Productivity is my passion. I’m the kind of person to put a lot of energy into saving energy down the line. Whether it be by creating applications to streamline trivial tasks or finding shortcuts to established processes, there’s always something satisfying about knowing you didn’t do everything you had to do to get the results you want. Enter Elgato with their range of Stream Decks. A panel of custom buttons with assignable icons to do whatever you might need? What’s the drawback?

The Stream Deck XL I have is the most expensive of the family, featuring 32 buttons in an eight by four grid. Coming with a solidly built and aesthetically pleasing stand, as well as a really premium-feeling USB C cable, you have almost everything you need right out of the box. All you’re missing is the free software to be on your merry way. Once downloaded, you’re greeted with a solitary animated button in the middle of the console inviting you to play. Pressing it takes you to Elgato’s support site should you want the guidance, which is a really cute idea. Having said that, I decided to dive right in instead.

If you don't want to go through the trouble yourself, there's a myriad of pre-made solutions for a huge variety of software.

At its core, the software is about as simple as it can be. You get a display showing the currently connected device and its live layout. With the toolbar to the side, you drag and drop buttons into place, and watch them magically appear on the Stream Deck itself. From here, you can configure the type of button you’ve placed down, as well as add a custom title and icon. It’s brilliantly intuitive. The software comes with a huge variety of useful button presets, ranging from media keys, to opening a website or application, to specific utility in apps like OBS. It’s the kind of device where your only limitation realistically is your imagination, as cheesy as that might sound. With 32 buttons to assign, I must admit I struggled a bit. On my standard layout, I have volume controls and media buttons. As well as those, I created a few batch files to power off and restart my PC, which are then opened via a button press. I even managed to create a button to enable and disable my external GPU, since my laptop has issues in recognising it unless it’s disabled on shutdown and enabled on boot via Device Manager. Again this was a simple affair of creating a few batch files and this time using a switch button which changes when pressed. This marvellous button saves me around 20 seconds whenever I start up my laptop, something I find myself constantly grateful for.

Beyond this, I started running out of ideas, at least for a universal layout. I created shortcuts to my most commonly used games, and I made a folder of anime to take me to the page on Funimation since I have a significant dislike for browsing the site. It can be frustrating at times to have so much power at your fingertips but not know where best to direct it. I’m certain my current layout won’t be final, and as I pick up on more small acts of timewasting, that I’ll create more buttons to streamline them. Though a panel of 32 buttons already sounds like a lot, you’re really not limited to this at all. You can create folders of buttons, which is how I keep my anime to one side, but you can also have different profiles entirely that will open with an application. For Visual Studio, OBS, Photoshop, all these apps with a myriad of shortcuts and odd keypresses, all can be organised in an easy to view way. My favourite profile was actually one I made for Gtuner, the companion app for the Titan Two. For those unaware, the Titan Two is a fancy adapter for consoles that lets you use pretty much any controller out there. More than that though, it enables you to write scripts, and even pass through inputs from your PC. You see where this is going?

The stand detaches easily if you want to work with the Stream Deck flat.

With a basic panel of keyboard input buttons, I suddenly have a controller for the Switch. Though this may not exactly be what the Stream Deck is made for, I was interested to see exactly how far I could take it in its versatility. I went to the extreme end of the spectrum and decided to try Project Diva, with expectedly middling results. The buttons are satisfying to press and give a pleasant enough thud when hit, but they aren’t designed to be hit quickly over and over again. It worked, but not well. I can see there being great utility in games as an accessibility controller, or just something you assign a limited range of buttons to when playing a game to get a young child involved without giving them too much control. As long as the actions you're doing aren't relying on being hit multiple times in a second, it stands up surprisingly well. The most obvious gaming use case that comes to mind is as a visual skill bar for an MMO, especially with how daunting it can be at first to have so many options bound to a keyboard with limited feedback. 

It was brave to attempt such a feat.

One aspect of the device I really do love is the ability to try before you buy in a genuinely meaningful sense by downloading the Stream Deck mobile app. Though it is a subscription service at £2.59 a month or £22.99 a year if you want to keep using it, the 30 day free trial gives you more than enough time to try everything out. Functionally it’s identical to having the regular 15 button Stream Deck. You use the software the same to assign buttons, and you get a nice bit of haptic feedback when you hit them. Though a subscription service may not be ideal for everybody, it does also provide an affordable entry point to the utility for those interested, but without the money to actually buy one. With the regular Stream Deck being sold for £140, you could get just over six years use out of the mobile app for the same price. I’d certainly say this route isn’t for everybody, but for those interested in the physical units, there really is no drawback to trying it out first.

The same welcome button that greeted me on the XL greets me here too.

All in all, the Stream Deck is a brilliantly capable piece of kit that, despite its name, delivers for more than just streamers. If you’re short a few buttons in a game, if you’re interested in savings seconds or minutes on trivial actions, if you want a panel of bookmarks and applications, you’ll find the Stream Deck useful. It’s like having another screen dedicated to productivity, and I am in love with it. For those not needing of the larger XL model or unable to justify £230 on such a device, both the regular and mini models come in at significantly cheaper price points, at £140 and £80 respectively. Though the smallest model only sports six buttons, I can see this being enough for some, especially when paired with the ability to add folders and switches to make best use of the available screen space.