The Elgato Prompter is by far and away the best thing Elgato has made in years. Along with the Stream Deck, this product feels as though it's reached through the barriers of the best streaming gear and become something innovative and truly useful. Sure, a teleprompter existed long before Elgato launched its own version, but it feels as though the brand really got creative and reinvented the wheel to suit modern content creation needs.
Now, Elgato has revealed a new version which rights one design choice people weren't so happy with - its size. The Elgato Prompter was really designed to be used in a home studio by streamers and YouTubers who don't venture too far from their home setups, but as soon as you try to use it from a further distance away, or you have a bulkier camera setup, it starts to feel a little limited.
"We heard it constantly: 'Love Prompter, but we need something bigger for our studio,'" said Julian Fest, General Manager at Elgato.
“Prompter XL takes what creators loved about the original—the versatility, the simple setup, the reliability—and scales it up for studio environments. Teams producing everything from multi-host shows to cooking tutorials are already seeing faster turnarounds and smoother shoots.” he said.
As practical as this may be for more established studio environments and pro-grade creators within them, the price certainly doesn't seem practical for anyone in a home setting who just wanted a larger display. $599.99/£499.99 is a hefty price to pay, but when you think about the Pompter's versatility, it starts to make sense... sort of?
One of the best things about the Elgato Prompter is that when you're not using it to read a script from, you can set it up as another display for your gaming PC. Except, with only a 9-inch display and a 1024 x 600px resolution, you're fairly limited as to what you can use it for. In other words, it's handy for having a chat window, Spotify player, or file browser open on, but you're not going to want to play DOOM on it.
The Prompter XL has a 15.6-inch display with a 600nit brightness and 1080p resolution, so you're going to be far less limited in how you can use it as a secondary monitor. What's slightly more practical is that the display attaches magnetically, which will make it a lot easier to clean and store away if you need to move things around in your studio.
The only catch is that this version of the prompter still uses a single USB connection; there's no HDMI or DisplayPort connectivity here. The XL model will also harness the same 60Hz refresh rate as the regular Prompter - so those dreams of playing DOOM will need to limit themselves to 60fps. Still, at least with the larger version, you'll have a power button, which will come in handy when you don't want to use it. The original Prompter doesn't have this, and it can be an annoying power and CPU draw.
Thanks to the larger size, the Prompter XL also supports cameras that weigh up to 5KG, and lenses that go up to 22cm in length. Like the original Prompter, you'll get lots of step-up rings to help you fit your camera exactly to the size of the backplate. You can check if your camera is compatible with either Prompter at Corsair's website.
The Elgato Prompter XL is controlled by the same Camera Hub software you can freely download and use to control loads of Elgato's hardware. Since the original Prompter launched, this software has been updated to include a scrolling speed that syncs with your speech, as well as other clever features that make presenting to camera even easier.
- Elgato Prompter XL: $599 at Elgato
- Elgato Prompter:
$299$244 at Amazon - View all teleprompters at Amazon
For more content creation gear, check out the best streaming mixers, the best microphones for streaming and gaming, and the best capture cards.
