Elgato Prompter - Review
Elgato have been the masters of the capture devices for a long time, they put the focus on webcams and even have been listening to feedback on their microphones. But the Prompter is something new, did they create a new slice of the market to conquer, or have they prompted a discussion about their product line up?
The Prompter is exactly what it says, a device that lets you view text, while a camera looks at you through it. Prompter is a home version of what you see in TV studios and what often lurks to the sides of a lectern. The idea behind the tech is that it’s basically a one-way mirror in front of a camera, so the user sees what is reflected, but the camera or people see through the glass. The idea is insanely simple, but when you see it in action it feels a little like a magic trick. Now when it comes to setting up the device there is good and bad, which feels like a juxtaposition. The good comes from how the unit arrives, it is one single unit and you just plug in the USB cable and you are done, the screen turns on and Windows should pick it up as a monitor. The bad comes from attaching a camera, you know the entire reason it exists. Please don’t misunderstand, getting the camera on is fairly easy, you just make sure the correct plate is installed at the back, and then dock your camera. Plate installation is fairly simple; you unscrew the one that is there if you don’t need it and then install the one you do need. For those users who have a DSLR camera, the Prompter comes with a series of rings to allow for a better fit.
The bad actually comes from trying to adjust it while its in position. You see when you have your webcam or camera installed and have it mounted in your desired spot; you need to begin the process of lining up things. For my setup, that meant trying to turn the camera to make sure it was in the right place, while reaching over the desk and everything on it. It is thankfully a one and done situation, so once its set up you won’t need to do it again, but it did take me a few tries to get it just how I wanted it to be, but thankfully there is a solution to make those finer adjustments possible, the Camera Hub software. If you are using an Elgato camera, then you can use the Camera Hub software to move the focal point of the camera and such, which is great for those pesky little nudges. However, if your device is not supported, then you have to things manually and that can take a few tries and a little frustration. My common issue was that the camera was just a bit to far back for me, which mean the sides of the Prompter case were visible, not the end of the world but again, needed more adjustments.
Once you are set up, then you can begin to use the device and there are three options for it, you can treat it as another display, have text appear and scroll on it, or connect your Twitch chat. For my testing, I made sure to use all three and it does well with two, not so with one of them and strangely that is the display mode. When you connect a Twitch chat to it, I honestly expected a lot of setup, integrating it with Twitch and such, but nope, you just need to tell it the name of the channel you want and you are done. It then shows the active chat for that channel and you can scroll through it like any normal channel. For text, you have a few more options here and depending on your setup, it can seem like magic. The basic one is auto scroll, you add your text and then Prompter just scrolls through it at your set speed, letting you read of it while looking at the camera. This is what you would see someone use when doing speeches, or reading the news. You can also set it up to follow along to what you are reading, if you know you are going to read at an odd cadence. Finally there is display, which is just another screen for your computer. Now I will preface this part by say that I have three monitors already, so with Prompter I ended up with a fourth and occasionally Windows would forget it was connected and have a moment of freak out.
My issue with the display actually lies with the quality of the image on it, if you use anything dark then its not too bad, but if you have a white or bright screen, then you break the mirror effect. But is not just that, there were times when I would put Team on it and the quality of the image was not right, peoples webcams were showing up as if they were 256 colours. Ok, it was not that extreme, but when I was comparing videos and video chats across two different screens, the quality was significantly worse on the Prompter display. Now the level of issue is going to come down to how you use it, if you put videos on it then it might annoy you, but text or Twitch chat and you will be fine.
One weird thing that I encountered was with Windows was treating Prompter as a monitor, I mentioned before that my computer would occasionally forget what it was doing and disconnect the display. That is a my PC issue, but something I found was that Windows would enable the display, even if the Prompter was set to show as off in the Camera Hub software. Now, as I rock a plan black background most of the time, it was not a huge swath of colour shining at me, but it just made me chuckle that it was considered off by the software, but still showing something.
From the moment I saw Prompter, my first thought was that it would just be a nice thing to have, more so if you were a big streamer, but upon actually using one, it has changed a lot for me. Recording podcasts and putting the run sheet on it, having chats with the people I am chatting with on the screen and yes, using it to display my Twitch chat, has made things greater than I thought possible. The quality of the display might be a concern if you are going to use it for video, or video calls, but if you understand that going it, it should not impact you too much. This is totally one of those devices that is more for a select group of users than an everyone device, but anyone who does add it to their setup, will quickly find themselves more engaged with their audience than ever before.
The Score
9.0
Review unit provided by Elgato
The Pros
Being able to talk to camera and still see the important things is game changing
Setup is so simple, as its plug and play…
The Cons
… but getting your camera in the right spot, with the Prompter in place can be fiddly
The screen quality is great for text, but videos and even video calls can look weird
