The stream deck is a shortcut to multiple apps that help streamline the productivity but it also controls smart home devices
Amazon has launched its Tech Week by offering customers seven days of discounts on more than 450 products, including the Elgato Stream Deck, a customisable controller that organises your desktop apps for a smoother workflow.
From today until May 13, the Elgato Stream Deck + is reduced from £199.99 to £159. It may be known as a streamer’s tool but it also works a treat for content creators and people who work from home. As both a PC and Mac user, I found the Elgato tool working fine on both laptops when I had to multitask and switch between programmes.
As a writer, I have a habit of keeping all my tabs open to the point it’s actually slowing down my workflow. The Streatm Deck + features eight push buttons with LCD displays, a multi-action Touchstrip and four dials – they are all customisable, whether it’s a shortcut to open Spotify or an easy video scroll to fast forward, pause or reverse a clip.
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I spend a lot of time watching videos, quickly typing, as well as joining conferences and half of the time I cannot navigate my mouse quickly enough to take a screenshot or even to unmute myself. But now I can assign one button to mute or unmute and utilise the knob function to speed up a video or pause for a screen grab and that saves me from awkward silence or having to rewatch an entire clip to catch up.
Elgato Stream Deck+
£199.99
£159
Amazon
Buy Now on Amazon
Trigger almost any action you want — switch cameras, mute your mic, launch apps, apply sound effects, turn on lights, change scenes, and much more.
Shoppers who don’t need any knobs can use a buttons-only version and Streamplify’s Stream Deck One comes with 15 customisable tabs and it can be set up with a 90-degree rotation. Logitech’s MX Creative Console has a creative dial and a deck with nine buttons that users can integrate with apps, but it retails at £199.99.
The Elgato Stream Deck+ comes with a non-skid platform, but it is non-foldable, which makes it difficult for storage. Other shoppers mentioned on Amazon reviews that they found the hardware “well-made and solid” but were disappointed that the glitches “made the user experience frustrating”.
Sometimes the auto-generated logo comes up rather small on the LCD display and I had to manually download a jpeg version to set as background, which took me more time than expected for the aesthetics.
But when it comes to speeding up my work, instead of opening yet another tab to jot notes on Google Doc, it is much faster to hit a button on Stream Deck+ to open the notepad and the LCD display shows the programme logo on button icons, which simplifies the mundane routine of hitting the Start menu and looking for ‘notepad’.
One amazing feature that I found is the “text” action, allowing me to pre-write 500-character blocks of text and insert them wherever I want with one button. The Touchstrip is able to display the weather forecast, which is a nice feature to have.
The rotary knobs allow me to adjust volume without hassle but it’s also an easy way to control any smart home appliances like Philips Hue lights (sold at Currys) by setting the lights’ brightness or colour temperatures, or activating specific scenes.
From now on, shoppers can enjoy 20% off and save £40 on the Elgato Stream Deck+.