Elgato Stream Deck Neo – 8 Customizable Keys, 2 Touch Points, Speed Through Tasks & Workflows - Control Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Zoom, Spotify and more, Drag-’n-Drop Setup - Works with Mac & PC

The media could not be loaded. I’d been considering buying a Stream Deck for a while and am glad to have found this model on sale, because it’s perfect for my uses, and the $20-off sale price made it even better! I’m a beginner Deck user and my computer skills are only slightly above average, and I managed to set this up in an afternoon without dropping money on paid profiles (which are basically preset toolbar sets). I probably could have done it faster if I’d watched some YouTube tutorials rather than going in cold, but I downloaded a few free profiles as a starting point and for inspiration, found some good searchable icon sets, and then customized a profile that fit my uses. In the weeks since, I’ve optimized further using folders and different profiles for a more seamless experience. I can’t wait to learn more as I go, but from what I can tell so far, any keyboard shortcut, macro, file path, or automation that can make your life easier is fair game. App-specific plugins can expand the functionality further, and it looks like you can even automate tasks using mouse patterns and clicks with a special plugin.**Target users for this Deck model**- I’m not a web designer, content creator, or sound / video editor. I am a scientist who works in an office and who uses Outlook, Word, and Excel on a daily basis. I think this is a great choice for casual office users like me. Not too big, not too small, and you have the flexibility to keep expanding your shortcut library onto multiple pages, folders, and profiles. If you want knobs, the Stream Deck + also has eight buttons plus four knobs instead of page-turning keys, but it’s also twice as expensive, making it less suitable as a starter model.- This model is an awesome starter Deck for those who aren’t sure what size Deck to buy. No need to stress about having too many or too few buttons, because as noted above, you can navigate through multiple pages of shortcuts with the integrated touch points. It’s like an improved Stream Deck Mini, because you have two extra buttons, plus you don’t have to dedicate any buttons to turning pages.- Digital nomads and work travelers — because it folds flat! 😄 The other Deck models snap onto non-folding pyramid bases that take up a ton of luggage space, and you’d need to buy a folding base separately if you wanted to travel with them. This one is perfect for travel right out of the box.- Anyone with limited desk space who wants the best of both worlds between a smaller-footprint Deck and a larger variety of keyboard shortcuts.- That said, anyone who’s already accustomed to a larger Deck and who has integrated a large variety of shortcut buttons into their routine may find it cumbersome to switch between pages, and will probably prefer to keep a larger Deck for their home office setup. Even for those users, the Neo might be good for work travel (because it folds!)- It works with Mac and Windows out of the box. For Linux users, I understand there are some GitHub setups that engineer compatibility.**What it does**You can skip this if you already know how the Deck works (or if you already watched my video demonstration), but I thought I’d highlight a few beginner-friendly features in case you’re a casual user like I was who isn’t convinced this device will be useful for them.- Profiles (basically toolbar sets) can be set to switch automatically if you open a relevant program. That means you can have 10 pages of Excel shortcuts and not worry about scrolling through them all if you’re using other programs.- The buttons don’t have to just be actions; they can become sub-folders of related shortcuts, which is a great way to cut down the length of your pages. Like any good scientist, I boilerplate a lot, so I made a Paste folder that breaks out the different types of paste shortcuts: regular paste, paste values, and paste special. The Elgato guide page also suggests putting all the multimedia shortcuts like Play / Pause / Skip in one folder, which is a great idea. And yes, you can put folders inside of other folders.- Hotkeys are a great starting point to quickly improve your workflow efficiency. They let you program keyboard shortcuts like ctrl + v, ctrl + z, etc. and perform them with a single button push. No more will you stop your work, look down at your keyboard, and press two far-away keys simultaneously. Also, if you use macro shortcuts in Microsoft Office, those can easily become Hotkeys too. I eventually just started looking up shortcuts for programs I use frequently and programming in anything useful.- A Hotkey Switch is a toggle between two hotkeys; if you click it, it runs one Hotkey and then swaps to the second function. This would be a good use case for swapping between copy / paste or mute / unmute microphone.- You can use Open to create one-touch shortcuts to files or frequently-accessed file locations on your hard drive, Sharepoint, OneDrive, or Dropbox. If you have That One Excel Workbook you still find yourself spending too much time digging up even though it’s already just a shortcut on your desktop, having a button for it will save you that time.- You can also use Open to launch programs that you use frequently. A long press of the same button can close the application, or you can reprogram it to trigger Force Quit if it’s a problem app that freezes / crashes a lot (looking at you, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC).- Website will create a shortcut to a webpage of your choice, and you can choose which browser it opens in.- Text will type pre-defined phrases, or ASCII characters like mathematical symbols. In this vein, there is a free emoji keyboard profile, if you’re into that. You can finish off your text phrase with “enter” which may be useful for some applications.- Plug-ins can add new actions for specialty programs like Photoshop, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Slack, and Govee light controls. Two big pluses to using plugins is there’s a great selection of free plugins, and you can filter them by operating system while searching.- Finally, Multi-Action lets you do chains of multiple actions with one button. I set one up to start my morning. First it’ll open Outlook, wait seven seconds for it to open, and then use a Hotkey shortcut to swap to my calendar. Then it’ll open Teams and my to-do list program.- There are free icon libraries to download so you can add relevant symbols to your custom shortcuts, or you can just type in a label. My favorites are Entypo and Pure because they’re simple and transparent, so you can see my background color behind them. Palette - The Simple Color Pack provides some nice backgrounds for typed labels.- Switch Profile lets you easily swap to another profile set. It’s easier to set up the profiles to swap automatically between programs, but if you have trouble with it or want to swap around.

This thing is amazing. You don't know how much you need it until you have it. I bought it for the usual reasons, but once you start setting it up you realize it's way more powerful than you thought. I've been tweaking it out for two days. It's a blast to setup and not too many things can say that. And if you have a bit of graphics and gif skills, you'll really be grooving.But this is more than just a streaming device, this is a computing game changer. If you take the time to look all the keyboard shortcuts you use on the regular, you'll be able to trim your mouse usage and just do things faster. It's like the first time you got into the terminal on a Linux distro and realize clicking through a cumbersome GUI is a waste of time for tasks that don't really need it.But the possibilities are quite extensive. I set up a page of just links to some good songs with awesome gifs on the buttons. I set up a page of just keyboard shortcuts for chrome. All the common tasks ready in one push. I set up a page to access all the various system functions for the computer. I set up a page for media playback. All the transport and volume controls right there. And those are just a few examples. You get the point.And don't be put off by only 8 buttons. That's 8 buttons per page and I'm up to 9 pages, and some of those have 3 deep folder structures. So, it's really 8 times whatever the software limit is. But be warned, once you get into it, you will want more Stream Decks. You will have a panel of stream decks on your desk. :)It's a powerful device, fun like a toy, and the hardware and software is excellent. Highly recommended.Pros: Just get a Stream Deck. You need it.Cons: The guilt you feel for not using keyboard shortcuts all these years.Thanks, Elgato. This device lives up to the hype. :)Amazon logistics needs no hype. ;)

I am not a content creator, so that’s probably why this wasn’t on my radar. I stumbled across it when trying to find a solution for a dual computer KVM setup I was using. I use a business computer and a personal computer on the same screen. I’ll toggle between them while working, but usually have music playing on the personal. I was looking for a way to pause music, etc on the personal quickly when needed and not have to fumble through switching the KVM. I had found a few shortcut key setups but they all used questionable software.The Elgato Stream Deck Neo is perfect and gives me even more than I ever thought I wanted. I have dedicated shortcuts setup so that immediately I can pause music or run activity on my second computer while connected on my first. The software is elegant, and full of plugins. I’ve added shortcuts and profiles for all of my specific activities: 3D printing / music & entertainment / productivity (Excel, Adobe, etc) and integrated with my Philips Hue and smart home setup. Works well with both my Mac and my PC. I am in love with the Elgato Stream Deck Neo.

I was testing it out for MS TEAMS calling/meetings.I have to return it since it failed. Not sure what caused it. See pictures of about the failure. No factory reset or pin hole factory reset on device.