Elgato Stream Deck Plus - reviewed

Two weeks have passed since I set up my Stream Deck +, here is what you should know before buying the newest product in Elgato's product lineup.

The Stream Deck + comes with a long USB-C to USB-A braided fibre cable. It has dimensions of ‎140 x 138 x 110 mm (5.5 x 5.4 x 4.3 in), a weight of 465 g and generally sits well on the desk due to its rubber foot. The Plus version has eight customizable LCD keys as well as four 360° encoders with a push function (multifunction dials). Furthermore, it brings a 108 x 14 mm (4.2 x 0.5 in) LCD touch panel with it.

Features

As mentioned above it comes with 8 customizable LCD keys. The keys are exactly as in the other Stream Deck products, they are well lit which makes them easy to see during the day and night times. The new multifunctional dials together with the LCD touch panel give the Stream Deck + the edge over previous products. The touch screen is very responsive and easy to navigate with swipe gestures to scroll through the pages. The dials are useful, especially when controlling e.g. brightness, scrolling through a video editing timeline or volume. The last feature to mention is the high customizability that is offered by the software. Whether it comes to icons, titles or colours, anything can be customized. You can have multiple profiles which makes it attractive to automate not only flows for private projects but also work.

Pain points

I will start with an obvious one first, but it always needs to be connected to a computer with the Stream Deck software installed. This is not necessarily a problem, but I honestly forgot that for my use case. Since my MacBook only has two USB C ports I had to buy a USB hub to actively start using the Stream Deck.

Not enough plugins support the dials yet. When I first browsed the plugin store in December I was pretty disappointed to find almost exclusively Elgato products being supported by the dials. Key lights, a Wave microphone and a simple plugin for computer volume were available but nothing more. Since then quite a few plugins have been added like a Hue integration. I assume it will get more and more over time, but it still is not there yet.

With a price of $199, this piece of tech is pretty expensive. Make sure you need the dials or the touchscreen before you pick this product.

In comparison to the original Elgato Stream Deck, with the Plus version you can't change the angle of the panel anymore.

Conclusion

If you’re a streamer looking for a way to improve your setup, the Elgato Stream Deck Plus is worth the investment. The same goes for heavy Elgato product users, all of their products are seamlessly integrated already. On the other hand, if you are searching for a device to save some macros or own a lot of smart products and want to use it as a smart home remote, this is not worth the money (yet). You should rather get one of the older versions like the Stream Deck Mini. If you already own an older version of this device and are considering purchasing the upgrade, think about whether or not it will be worth it for you.

If you are interested in this product, you can get yours at https://amzn.to/3XfrnXZ (affiliate link).