The Simple Genius of Elgato: How the Stream Deck Revolutionized Peripheral Keyboards

The Elgato Stream Deck may seem like a new innovation, but it’s actually an evolution of previous ideas from Art Lebedev and Razer. These companies believed in a new era of keyboards that could morph and adapt to a user’s needs, but they struggled to make it a viable product due to high costs and unfamiliar input devices. The Elgato Stream Deck succeeded where they failed, by offering a purpose-built tool that is comfortable and peripheral, rather than replacing your existing keyboard. The soft, jeweled keys of the Stream Deck are a joy to use and offer a different satisfaction from traditional mechanical switches. The Verge even has its own official bubble-popping Stream Deck plugin, created by colleague Mitchell Clark. As we prepare to chat with the head of Elgato, we can’t help but wonder how they managed to create such a satisfying key experience using lenses on top of a single LCD screen. Overall, the Elgato Stream Deck has redefined the way we interact with our devices, and we can’t wait to see where this technology will take us next.