Elgato has done serious research and action to give gamers and content creators the tools they need to grow their audiences. If you are thinking of starting your own Let’s Play channel or your own streaming channel – I mean you are seriously considering it – then you probably already have a list of tools that you will need.
A capture card and microphone are all you need, and Elgato has a full line of beginner-friendly capture cards that I have loved over the years. A no less useful tool that seems more intimidating to beginners is a macro keyboard. They can be big, they can look like spaceship control panels, and they can be difficult to program effectively. Elgato’s new Stream Deck Mini fits in the palm of your hand and offers professional-quality control over your stream for $ 99.
Here’s the elevator pitch and basic Elgato ventilation:
Six fully customizable LCD keys:
- One touch touch operation. Instant visual feedback.
Drag and drop configuration:
- Just drag and drop actions on the keys. Assign ready-made icons or create original images.
Native integrations:
- OBS Studio, XSplit, Streamlabs, Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, Mixer, etc. – Stream Deck Mini integrates seamlessly with a creator’s favorite tools and platforms.
Unleashed creativity:
- Creators can use Stream Deck Mini to enhance their onscreen antics with GIFs, images, videos, and sound clips.
Multitasking made easy:
- Assign multiple actions to a single touch and initiate them all with a single touch. One by one separated by intervals, or together, simultaneously.
If you’re a veterinarian streamer, you probably own the original Stream Deck or another branded macro keyboard. I own and love my Stream Deck, and the mini offers exactly the same features. For the uninitiated, why bother? Setting up a stream, launching a stream, and maintaining a stream while interacting with your viewers can be tough work, and the Stream Deck Mini is all about streamlining that process from start to finish, freeing you up for what is most important: the game you play, and your fans.
Consider this: When you want to launch your Fortnite stream, you probably have a long list of things to do before you get started. After starting the game, you will need to go live in the client of your choice, tweet the link to all of your followers so they know how to join you, and probably type and offer a quick greeting to everyone in the Twitch chat with some links for donations or a call to subscribe.
Instead of taking five minutes of your time to do it all, what if you could push a single button and keep going? At the touch of a button a beautiful personalized LCD backlit key with a vivid image of a Fortnite pinata, you can go live and send all those links and greetings instantly.
What about toxic viewers in Twitch chat, something every professional or amateur streamer needs to deal with on a regular basis. Let’s say you have a few people blocking your feed and start talking trash or abusing your regular chat audience. Your game is heating up and you don’t have the money to pay the moderators, so you either have to take your attention away from the game to ban or disable a handful of jerks, or let them abuse your followers.
With the Stream Deck Mini, you could have an entire button dedicated to Twitch controls. Tap on that bad boy, and he might open a subfolder of functions, and one of those keys might automatically switch Twitch chat to subscriber-only chat. Two keystrokes that you can perform in about 1.5 seconds, and the problem is solved.
Some functions are more convenient and you do not need to broadcast live to use your Stream Deck Mini. If you want to start creating game review videos and uploading them to YouTube or a website you created, the Stream Deck Mini will integrate seamlessly into your Elgato Game Capture or OBS software. Assign keys to start and stop capturing so you don’t have to take game breaks to come back to your computer and click around.
Besides its function, which is absolutely the most important part of this device as a tool, it is also incredibly fun to customize. Of course, you can label your Twitch folder button with a giant Twitch logo, and you can put the Twitter logo on the button you press to send your “upload” notifications, but you don’t have to. do it. We’re only dealing with six buttons here, and you configure them yourself. You’ll know exactly what each button is for, and muscle memory will serve you better than your eyes, so go crazy and dress up your Stream Deck Mini with beautiful and beautiful buttons!
If you are in Adventure time, create your own personalized layout with your favorite characters. Populate an entire key folder with custom Twitch emotes, one for each button. Stream Deck software makes assigning icons and functions to each key incredibly easy, and for aspiring streamers as well as professionals, the only limit is your imagination.
When you hold the thing in your hand, there’s no denying that it’s small, light, and plastic. When you take it out of the box, it may not to feel like a $ 100 product, and that’s my only real complaint. My original Stream Deck also had a few scuffs and scratches visible on a few of the buttons, so you need to be careful with this thing. But you don’t pay for precious metals or expensive materials. You are paying for a compact and extremely powerful creative tool with a software suite and extensive functionality.
For content creators, the Stream Deck Mini is a massive quality-of-life upgrade that you won’t be able to live without after making it part of your routine. It’s one of the most versatile tools you can possibly add to your arsenal as a streamer, and it’s one of the most affordable macro keyboards out there.
You can check out the available sellers here.
