What type of device is the Meta Portal?

The Meta Portal is a smart display.

Meta Portal was a line of smart displays and videophones designed primarily for video calling. Facebook launched the first Portal devices in 2018, before the company changed its corporate name to Meta in 2021. The family eventually included Portal, Portal+, Portal TV, and Portal Go models, with different screen sizes and form factors.

Portal devices used cameras that could automatically zoom and follow people as they moved around a room. They supported video conversations through Messenger and WhatsApp, and they incorporated Amazon's Alexa voice assistant. These features distinguished Portal from ordinary tablets, even though it used an Android-based operating system and had a screen suitable for some tablet-like tasks.

The product is commonly confused with a VR headset because Meta is strongly associated with Quest virtual-reality devices. Portal was not designed for immersive virtual reality, and it was neither a smartphone nor a conventional tablet. Its defining purpose was a stationary or semi-stationary video-calling display for homes and workplaces.

Meta discontinued the Portal line after limited commercial success and privacy criticism related to camera-equipped devices. Its classification as a smart display remains the canonical answer to the question.