The Stream Deck-packed gaming keyboard is a monster of fine concepts

The Corsair Galleon 100 SD didn’t simply come out of the ether. The new full-size mechanical keyboard with a Stream Deck fused to its aspect is the results of a lot of issues coming collectively over time. Corsair’s gaming enterprise is extra refined than ever, and Stream Deck’s large ecosystem of plug-ins makes the devoted {hardware} helpful to only about anybody, even when they’ve little curiosity in streaming. The fusion is smart.

The potentialities with a Stream Deck have been already huge, and the Galleon makes it simpler to really feel like an influence consumer. I can flip my Philips Hue lights on and off all through my residence with one in every of its dials, and I can pause, skip, and fave tracks in YouTube Music with its buttons. I can launch The Verge, declutter a multitude of home windows on my display screen right into a tidy grid, and a lot extra with a single button press — all with out taking my palms off the keyboard.

Anyway, right here’s a fast historical past lesson on how we received right here: The Galleon is the results of acquisitions and one other firm’s misfortune. After Corsair purchased Elgato in 2018, it acquired a majority stake in iDisplay, the corporate that already produced tiny screens for the Stream Deck. And it’s doable none of this may have occurred if iDisplay hadn’t been requested years earlier to provide OLED screens for every key of Art Lebedev’s groundbreaking, but finally flawed, Optimus Maximus keyboard, which offered for $1,490 at launch in 2008. So right here we’re.

The Galleon is fairly priced at $350. Yes, you may pay about $60 for a Deck Mini after which purchase an excellent keyboard; maybe each will price you lower than $350. But it’s enjoyable to make use of a product that’s each a great, polished keyboard and an excellent bundle of customizable buttons and dials.

The Stream Deck integration is the large draw with the Galleon. It has 12 buttons, a non-touch display screen, and two rotary dials, all of which could be custom-made. The LCD display screen behind the keys is Elgato’s highest-resolution display screen in a Stream Deck to this point (it’s a 5-inch 720 x 1280 IPS show). You can drag and drop instructions and plug-ins by means of the Stream Deck app, giving you quick access to day-to-day niceties, like generally used emoji to make use of throughout video calls, in addition to extra highly effective integrations.

Elgato developed official Stream Deck plug-ins for a number of widespread companies, together with Philips Hue, Apple Mail, Slack, Zoom, Photoshop, YouTube, Spotify, and extra. There’s a vibrant neighborhood of builders who submit their very own plug-ins as properly. The rabbit gap goes actually deep, not only for plug-ins, however for the customizable app icons you may assign to every button, and the backgrounds you need to use on the bigger display screen. Some of them are actual time-savers, like this Helldivers 2 profile that allows you to execute Stratagems with the push of a button, versus frantically hammering directional keys whereas enemies are encroaching.

The keyboard connected to the Stream Deck is nice, too, even when it’s not the focus right here. It seems slick and subdued, with per-key RGB LEDs that may be configured in Corsair’s browser-based Web Hub app. You don’t want to make use of the software program, however you want the Stream Deck app to get probably the most out of the buttons and dials. The chassis has an aluminum housing, and a big wrist pad could be connected magnetically close to its backside keys. The Galleon connects to your PC (or sport console — it formally helps Xbox and PlayStation) with a single USB-C-to-A cable. If you’ve gotten an additional accent to attach, you may plug the second included USB-C-to-A cable into your PC for information or charging passthrough. Then, connect your gadget to the USB-C port.

The design isn’t that totally different from Corsair’s Vanguard series of keyboards. The Galleon contains gasket mounting and a number of layers of dampening. Typing sounds and feels satisfying and bouncy, but managed. Its MLX Pulse switches have a pronounced “thock” sound and don’t require a lot drive to actuate. One of the few missed alternatives is making the Stream Deck modular, in order that left-handed typists can simply entry its buttons and knobs. The Mountain Everest Max did this years in the past, and it’s all of the extra puzzling given Corsair employed that firm’s founder, Tobias Brinkmann, because the VP of its gaming division answerable for constructing this very keyboard. Corsair’s advertising supervisor Andrew Williams shared with The Verge that it’s as a result of growth on the Galleon had already begun by the point Brinkmann was employed, and adopted the assertion with “Who knows? Maybe we will iterate on this. :)”

Coming off of just lately testing the Asus Falcata keyboard, which makes use of the longer-lasting, extra customizable Hall impact switches which might be each quieter and considerably quicker to actuate (too quick for me till I set actuation level thresholds), the MLX Pulse feels extra like what I’m used to typing on with my Kinesis Freestyle Edge RGB break up ergonomic keyboard. If you’ve gotten a most popular change, you aren’t locked to utilizing Corsair’s. The Galleon helps scorching swapping switches, as long as it’s a 3-pin or 5-pin change. A software is included to make it straightforward to deconstruct every change all the way down to the bottommost layer protecting the PCB.

I’ll solely ever scratch the floor of what’s doable with the Stream Deck. The gadget began out as a companion for streamers on Twitch, so there’s a bevy of assets — ready-made drop-in property to make your stream look extra skilled, some totally free, some for a charge — from Elgato and different builders. For simply being a set of buttons and knobs, the chances with this mature cross-platform ecosystem are huge, and people who actually faucet into it’s going to get quite a bit out of the Galleon.

Even for many who use the Stream Deck extra casually, $350 for the comfort of a two-in-one product is just not a horrible value. It’s a luxurious I don’t assume is value upgrading to in the event you’re already comfortable along with your keyboard or your present Stream Deck. If you want one of many elements, or each, this all-in-one, single-cable gadget is only a actually cool factor.