Congratulations, world. The Elgato Stream Deck Plus is back down to $159.99, finally making the dream of spending triple digits to avoid using a mouse slightly more affordable. If you’ve ever looked at your perfectly functional keyboard and thought, “This is great, but I’d prefer to pay $20 per button for the privilege of muting Zoom,” then your ship has come in.

The primary claim here is that the Stream Deck Plus is a “handy productivity tool” for “automating everyday tasks.” Let’s be real: “automating everyday tasks” is tech-speak for “I’m too lazy to remember that Alt+A mutes my microphone.” We are living in an era where we buy hardware to solve problems created by having too much hardware. Elgato wants you to believe that a $160 plastic housing for eight LCD keys and four knobs is the secret sauce to a streamlined workflow. In reality, it’s a glorified macro pad for people who want their desk to look like the flight deck of a Boeing 747 while they’re actually just browsing Reddit.

Then there are the rotary dials—the “Plus” in Stream Deck Plus. The article suggests these are “especially useful for controlling music.” Revolutionary. Truly. Because as we all know, the dedicated media keys that have existed on every standard keyboard since the late 1990s are simply too cumbersome. Why tap a “next” key on your $50 Logitech when you can spend $160 to “cycle through Dial Stacks” just to skip a Nickelback song? The claim that these dials are a space-saver because they handle multiple functions is a masterclass in marketing spin. It’s not “saving space”; it’s adding layers of menu-diving to a physical device whose entire value proposition was supposed to be “one-touch simplicity.”

Let’s talk about the “slim touchscreen.” The article notes that while the screen itself can’t actually trigger plugins—you know, the thing the buttons do—it does let you swipe between pages. So, for the price of a budget tablet or a high-end mechanical keyboard, you get a screen that acts as a digital label for the knobs you already paid for. It’s a UI for your UI. Elgato’s software updates supposedly make this “far more useful than it was at launch,” which is a polite way of saying the device was essentially a $200 paperweight with blinking lights when it first hit the shelves.

The assumption underlying this entire “deal” is that your time is so precious that saving the half-second it takes to click a volume slider in Windows justifies a $160 investment. If you are a professional colorist or a high-end video editor, maybe those dials offer some granular control. But for the average “productivity seeker” or streamer, the Stream Deck Plus is a solution in search of a problem. It’s the Segway of desk accessories: it looks high-tech, it costs too much, and deep down, everyone knows you’d be better off just using your legs—or in this case, your keyboard shortcuts.

If you absolutely must have the aesthetic of a professional studio to justify your four-viewer Twitch stream or your corporate spreadsheets, go ahead and grab it at its “lowest price.” Just don’t pretend it’s about “workflow.” It’s about the knobs. And if you’re spending $160 on a dedicated Spotify controller, there’s definitely at least one knob involved in this transaction.