Like many nice merchandise, the Elgato Stream Deck wasn’t precisely a brand new concept.
When the very first one debuted six years in the past this month, we immediately in contrast it to Artwork Lebedev’s legendary Optimus Maximus keyboard, which promised an array of swirling OLED screens beneath your fingertips a complete decade earlier. Razer, too, pioneered LCD keys earlier than their time, tacking them onto a keyboard and the corporate’s very first Blade laptop computer.
However right now, we’re celebrating the easy genius of Elgato — the corporate that lastly turned them right into a viable product by making them comparatively low cost, cozy, and most significantly: peripheral.
Artwork Lebedev and Razer each believed we wished a brand new keyboard that morphs, the place our major computing enter mechanism needs to be changed with one which intelligently adapts to our wants.
Even right now, the concept feels grand: “Why would Photoshop and Quake current you with the identical boring keyboard?” you’ll be able to virtually hear Artwork Lebedev’s idea photographs ask.
Razer, maybe impressed by that Quake keyboard structure, requested a follow-on query in 2011: “In case your keys can morph, perhaps you don’t want so a lot of them to play PC video games on the go?” The consequence was the Razer Switchblade, a 7-inch idea handheld gaming PC prototype created by way of a partnership with Intel.
Razer did not promote that one, although. The ultimate “Razer Switchblade” turned out to be far much less thrilling on the time: ten LCD keys and a touchscreen trackpad embedded into an everyday keyboard. You’ll be able to nearly see a Stream Deck if you happen to look carefully — however nonetheless built-in, not but peripheral.
That’s why the concept didn’t stick. Razer thought customers would purchase into an expensive keyboard ($250) or laptop computer ($2000+), surrender the familiarity of the enter gadgets they already owned, and belief that recreation builders would help its new Switchblade UI. It additionally didn’t assist that the keys felt brutal — stiff, flat and brittle.
The Elgato Stream Deck requested for none of these tradeoffs.
Photograph by Dan Seifert / The Verge
The Stream Deck instantly pitched itself as a purpose-built instrument proper right down to its title, providing you with useful buttons to manage Twitch, OBS, and Twitter proper out of the gate. (It does much more right now.) You place it alongside your favourite keyboard, as a substitute of changing it, and between that and the $80 beginning worth of the six-key Stream Deck Mini, I used to be simply offered.
And the keys, these keys… comfortable, soft, inviting, every jeweled press like popping a bit of bubble wrap. I’m not saying it’s something just like the satisfying crunch of a mechanical change — it’s a unique pleasure solely.
Talking of which… I’ve an little announcement to make, a deal with for any Stream Deck house owners who may be studying this story:
The Verge has its personal official bubble-popping Stream Deck plugin!
Earlier than he left on a 2600-mile hike — significantly, he’s strolling the Pacific Crest Path — my pricey colleague Mitchell Clark coded the bubble popping app of my daydreams, full with sound results. (He truly submitted it to Elgato his first day on the path.) It really works with as many buttons as you want; Tom even examined a full web page of bubbles on his 32-button Stream Deck XL.
It’s reside within the Elgato app retailer, it’s our free present to you, and you’ll obtain it proper now.
I’m set to interview the top of Elgato within the close to future, and I plan to ask how they managed to make these keys truly really feel good. We already know there isn’t a tiny display beneath every key:
The buttons are all lenses that sit on prime of a single LCD display. The extra you understand!