Elgato Stream Deck Plus Review: After a Year, I’m Sold
After over a year, this Elgato Stream Deck Plus review is very easy for me to summarize: it is one of the best desk setup purchases I have ever made. It is not something everyone needs, but if you like automations, shortcuts, smart home controls, and shaving little bits of friction out of your workflow, this thing can become ridiculously useful.
The Stream Deck Plus became my favorite desk accessory
The Elgato Stream Deck Plus is essentially a programmable control panel for your computer. You get customizable buttons, a swappable touch panel, and rotary dials, all connected to software that lets you assign actions for apps, keyboard shortcuts, audio controls, automations, and even smart home commands beyond the computer itself.
Now, do you need one of these devices? Absolutely not, but are they a heck of a lot of fun and can they substantially improve your efficiency? Hell yes, they can.
— Sam BeckmanThat balance is the whole appeal. I would never pretend that a Stream Deck Plus is essential, but I use mine literally every single day because it now controls so much of my office. At this point, it feels less like a novelty and more like a proper tool that has been dialed in to suit my workflow to a T.
The plugin marketplace is why I would choose Elgato
There are plenty of third-party Stream Deck-style devices, and I am sure many of them are great in their own right. The reason I think Elgato’s options are so strong comes down to one thing: the plugin marketplace.
I previously used a similar device called the Loupedeck CT, and the marketplace felt so limited compared to Elgato’s. That matters because you can have incredible hardware, but if third-party plugin support is weak, it becomes much harder to make the device do exactly what you want.
At the time of making the video, Elgato’s marketplace had well over 600 plugins available. That does not mean you have to buy an Elgato device, but if you are looking at an alternative, I would absolutely research its marketplace first and make sure the plugin lineup is solid.
My Stream Deck Plus setup is built around three pages
My entire Stream Deck Plus configuration comes down to three main pages. The second page is where I leave it 99.99% of the time, because that puts my secondary pages just one swipe away on either side.
| Page | Role | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| First page | Older shortcut-heavy setup I only use occasionally now | Weather, stopwatch, app launchers, Color Picker, YouTube Stats Tracker, macOS theme toggle |
| Second page | Main page I use almost all the time | Volume, aircon, blinds, office power, lights, camera power, robot vacuum |
| Third page | Dedicated blind presets | All blinds open, all blinds closed, and specific 75% positions for different times of day |
The dials make smart controls feel instant
The bottom section of my main page starts simply, with a clock and date plugin, plus an output device control plugin for computer volume. The volume dial gives me a visual indicator, lets me adjust volume, and mutes or unmutes audio when pressed.
The next two dials are where things get much more interesting. I use action triggers, which means one dial can have three separate functions: rotate left, rotate right, and press in. One dial controls my air conditioner, with left and right changing the temperature and the press toggling it on or off.
I also customized the aircon label so I can see whether it is set to cool or heat. That sounds like a small thing, but before I set it up, I had multiple moments where I thought the heater was running in winter when the mode was actually set to cool.
The next dial controls the three smart blinds in my office. Rotating left closes all three, rotating right opens them, and pressing the dial pauses them wherever they are. For filming, that is incredibly handy because I am constantly changing the blinds depending on the shot.
Home Assistant is doing the heavy lifting
Most of the powerful stuff in my setup is handled through Home Assistant. The Stream Deck Plus is basically calling scripts when I press buttons, while Home Assistant handles the actual logic in the background.
My favorite button toggles a custom script that acts as a smart master power switch for the entire office. In the morning, when the studio lights are off, it opens the blinds, sets the front right blind to 75%, and turns on the various lights and switches in the studio.
At the end of the day, pressing the same button detects that the lights are already on and runs the opposite sequence. It turns off the aircon, closes the blinds, and turns off the lights and switches in the office. I honestly love that script.
I also have separate buttons for all office lights, just the lights at my computer desk, power to the camera in my top-down station, and power to the little fan attached to that camera. The top-down camera button may eventually get replaced, because I often forget to turn it off from my desk and have picked up a separate stand-alone Wi-Fi button to mount in that filming area.
The robot vacuum button is another great example of why Home Assistant is so useful. When the vacuum is docked, pressing the button starts a cleaning cycle. When it is already cleaning, pressing the same button sends it back to the dock.
I used to be satisfied controlling smart home gear through Google Home on my phone, but after spending a lot of time with Home Assistant over the past year or so, it is just so much more versatile. If you are interested in this kind of setup, I highly recommend looking into it.
The blind presets are simple, but I use them all the time
My third page is entirely filled with blind presets. I have buttons for all blinds fully open, all blinds fully closed, and presets where one blind is set to about 75% while the others are fully open.
That 75% position solves a real problem in my office. In the morning, the sun blazes through the window to the right of my desk, so that preset blocks it. In the afternoon, the same thing happens through the window on my left, so I have another preset for that side.
The custom icons make those presets much easier to understand at a glance. I used Google Gemini to help create the blind-state icons, and I also leaned on it heavily for scripting in Home Assistant. I still poured hours, probably days, into the setup, but once it was all done, it likely saved me weeks worth of time.
My first page is more traditional Stream Deck stuff
The first page is basically an adapted version of the setup I used before I really started exploring Home Assistant. I rarely live on this page anymore, but there are still some useful tools here.
- A custom weather plugin using a free weather API key from weatherapi.com.
- A stopwatch button using the default stopwatch plugin with a customized dynamic appearance.
- Open application shortcuts for the App Store, Link My Droid, and Screen Studio.
- A hotkey button for Shift Command P, tied to the free Color Picker app.
- YouTube Stats Tracker, which shows a real-time subscriber count after entering an API key and channel ID.
- A shortcuts plugin button that toggles between system light and system dark mode.
There is also a different action trigger on that first page for Stream Deck backlight brightness. I mostly use it when filming the Stream Deck itself, because maximum brightness is usually too bright on camera. The middle press can also put the Stream Deck to sleep.
My verdict after over a year
The Elgato Stream Deck Plus is not necessary, but it has become one of those tools I would immediately miss if it disappeared from my desk. The combination of buttons, dials, plugins, Home Assistant scripts, and custom icons has made it feel completely tailored to the way I work.
If you only want a couple of app launchers, it is probably overkill. But if your desk setup involves smart devices, filming routines, shortcuts, and actions you repeat every day, this is exactly the kind of gadget that can level up your efficiency big time.
Where to Buy
If you want the same desk gadget I have been using for over a year, this is the Elgato Stream Deck Plus link from my setup.
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