Logitech MX Creative Console Review: A Stream Deck With Benefits

Logitech has launched a two-part console pitched at creative professionals that combines a customizable keypad with a dedicated dial. Dubbed the Logitech MX Creative Console, it builds on the formula popularized by Elgato’s Stream Deck devices, but adds a little extra.

I've been testing an early version of the MX Creative Console for the past fortnight. Here’s my initial verdict on Logitech’s latest peripherals.

The Keypad

Let’s start with the keypad, which is the strongest part of the package.

It will be instantly familiar to anyone who has used a Stream Deck, or indeed one of the more recent Loupedeck consoles – a company which Logitech acquired last year.

The keypad is effectively nine customizable buttons with a tiny display under each (it’s actually one large display broken into nine sections, but it’s made to look like each button has its own display).

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The keypad’s buttons work as shortcuts for functions in popular apps, with Logitech putting a particularly strong emphasis on Adobe’s Creative Suite apps: Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Illustrator and the like.

Logitech’s clearly worked closely with Adobe to create a series of profiles for each of these apps, creating dozens of useful shortcuts. The Photoshop Retouch profile, for example, includes shortcuts for the Remove tool, Dodge and Burn, the Lasso, the Magic Wand and many more. The idea is that it saves you having to hunt for your most-used functions in the labyrinth menus or remember keyboard shortcuts, and simply dab a button on the console instead.

Even the most obscure functions in Adobe’s apps are available in the pre-created profiles and it’s relatively easy to move them around using Logitech’s software. If a function you use regularly isn’t among the presets, you can create it yourself, assuming the function has a keyboard shortcut.

For anyone new to these apps, who doesn’t have the keyboard shortcuts already seared into their brain, it’s an extremely handy way to access functions without scouring through menus. As someone who regularly uses a Stream Deck to access functions in the Adobe apps such as Lightroom and Audition, it was dead easy to make the switch to Adobe’s console and much easier to set up.

Logitech’s keypad only has nine customizable buttons, which is fewer than the regular Stream Deck (15) or the Stream Deck XL (32), but it does have two page buttons, making it painless to access more than nine functions for each app.

Yet, while support for the main Adobe creative apps is extensive, there’s not much else on offer in Logitech’s fledgling store. There are pre-packed profiles for apps such as Spotify Premium and Zoom, but not much else right now. That means that, until the store is padded out, you’ll have to create function shortcuts yourself using the LogiOptions+ app. That’s straightforward, but unlike the Stream Deck, there are limited options to customize the icon for keyboard shortcuts, meaning everything looks too uniform.

The Dial

The dial is the second part of the package, and one that struggles to earn its keep.

It’s designed to work in harmony with the keypad so that if, say, you press the button for the burn tool in Photoshop and then press “size”, you can adjust the size of the brush with the dial. That’s nice, but it only seems to work with certain brushes. When I tried it with the healing brush, for example, the size didn’t budge, although we must bear in mind I was testing pre-release software.

There’s a second scroll dial on the unit, similar in function to the scroll wheel on a mouse, which lets you zoom in and out of images, or up and down the page if you’re on a long website.

There are buttons on the dial, too. The top two are set to undo/redo by default, which is great for backing out of errors in those creative apps. And then there’s the button in the bottom-right corner, which opens the Actions Ring, a software overlay that lets you alter various parameters in your open app.

Let’s go back to Photoshop, for example. If you’re editing a photo, you can press the Actions Ring button and a ring of icons appears on screen, with controls such as contrast, brightness or vibrance. You then have to move your hand off the dial and back to the mouse to select the icon of your choice, then move the hand back to the dial to adjust, say, the brightness by turning the dial.

If that sounds like a fussy, overcomplicated procedure, that’s because it is. Why you can’t select the function you want using the dial itself is beyond me. It sums up my overall experience with the dial, in that almost everything it does is easier to achieve with a mouse or keyboard shortcuts. Having four devices to control one computer (mouse, keyboard, keypad and dial) feels like at least one too many.

Logitech MX Creative Console Verdict

The combined package of MX Creative Console keypad and dial costs $199/£199. That price is softened notably by a three-month voucher for Adobe’s entire Creative Suite, which is worth more than $150 alone and can be applied to both existing and new subscriptions.

That very much reinforces my feelings about this device: if you’re a heavy user of the Adobe Creative Cloud apps who struggles with endless keyboard shortcuts, this could be an absolute blessing.

For the non-Adobe user, it’s a much harder sell. The current lack of widespread app support and the availability of bigger, cheaper Stream Decks makes it much less attractive to streamers and people who want a general-purpose control deck.

The Logitech MX Creative Console will be available from mid-October, for both Windows and Mac.