Elgato Stream Deck: A Non Streamer's Perspective

so I am NOT a streamer I don't have a twitch account I don't do live streams so why did I buy an elgato stream that coming it's in the name right stream deck well while it's very useful to streamers since it ties in with OBS twitch and Twitter in essence the elgato screen deck is really just a glorified macro pad but although you could kind of do most of the stuff this thing does with a normal keyboard plus some software it is a rather nice piece of kit and today I'm gonna give you my thoughts on the elgato screen deck from a non streamers perspective before we get into it though a quick word from today's sponsor if you want to protect your online privacy check out I oversee VPN I versi have won awards for speed have a zero logs policy along with being one of the cheapest VPN providers around the app is available on a wide selection of platforms including Windows iOS and Android and features some very useful tools including an internet kill switch for peace of mind in the event of a dropout along with split tunneling and giving you the freedom to choose which traffic travels through the VPN allowing for total control over your online activity find out more by clicking the link in the description below anyway back to the video each key on the pad is basically a tiny OLED screen so it can display whatever you want and since each button can dynamically change its look and function it means you can have folders so I can click this YouTube icon for example and a fold opens and within that folder there's a bunch of buttons that do stuff like opening up my YouTube dashboard for example so you're not really limited by only having 15 physical buttons on the pad so if I don't use this for streaming what do I use it for or for the most part I use it for the following three things launching programs as a macro pad to use within programs and as a shortcut to websites now while that might sound unnecessary it's honestly crazy how much time this thing saves my YouTube comments for example I must pull up this page over ten times a day when I'm on my computer before I'd have to navigate to YouTube click on dashboard and click on comments now all I do is click one button and it's there I don't even have to have Chrome open so my top row of buttons is pretty much dedicated to website shortcuts and it saves a lot of time I use the middle row mostly for launching programs so when I click the steam button it opens a folder with a bunch of games in some of the game icons will Amy launched that game while others like the rocket League one actually opens up a nother folder which has the rocket League shortcut within it but also has a button which turns my last goal into a video clip via gift your game or Jeff your game if you like now yeah I could just hit the shortcut on my keyboard but then I have to remember which button is the stream deck is visual so you don't have to remember any buttons or anything like that and I think that's one of its biggest strengths now I even have a smart home folder on the stream deck yes that's right I can turn any of my smart bulbs on or off using the stream deck how the heck is that even possible I hey you asked well it basically involves using if this then that to launch web shortcuts to a special link that's programmed to turn that specific bulb on or off it sounds super complicated but luckily my man Paul Hibbert made an easy-to-follow how-to video on it I'll leave a link in the description if you want to find out how to do that but yeah even being able to turn lights on and off is a time-saver because I don't have to unlock my phone to open an app plus all the buttons on this are all in one place the Nano leaf button is right next to my Philip 2 button on a phone I'd have to open up two separate apps it's pretty cool and the bottom row of buttons I kind of use these for a few different things the premier Pro burn is basically a folder containing a bunch of hotkeys to use while video editing and it saves a ton of time I can instantly open the folder containing all of my footage I can undo and redo without having to hold down several keys I can ripple Cort zoom into the timeline play in pause which to be fair I could also do just by hitting the correct key on my keyboard after all that's really all the stream deck Burton is doing it's pressing keys for me but again that would require me to memorize which key does walk with this I've got a picture to tell me exactly what it does it's so much more intuitive and therefore you get stuff done a lot quicker honestly guys if you do any sort of video editing this feature alone makes the stream deck totally worth it in my opinion also along the bottom I've got a button to launch my audio editing software along with a task manager burn so I don't have to hold ctrl Alt Delete to bring up task manager it's pretty nifty now although there is a webpage provided by Elgato where you can download or create your own icons for each button there's not a huge selection and I honestly can't be bothered to make my own so I got 90% of my icons by literally just going to Google typing in our home icon or whatever downloaded the PNG and set it as the picture to me that was the most simple way of doing things although to be fair you creating a shortcut to launch a program most of the time it will pull the icon from the program automatically so in that case you won't have to manually set an icon however for websites or macros you'll have to sort one out yourself now for a few criticisms the build quality is not really that great for the price of it is or plastic the stand in particular fuels are very flimsy although it does have quite good grip it doesn't slide around on the desk I also would have liked a bit more flexibility in terms of angles the stand only has four settings you cannot have to be looking straight at the buttons as well otherwise whatever icon they're displaying can look a bit distorted I guess that's just the nature of having a display underneath a thick piece of plastic a removable cable would have been nice as well just in case it breaks it's not braided or anything either honestly I don't really have any other complaints I think the software is great is easy to use and set up it definitely takes a few good hours to get everything how you want it though so make sure you set aside a good chunk of time for that all in all it's a very cool piece of kit although if you're not a streamer I wouldn't exactly call it essential it definitely is more of a luxury kind of thing if you're trying to decide between this and a new keyboard for example get a nice keyboard first at the end of the day you don't need a stream deck it just makes a lot of things faster and easier if you one of those people who's always looking for ways to improve this up and you've got the money to spare I say go for it you'll be very happy with it I'll drop some Amazon links in the description if you want to check it out if you've got any questions or you just want to say hi drop me a comment below I do reply to everyone thanks for watching today guys that do hope you enjoyed you can drop me a like rating to show you support don't forget to subscribe as well if you want to see more without being said hope you all have a good week I'll catch you all in the next one [Music] [Music]

Channel: Tech Tesseract

Views: 326,266

Rating: 4.9397087 out of 5

Keywords: stream deck, elgato stream deck, elgato stream deck review, elgato gaming, stream deck review, stream deck setup, how to use stream deck, stream deck tutorial, stream deck ideas, Elgato Stream Deck: A Non Streamer's Perspective, stream deck 2019, stream deck smart home, review, tech tesseract

Id: puKGtp9TJYo

Length: 6min 30sec (390 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2019