How Elgato’s Stream Deck Plus Helps Maximizes Productivity as a Creator, With Some Gaming and Day Trading Thrown In

The Elgato Stream Deck Plus, priced at $159.99 (was $199.99), is one of those rare devices that silently sneaks up on you and upgrades your daily routine, regardless of what you’re doing. Eight LCD keys are imprinted with bespoke icons that glow in the dark in your preferred style, while four dials move smoothly and a center touch strip comes to life with every tap and swipe.

It all connects to a Mac or PC via a single USB-C cable, and Elgato’s user-friendly software allows you to assign commands without becoming mired down in lists and submenus. Getting started is simple: just drag and drop actions from the plugin library onto keys or dials, then change the icons to match whatever you’re working on at the time.

Content creators have grown to rely on this tool to significantly speed up their production. When you’re in the middle of a live broadcast or video recording, one key in OBS switches scenes, another turns off the microphone with a click, and a third starts or stops capture. The dials provide precision control over volume levels, allowing you to match your game soundtrack to your voice, as well as adjust the camera zoom or brightness on your Elgato Key Light. The touch strip allows you to scroll around internet tabs or timelines in your editing software without having to rely on the mouse for hours on end. With plugins, you can get Twitch Chat notifications, check the status of your YouTube live stream, start or pause Spotify playback, and even dim the lights or queue up the next track with a single button. Many customers describe the Plus as a production console that consolidates all of the scattered controls into a single compact tiny panel, reducing fumbling and allowing you to focus on the actual performance or editing.

Gamers, too, are enjoying the speed and accessibility it provides to their sessions, since they quickly open a game, switch between audio outputs (headset and speakers), and activate overlays for FPS and hardware stats. The macro function allows you to tie together many tasks, so one button opens Discord, mutes notifications, and takes you to a voice channel. In games that allow hotkeys, the device performs complex inputs faster than you can reach across the keyboard. The dials allow you to modify loudness or sensitivity without pausing the action, and in games like Helldivers 2, the community has created a variety of configurations for firing off stratagems or managing squad directives. The knobs and sensitive keys provide tactile feedback that feels perfectly at home in the heat of the moment, transforming arduous tasks into effortless taps.

Day traders will go to considerable efforts to save precious seconds on key trading choices, since in fast-moving markets, every millisecond counts. So they map their keys to execute buys or sells at certain share counts, such as 100 share buys, 200 share shorts, or scaling out half a position with a single key stroke. When market conditions change unexpectedly, a single tap cancels all open orders or flattens everything. The dials make it incredibly simple to cycle between watchlists and adjust order sizes to the exact quantity required. The software even allows you to configure hotkeys that work flawlessly with platforms such as ThinkOrSwim, DAS Trader, and Interactive Brokers, letting you to create your own custom icons that make sense to you so you can close trades quickly. Those who have tried it have reported cleaner execution and considerably fewer misclicks, which is especially true during wild, volatile openings or when news breaks and the market begins to swing violently.