Elgato Stream Deck + s

Elgato Stream Deck + – In recent years, live streaming has become a familiar element in daily life, and streaming has also become a 'profession' with many prominent names, admired by the gaming community and earning extremely high incomes, comparable to movie stars or famous singers.

This is precisely why the demand for professional streaming accessories exploded, causing Elgato to transform from a small manufacturer into a major name. Even after being acquired by the "pirate" Corsair, the Elgato name still stands independently as a branch specializing in streamer accessories within the company.

Of all the accessories Elgato has ever released to the market, the Stream Deck is arguably the most special and impressive device for users, offering high customizability and quick, practical operation during use. This product even created a new wave among other accessory manufacturers, prompting them to launch similar product lines.

Building on its success, Elgato is further upgrading its Stream Deck product line this year with the Elgato Stream Deck+ , featuring many new elements and promising to provide users not only with a professional streaming device but also with many other features to meet their needs.

Are these upgrades really worth it?

Let's find out together with tipsplay.net!

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ELGATO STREAM DECK + – QUALITY IN BOTH HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE!

For those unfamiliar, Stream Deck is a unique product from Elgato. This device features mini OLED displays on the buttons, allowing users to quickly access pre-set features/effects while streaming, enabling streamers to operate independently without the need for post-production support as in traditional methods.

The Stream Deck's high level of integration and customization, along with its on-screen buttons, made it very attractive to streamers, but that's about it.

Therefore, with the Elgato Stream Deck+ , Elgato demonstrates its ambition to expand its user market with a more versatile product, not only for streamers but also for other user groups, including content creators, thanks to a fresh design and upgraded software with many unique features.

The most noticeable changes are in the appearance, with the addition of a touchscreen strip and rotary knobs below the familiar on-screen button strips, which are prominently displayed on the box.

As for the main part of the product, similar to other products from the 'pirate house', the Elgato Stream Deck+ is also built with incredibly impressive hardware quality, unlike some of the 'shoddy' copycat products that appeared later.

Overall, all the components are housed within an extremely robust protective casing, with a base that also serves to support the product in a comfortable usage position.

This casing is manufactured with extreme precision, featuring precisely cut holes for the buttons and LCD screen, creating a seamless, monolithic design for the entire product while also providing secure protection for the small screens integrated within the buttons.

These keys utilize rubber dome technology, accurately detecting user input even when pressed off-center, ensuring responsive feedback even during intense action sequences in a game.

The touchscreen is designed to be recessed into the horizontal plane of the product, giving it a simple and seamless feel, while the knobs are placed in a separate recess to reduce their height, making them not too bulky but still easy to use with any hand size.

These knobs incorporate highly subtle tactile feedback, allowing users to easily feel the change in each increment, making them suitable for fine-tuning parameters requiring high precision.

Overall, the Elgato Stream Deck+ demonstrates Elgato's top-tier design and craftsmanship, delivering a truly premium product suitable for high-end desks or high-end, colorful PC builds.

This is also something that products for streamers from some other companies struggle to match.

Software is another strength of Elgato, with its control applications and plugins being designed to be extremely practical and professional.

Aside from the familiar quick-access buttons found in previous Stream Deck versions, the touchscreen and control dials are also designed for extremely convenient operation.

The touchscreen not only displays information about the functions of the four rotary knobs below, but also allows users to turn these features on/off with a single touch, or quickly switch to different profiles for various tasks by swiping horizontally.

The brand-new rotary knobs on the Elgato Stream Deck+ can be used for a variety of purposes, primarily to change values/parameters as desired.

You can use this rotary dial to increase/decrease the volume when using it with music/movie settings, similar to the scroll wheels on Corsair gaming mechanical keyboards; to increase/decrease the brightness of the Elgato Key Light ; to change the color temperature; or to change the color palette in a style similar to the famous Surface Dial rotary knob from Microsoft's Surface Studio machines specifically designed for design.

Therefore, streamers can use this product template to stream more professionally, for convenient entertainment, or for application in content creation software.

Beyond the built-in features, users can also access the plugin store integrated into the device's control software to access and display parameters for certain games, control smart home ecosystem devices, or monitor system parameters and settings, etc.

Furthermore, these features will gradually be expanded in the future with the contributions of a large user community, demonstrating Elgato's ambition to not limit itself to the world of accessories for streamers, but to reach a larger user community with Elgato Stream Deck+ .

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ELGATO STREAM DECK + – LONG-TERM GROWTH POTENTIAL!

Despite its impressive design and build capabilities, along with useful and innovative software, the Elgato Stream Deck+ still faces the question of whether it can establish a lasting foothold outside the streamer community.

Clearly, for casual streamers, the Stream Deck Mini or Stream Deck MK.2 versions already offer sufficient features, making it difficult to convince users to spend extra money upgrading to the premium version.

Not to mention, the potential for expanding the plugin store in the future remains an unknown.

It's worth noting that, similarly, the keyboard backlight control feature via iCUE is incredibly impressive, but it's only supported by a few games like Far Cry 6 or Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, and hasn't become as widespread in the gaming world as Corsair had hoped.

Furthermore, the Elgato brand is still primarily aimed at the streamer community, making it difficult to convince other user groups to try this innovative product.

Finally, the cable placement for the Elgato Stream Deck+ is quite inconvenient for certain types of stiff cables; if Elgato moved this connector to the base, the product would be easier and more flexible to use.