The Elgato Stream Deck XL is certainly a unique product from a company that specialises in a very niche market, however, outside of streaming, the Stream Deck range offers much more usability than just improving the quality of your streams. This is a powerful tool that, if unleashed correctly, can really streamline your workflow.
Firstly, the build quality of the device is excellent, we love Elgato’s choice to use a removeable USB Type-C cable and the rock-solid non-slip base with magnetic attachment helps to keep the device steady and in place, however, it’s not perfect and some care does still need to be taken to prevent it being pushed around your desk. The buttons feel excellent and are spaced nicely with a lovely concave shape but we’d really like to see the screen below not suffer any colour shifting when pressed, which signals some damage to the LCD below may occur.
Moving onto the software, Elgato have some a stellar job on this, so far. The built-in application tie-ins gives any budding or well-established Streamer the tools they require to produce beautiful and professional quality streams without memorising tens or hundreds of key shortcuts, many of which may interfere with their game, but it also gives music producers, video editors, content creators and, well, almost anyone a useful piece of software to build up their own Macros and shortcuts. However, now to explain the “so far” caveat. Elgato provide their Key Creator tool to produce high quality icons for your device but it’s not built into the software, instead relying on your internet browser to create the icons, with a laborious method of adding them to keys on the device. The software also offers no way of backing up your current loadout; you could spend tens of hours perfecting and honing your device to operate perfectly but that could all be lost without a backup ability. We also can’t wait to see what else the community develops thanks to Elgato opening the device up to Third Party plugins.
Now, onto the price. At £230/$250, it certainly isn’t cheap but if you’re producing content on a daily basis and require a unique, and potentially very powerful tool, then that cost likely pales into insignificance when considering the time, effort and frustration you can save with a product such as this. And, if that pricetag is a little out of your budget, remember that Elgato offer the Stream Deck Mini and Stream Deck at a lower cost.
Great build quality, decent software, incredible potential and just downright cool. The Elgato Stream Deck XL gets a thumbs up from us.
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
Stay connected with the Vortez Social Media pages:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Join in with the discussions on Discord
Firstly, the build quality of the device is excellent, we love Elgato’s choice to use a removeable USB Type-C cable and the rock-solid non-slip base with magnetic attachment helps to keep the device steady and in place, however, it’s not perfect and some care does still need to be taken to prevent it being pushed around your desk. The buttons feel excellent and are spaced nicely with a lovely concave shape but we’d really like to see the screen below not suffer any colour shifting when pressed, which signals some damage to the LCD below may occur.
Moving onto the software, Elgato have some a stellar job on this, so far. The built-in application tie-ins gives any budding or well-established Streamer the tools they require to produce beautiful and professional quality streams without memorising tens or hundreds of key shortcuts, many of which may interfere with their game, but it also gives music producers, video editors, content creators and, well, almost anyone a useful piece of software to build up their own Macros and shortcuts. However, now to explain the “so far” caveat. Elgato provide their Key Creator tool to produce high quality icons for your device but it’s not built into the software, instead relying on your internet browser to create the icons, with a laborious method of adding them to keys on the device. The software also offers no way of backing up your current loadout; you could spend tens of hours perfecting and honing your device to operate perfectly but that could all be lost without a backup ability. We also can’t wait to see what else the community develops thanks to Elgato opening the device up to Third Party plugins.
Now, onto the price. At £230/$250, it certainly isn’t cheap but if you’re producing content on a daily basis and require a unique, and potentially very powerful tool, then that cost likely pales into insignificance when considering the time, effort and frustration you can save with a product such as this. And, if that pricetag is a little out of your budget, remember that Elgato offer the Stream Deck Mini and Stream Deck at a lower cost.
Great build quality, decent software, incredible potential and just downright cool. The Elgato Stream Deck XL gets a thumbs up from us.
Pros
+ Endless possibilities
+ Feels very well put together
+ Bright and vibrant LCD screens
+ Can streamline and optimise almost any workflow
+ Removable USB Type-C cable
+ Stand does a decent job of staying put
Cons
- Not adjustable stand
- Key Creator isn’t part of the software suite
- Costly
- No Wallpaper Mode
+ Endless possibilities
+ Feels very well put together
+ Bright and vibrant LCD screens
+ Can streamline and optimise almost any workflow
+ Removable USB Type-C cable
+ Stand does a decent job of staying put
Cons
- Not adjustable stand
- Key Creator isn’t part of the software suite
- Costly
- No Wallpaper Mode
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
Stay connected with the Vortez Social Media pages:
Join in with the discussions on Discord
