Elgato Stream Deck Mk.2

A supremely useful set of shortcut buttons that can speed up almost any PC task

- BARRY COLLINS

SCORE

PRICE £117 (£140 inc VAT) from elgato.com

It's not often that PC Pro delves into the kind of hardware targeted at Twitch streamers. The brilliance of the Stream Deck, however, is that it has many uses beyond playing a police siren sound effect to a watching audience.

The Stream Deck is a 15-button panel that can be used to control all manner of things: Windows PC or Mac, Photoshop or PowerPoint, Spotify or Slack. Anything that accepts keyboard shortcuts is basically compatible with the Elgato Stream Deck Mk.2.

This second version is a minor upgrade to the model Paul Ockenden waxed lyrical about in his RWC column (see issue 317, p113), and is now only part of a range of Stream Decks that span from the six-button Mini version right through to the 32-button XL. This 15-button panel hits the sweet spot on the price/ utility axis as far as I'm concerned, although Paul prefers the XL.

The Mk.2 addresses one of the key criticisms Paul had of the original model - its captive power cord. This one now connects to the computer via a standard USB-C cable, meaning that if the cable fails you don't need to bin the entire device. On that note, Elgato recommends you don't connect it via a USB hub, but I've never had any problems doing so.