Logitech MX Inventive Console overview: decide your individual buttons

At the very least for now, your laptop or desktop pc is inherently extra succesful than a smartphone or tablet. What you lose, sticking to the classics, is numerous the interface simplicity of a telephone. Utilizing a desktop pc to it is fullest means getting snug with keyboard shortcuts, particularly should you plan on utilizing any sort of skilled artistic software program. That’s, except you will have a macro pad.

Macro pads or shortcut keypads have existed for ages as instruments for digital artists to shortly entry controls and settings within the dense menus of desktop software program, or for switching cameras and microphones throughout a broadcast. They burst into the mainstream in the course of the pandemic WFH period, although, largely due to the recognition of the Stream Deck, which was designed in the beginning for controlling livestreams, however whose buttons may very well be personalized to work with a bunch of various functions.

Logitech’s MX Creative Console is a one-two punch meant to deal with the recognition of the Stream Deck — the corporate acquired competitor Loupedeck in 2023 seemingly with the identical motivation — that features a dialpad and a keypad for switching instruments and adjusting settings in apps. For those who’re not utilizing an formally supported app it might take quite a bit to arrange, but it surely’s numerous enjoyable to make use of when you do.

Advisable

Logitech MX Inventive Console

Logitech’s MX Inventive Console is a dialpad and keypad combo pack that’s designed to regulate Adobe software program however can work with absolutely anything in your pc should you’re prepared to set it up.

Execs & Cons

• Tacitle controls makes the whole lot simpler
• Deeply customizable
• Makes utilizing your pc really feel extra private

• Organising buttons can take numerous time
• Not each appropriate app receives the identical stage of help

See our course of

How we test and review products at Pocket-lint

We do not do arm-chair analysis. We purchase and take a look at our personal merchandise, and we solely publish purchaser’s guides with merchandise we have really reviewed.

Worth, availability, and specs

The Logitech MX Inventive Console launched in September 2024 for $200, a better worth than the $100 you pay for an entry-level Stream Deck Neo. You should buy the MX Inventive Console immediately from Logitech, or from retailers like Amazon in both darkish grey (graphite) or white (pale grey).

A part of the justification for the MX Inventive Console’s increased costs is that you simply’re really getting two totally different gadgets for one buy; a Stream Deck-esque keypad, with 9 sq. buttons within the middle and web page ahead and web page again buttons, and a dialpad with a dial, curler, and 4 extra buttons. The dialpad works over Bluetooth and has two rechargeable AAA batteries you possibly can cost with a USB-C cable, whereas the keypad must be wired into your pc to work, additionally over USB-C.

Whereas each items of the MX Inventive Console are principally fabricated from plastic — save for the dialpad’s cool metallic dial — they really feel sturdy and have satisfyingly clicky buttons. They’re premium equipment, even when they may not look it at first blush. Logitech’s designed the MX Inventive Console to work with Adobe apps in the beginning (Photoshop, Illustrator Premiere Professional, Lightroom Traditional, After Results, and Audition), however supplies plugins for different apps, like Zoom, Microsoft Groups, and Closing Minimize Professional, which you could obtain.

Much more importantly, any keyboard shortcut will be assigned to a button or different management with the Logi Choices + app, which suggests any app can have a profile made for it should you really need it to.

Associated

Should you get an LCD or OLED Steam Deck?

It is principally a query of price range and the way diehard you wish to be.

What I preferred concerning the Logitech MX Inventive Console

It is each enjoyable and handy to push buttons

I’ve lengthy fantasized concerning the potential of those sorts of shortcut keypads, however have by no means been capable of justify shopping for one due to the sort of work I do. There are simply fewer keyboard shortcuts a journalist wants to recollect than a 3D modeler. Some a part of me additionally thinks including further gear that I do not deem mandatory creates the phantasm of productiveness enhancements with out really altering something. Fortunately, even when it would not solely make sense for my job, primarily based on my time with the MX Inventive Console, I used to be proper to be curious.

With the ability to shortly take a screenshot, launch certainly one of my generally used apps, or entry instruments I can by no means keep in mind the identify of in my picture enhancing app is extremely useful. It is also fairly enjoyable due to how Logitech’s buttons, dials, and rollers really feel to make use of. A dial or curler is tactile, clean, and able to extra finesse than a mouse for tweaking settings, and while you’re just a few layers deep enhancing one thing, that is what you need.

Associated

How to turn a Steam Deck into a TV gaming console

You’ll be able to play PC video games in your TV with out shopping for a desktop or laptop computer.

It is also fairly simple to arrange and customise the MX Inventive Console with the Logi Choices+ app. With an app plugin put in, you get dozens of shortcut choices to tug a drop onto your keypad, and pre-made layouts for apps like Photoshop and Zoom. You’ll be able to cease there and be fairly properly off, particularly should you principally work in Adobe’s suite, however there’s additionally the liberty to do much more by creating your individual shortcut buttons.

Any mixture of keys in an app can grow to be a button with a customizable icon. And within the case of the dial or curler, you possibly can even assign actions (or keys) to be nearly pressed alongside no matter you need your bodily changes to correspond to. It takes work to make these, however you will have a stunning quantity of flexibility when it comes to the buttons and controls you possibly can create, and on the important thing pad, what every button appears like.

What I did not like concerning the Logitech MX Inventive Console

The dearth of help — official or in any other case — may very well be an issue

There are treasured few issues I can discover at fault with the MX Inventive Console. It’s kind of annoying to have one accent that is wi-fi and one other that is wired, however there’s doubtless a superb motive for that. I think about it takes extra energy to mild up the shows behind the buttons than it does simply register inputs on the dial pad. However, I used to be nonetheless bothered by having to take care of one other cable.

The bigger difficulty is the work it’s a must to put into the Logi Choices+ app to get a setup that works for you. The app is designed to handle all of Logitech’s current merchandise, and it looks as if it is lacking among the polish that is likely to be current if it was simply centered on the Logitech MX Inventive Console. For instance, it seems like the corporate ought to’ve carried out extra to make constructing setups for apps with out profiles simpler. There is not any software program characteristic that would have recognized and added obtainable app shortcuts robotically? Even when I then needed to go in and edit these robotically added shortcuts, I nonetheless would’ve most well-liked that annoyance to including the whole lot one after the other, manually.

Associated

Logitech walks back CEO’s ‘forever mouse’ concept amid strong backlash

A subscription-based ‘perpetually mouse’ was dreamed up by Logitech’s CEO, however a bitter buyer response now has the corporate back-peddling.

There’s additionally the query of what occurs when Logitech stops supporting the MX Inventive Console. The accent already would not appear to have fairly the extent of group help that the Stream Deck has. Is Logitech going to trouble internet hosting a market for profiles a yr or two from now? There’s nothing to recommend the corporate will not, however tech corporations have dropped help for equipment for much less.

Must you purchase the Logitech MX Inventive console?

The advantages of bodily buttons take work

There’s quite a bit to love concerning the MX Inventive Console, however its largest benefit is that it makes utilizing your pc each simpler and extra private. Even when it takes work to really put collectively, being compelled to consider the way you’re presently utilizing your software program is an effective factor.

It prompts a sort of digital spring-cleaning, manual-reading, and group that can at all times go away you in a greater place. You will study your self, your habits, and your expertise.

If you may make peace with restricted help from Logitech and are snug paying a little bit of a premium to do issues in your pc which might be already potential with keyboard shortcuts, the MX Inventive Console is enjoyable, useful, and most significantly, versatile. That is all you possibly can actually ask for from a pc accent like this.

Advisable

Logitech MX Inventive Console

Associated

5 interesting Microsoft accessories to use with your Surface

Microsoft has up to date its Floor equipment to make work and play extra snug for everybody. Here is what every of them can do.