It’s been a little over a week since the fine folks over at Elgato sent us over their new Stream Deck device to take a look at. You might know the company for the video game capture and livesream boxes they sell, and while the Stream Deck is a departure for them, it’s built from the ground up to compliment your livestream. This little device features 15 customizable LCD keys that allow you to launch up to 210 unique actions while you are streaming a game via Twitch or other service.
If you do a lot of streaming online you know what a pain it can be to create keyboard shortcuts to activate media like sounds and gifs, or to switch scenes while playing a game. This is even more troubling when you are streaming a game that requires a bunch of keyboard shortcuts as it is. Now you can simply program an LCD key to activate something with the press of a button, freeing up your hands and precious key bindings.
Where this sort of thing was once relegated to professional studios or those when tons of disposable case, Elgato brings it to your fingertips for the reasonable price of $150. Speaking on the price, the Stream Deck both looks and feels like a high-end product that looks pretty great sitting on your desk. And it doesn’t take up a lot of space being about as long and wide as a standard gaming mouse. Elgato also includes a groovy adjustable stand so you’ll always have it exactly where you want it.
Out of the box the software to run the Stream Deck works with Twitch and YouTube Gaming, but since this is a essentially a macro device you can program all sorts of keyboard shortcuts to activate things in other programs. What the Stream Deck does, beyond looking cool when you design the look of each LCD button, is streamline your streaming experience. No longer will you have to fiddle with the keyboard or Alt+Tab out of your game to access something.
But it’s much more than a way to drop in animated gifs during a stream (that’s probably what most of you will use it for), but offers much wider options than you might initially expect. You can set up an LCD button to welcome viewers to your Twitch stream, or set a key to show how many viewers are watching if you only have a single screen, or even send out a tweet and change the scene if you are going on break. This little magic box does so many thing.
Here at GAMBIT we stream on a few platforms on a nightly basis, but the Steam Deck gets just as much use during the day here on my desk. Because the LCD screens are programmable you can set them to do things completely outside of gaming. The 15 buttons can be set into folders and what I did was label them for everything I do. My work folder consists 9 icons for websites I visit the most that I can now launch with the press of a button, as well as a row of the gaming platforms I use (Steam, Blizzard, etc) that I can also launch with ease.
You’d be surprised what a difference this makes and means I can easily recommend the Stream Deck to those that don’t even game. I haven’t experimented much, outside of mostly gaming but with what it can do I’m excited with the possibilities. Imagine setting keyboard shortcuts from your favorite photo/video editing software suite. The more I find I can do with the Stream Deck the more impressed at the price point Elgato is offering it for.
But just how does this little wonder work? Elgato offers a website that not only hosts to software for the Stream Deck, but also to create your own personal icons. When you launch the program all you have to do is drag an action from the right panel and simply drop it on the LCD button you want. From there you can configure the actions for said action as well as drop in a custom icon (72×72 pixels) which the software will resize to fit.
Creating folders works by simply dragging and holding one icon over another. When streaming on Twitch I created two separate folders that I flip between. One holds all my animated Gifs of very dead memes, while the other hosts all my audio drops for stuff that happens while in game. Sure, I’m using it as a meme machine, but this is the internet so what did you really expect. What’s nice is that these little additions to the stream make the viewers experience a better and more engaged one.
I find it really hard to find something about the Elgato Stream Deck that I don’t like. I came into this review thinking this would be an overpriced box that did very little, but I was terribly mistaken. The Stream Deck will make your streaming experience much more fun than without it, and with the extra features that Elgato isn’t pushing, this little device will get some serious use even when not gaming.
“Must Own”
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