Picked up a pair of Nucleus Intercoms:
https://nucleuslife.com/
They dropped the price to $149 temporarily, which is a pretty nice deal. This is basically the Roku of video chat. I sent one to my grandma to do easy video chat with her since we live far apart. Initial thoughts:
1. It's pretty much like a thick iPad Mini.
2. Both of my units have a greenish tint to the picture, not sure if it's color-adjustable.
3. Lens is kind of a fisheye, but if your face is in view, it's normal.
4. Video quality is kinda meh, like 720p Youtube that's having trouble streaming.
5. Not a fan of the speakers, sound like crappy laptop speakers. Not very loud either (again, for grandma usage).
6. Wish it had a battery, but that's the tradeoff for being pretty lightweight.
7. Comes with a wall-mount system & a kickstand. Kickstand is non-adjustable, so you can't tweak the angle. Both are made out of raw metal - gets the job done but seems like a little plastic kickstand with an angle adjustment would have been nicer.
8. They added Amazon Alexa support, although I've read the mics don't do anywhere near as good of a job as the Echo/Dot/Taps do (some people were saying they had to yell to get Alexa to recognize their voice commands).
9. Has auto-answer available, for convenience
10. Has a physical sliding lens cover, for privacy
11. They do have a smartphone app, if other family members want to call in from non-Nucleus devices
I bought it specifically to use to video-call an elderly person, so for $300 for the pair, I'm pretty happy with it overall because I got two for less than the price of one iPad Mini, which is great, and the interface is super easy to use for the aging population. Pairing additional units is as simple as entering in a code & then confirming an email. You can do your house plus remote callers (although I just set both of mine up as in-house for convenience, so she wouldn't have to press the Remote tab) & do either voice or voice & video calls.
I've had my eye on these for awhile as a smarthome feature. Problem is twofold, however: one, I don't have a big enough place to really warrant them, and two, everyone has their own cell phone. It might be cool if these tied into like the Ring doorbell & some outdoor security cameras, because then it'd be uber-convenient to have a 100% integrated video system for calling & survelliance, but the mic/camera/speakers are just kind of mediocre compared to what's readily available these days, so meh. I do like it for my intended purpose (easily calling grandma via video) & while it was pricey, again I was happy that two units was cheaper than one iPad, which would have been too much of a technology barrier for my grandma to use at this point in her life.
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