Elgato’s button-studded Stream Deck immediately won over game streamers when it launched last year, offering pro-grade, on-the-fly studio controls at an affordable $150. But today, those capabilities have gotten even cheaper with the release of the Elgato Stream Deck Mini ($99.95 on Amazon).
The Stream Deck Mini is a smaller version of the Stream Deck, as its name suggests. It contains only six buttons compared to the fifteen of the larger version. But those six keys are just as comprehensive, giving you the ability to program each button to launch different actions, like changing OBS scenes, playing a GIF or managing chat, and customizing the image on each, because the keys are tiny. LCD displays. If you really want to get fancy, you can assign multiple separate actions to a button press, launching each simultaneously or in a certain order.
It’s incredibly versatile and incredibly useful if you want to manage or add multimedia to your stream without having to manually switch between programs. Everything a streamer does in software, you can do on the Stream Deck Mini with the push of a button.
The (just) under $100 price tag and streamlined layout of the Stream Deck Mini make it a less intimidating prospect for streamers with simple channel elements, and the tech comes with a two-year warranty backed by customer support. from Corsair. But if you’re streaming a media-heavy stream, consider saving a few extra pennies for the full Elgato Stream Deck ($150 at Amazon). The extra $50 gets you nine extra LCD buttons, which more than doubles the capabilities of the Stream Deck Mini.
For much more detailed information on the experience, read our review of the original Elgato Stream Deck. And rest assured: although this review mentions somewhat buggy software support, Elgato has been steadily updating the Stream Deck to become much more reliable (and even more complete) over the past year.
