow to those who enjoyed them.

Meta also began pulling support for third-party apps. In June 2023, a slew of apps were discontinued on Portal: workplace productivity apps like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and then some consumer apps got axed.

Portal’s own voice assistant features were next on the chopping block. Meta had already removed the “Hey Facebook” wake word earlier (due to the Meta rebranding) and reverted to “Hey Portal” only. But in late 2024, Meta signaled that all voice assistant support would cease. As of January 31, 2025, the “Hey Portal” voice command was scheduled to stop working, and integration with Amazon’s Alexa was to be discontinued entirely. At the same time. Essentially, by 2025 the Portal devices would have no smart assistant capabilities, no third-party apps, and no social sharing features left – they would only function as bare-bones video calling screens for Messenger and WhatsApp.

Meta’s handling of the shutdown drew criticism from the small but devoted user base that had come to rely on Portals. Some features were turned off with minimal notice or explanation, leaving users feeling frustrated. For instance, many families loved the AR Story Time feature (where the caller could appear with animated masks and filters to entertain kids), but by early 2025 most of the story filters had quietly disappeared, with only a handful remaining​

Meta’s approach was essentially to incrementally “brick” the device’s smarter functions, presumably to reduce cloud costs and third-party dependencies, while keeping core video chat working for a while longer. And eventually removing apps like Spotify, Plex, and Tidal.

It’s worth noting Meta did continue to issue system security updates during this sunset (they pledged to maintain critical patches for some time). However, for many users the damage was done – the Portal that had once been a multi-purpose communication hub had been reduced to a very limited device. Community forums sprung up with pleas to Meta to unlock the Portals (allowing custom apps or repurposing) since they were now effectively e-waste for anyone who wanted more than just simple calls. A petition on Change.org garnered some attention, urging Meta to release an update to open up the OS so that hobbyists could extend the life of the hardware. As of early 2025, Meta had not done so, and the Portal TVs and their kin were in a slow march toward obsolescence.

In hindsight, the phased shutdown – rather than an abrupt termination – was likely Meta’s way to honour enterprise contracts and avoid a PR backlash from immediately bricking devices. But it also strung users along, and each update that quietly removed functions felt like a small betrayal to those who had integrated Portal into their daily lives.

Current State and Alternatives for Portal Users

 Today, in 2025, the Facebook/Meta Portal TV is effectively a dead product walking. Its core functionality – Messenger and WhatsApp video calling – remains operational as of early 2025, but with no guarantees for how much longer. Almost every ancillary feature has been discontinued or will be shortly. “Hey Portal” no longer responds, Alexa is gone, and you won’t find apps for news, music, or streaming on it anymore​

The good news is that the idea of a dedicated video-calling from the TV, and connected with family from the living room hasn’t entirely died with Portal TV. One modern alternative is called Higlo, which offers similar functionality to Portal TV but with expanded features that Portal never had. While avoiding sounding like an advertisement, Higlo is positioning itself as the spiritual successors to Portal TV: promising the same “in the room” feeling of seeing loved ones on your television, with much richer and easier to use interface, focusing on user privacy, and providing ongoing support.