“Ican’t imagine anything more boring than watching someone else play a video game!”
Gerry, a PC Pro subscriber, contacted me recently and asked whether I had any experience of a range of products from Elgato called Stream Deck. As it happens, yes – I’ve been using them for years!
What’s a Stream Deck? Well the best way to explain it is visually, so start by looking at the picture at the bottom of this page. It’s a bank of software-aware buttons that are fully programmable, including the graphics behind each button. It’s a simple concept, well executed.
My original Stream Deck was the original model with 15 keys. It was okay, although there were a few annoyances, which I’ll get on to in a while. However, I recently upgraded to the 32-key Stream Deck XL. Do you really need those extra keys? If I’m honest, not really, because you can cascade the functions – effectively press one button to get a whole new bank of different buttons, a bit like a subfolder. But I’m jumping way ahead of myself here…
Why the name Stream Deck? It’s because the primary target audience for these devices is online “streamers”. For the people reading this who don’t have the foggiest idea what a streamer is, the clue is in the name – a streamer is a person who live-streams video, and that’s a really big thing these days. There’s a massive community of people live-streaming themselves playing games, for example. This must appeal to a
