Elgato Stream Deck Review: A Social Gamer’s Ultimate Command Center

If you’re thinking about starting up a let’s play channel or streaming channel of your own, I mean seriously considering it, then you’ve very likely encountered a few of the roadblocks that stand between you and your potential community. If you’re an experienced streamer, then you know that staying engaged with your community is the most important part of your job. Anyone can sit down and play games, but it takes talent and the right tools to engage and manage the community that will keep you thriving.

When it comes to managing those nitty-gritty operations, you need your tools to be as non-intrusive and simply functional as possible. That’s where the Stream Deck comes in. This is a tool that will give back to you exactly what you put into it. Out of the box this unassuming little rectangle comes equipped with some pre-programmed hotkeys to manage your Elgato Game Capture software and fire off some Twitch and Social commands on the fly, but over time, this will become your ultimate command center.

So let’s get down to it. Is this something you really need as a novice or pro streamer? Let’s go over the function of the device, the quality, custom features and everything else you might need to know.

What’s the point of the thing?

You can find some flowery words on Elgato’s website or from a few other reviewers, but I’m going to shoot straight with you. The Stream Deck is a no-nonsense, highly functional hotkey hub which is designed to integrate with all of the most powerful and most popular streaming software.

Setting up for a stream, initiating a stream, and maintaining a stream while engaging with your viewers can be hard work, and the Stream Deck is all about streamlining the process from beginning to end, freeing you up for what’s most important: the game you’re playing, and your fans.

Why waste time hitting up your Twitter and Facebook pages to type out invitations and links to your stream? Tap your Facebook button and Twitter button on the Stream deck, pre-set with your own custom messages and links to your channel, and be done with it. Don’t worry about shuffling through multiple windows to set up your scene and start your stream in Elgato’s software before you start playing. Just tap your pre-set scene and the stream button on the Stream Deck and it’s taken care of automatically.

Even if you’re not livestreaming, the Stream Deck proves to be immensely useful. I was capturing some ARMS gameplay for work, for example, and I had my Stream Deck sitting next to my gaming chair on a drink table. After a particularly impressive match that I wanted to record, instead of getting out of my chair and clicking through some windows and dragging back sliders to record my last bits of gameplay, I simply hit my “flashback record” key on the Stream Deck. That’s all I needed. I knew that last five minutes of my gameplay had been recorded and set aside to process, and I could go on with my game without any interruption.

Literally every facet of your game streaming and game capturing workload is streamlined through the Stream Deck’s customizable and beautifully lighted buttons. From simple things like muting and unmuting your mic, to what might be more time-consuming tasks like inviting your social media following to a stream or firing off the perfect gif to say thank you to a new subscriber… All of that busywork is consolidated to the push of a button, and it’s something you don’t realize you need until you have it, literally, at your fingertips.

Build Quality

Overall I’m incredibly pleased by the design and quality of the product. It’s not exactly cheap at $150, and you’re mainly paying for function and not form. There are a few changes I might make. The buttons feel nice and the actuation is pleasant, but it’s a little too easy to press what feels like a little too firmly into the back-screens. You know that wave of color that you used to love sending from your old laptop screens with your finger as a kid? You’ll see that bending of light from time to time when pushing these buttons, and I worry that months of mindless use from heavy-handed users may eventually damage the back-screen.

While I’m glad the Stream Deck’s design is simple (a tool should never concede function to form), I have to wonder if the average consumer, after spending $150 and taking this out of the box, will feel like his or her money was well spent. First-impressions last, and the Stream Deck does come out feeling, well, extremely plastic and light. Again, for the most part that makes it highly functional and convenient when traveling, but it is something I noticed.

It would have also been nice to have the option to remove the USB cable, which is attached to the back of the unit. When traveling you’ll either have to wrap the cable around your Stream Deck or bunch it up.

Customization

This is my favorite part of the Stream Deck. Each one of its 15 buttons, apart from being highly programmable, is also aesthetically customizable. You can make these buttons look any way you want to, and the software that comes with your Stream Deck (which is lean) offers a really robust icon creation suite. When you plug up your Stream Deck it will look something like this out of the box:

With about 20 minutes of tinkering, I tricked mine out for my ARMS stream and had a blast doing so:

I did this without watching any tutorials or reading any how-tos. It was all straight-forward and easy to manage. You’re able to export and import custom layouts with a few simple clicks, so I can already see custom layouts in my future for most of the games I play. The Stream Deck really feels like your own personal toolkit once you deck it out to look just right.

Conclusion

If you have that buck-fifty to spare, Elgato’s Stream Deck is an incredibly functional tool for novice and veteran streamers alike. This device is the functional equivalent to a blank canvas, and before long you’ll have a command center worthy of the name, and worthy of your investment.

This won’t change how you stream. That’s still all about you. This just allows you to play your games and reach out to the people who support you with ease and flair. This takes the mundane, tedious work out of your daily setup, reach out, and stream management, and that’s what makes it special. Plus, you know, it just looks really damn cool.