Elgato Key Light Mini – Dazzlingly powerful and smart LED lighting

Elgato Key Light Mini – design and functionality

The box of the Elgato Key Light Mini does not offer much content. It doesn’t need that either, because you don’t need anything more than the LED itself and a USB cable for charging or for power operation. Even the cable makes a positive impression here. This is not only very long, but also angled so that the cable is always behind the light when it is connected. This alone shows that Elgato really thinks about the design.

With its dimensions of 147 x 100 x 16 mm, the Elgato Key Light Mini LED may seem a bit inconspicuous at first, but up close you can see and feel the well-known Elgato quality. The outside is made of matt black metal (probably aluminium) and appears to be quite robust, which is certainly also due to the slightly higher weight of 300 g. The 4000 mAh battery should certainly be responsible for this. The back panel features the familiar Elgato pattern found on most of the brand’s products and two status LEDs for WiFi connection (2.4 GHz/5 GHz, 802.11 a/b/g/n) and the battery, which displays the remaining battery fairly accurately using five separate LEDs.

Although the Elgato Key Light Mini comes with a 1/4 inch thread, which makes it compatible with all kinds of mounts and tripods, this is just one way of flexible use. Because the back is equipped with strong magnetic strips.

The first thing I did with it was tape it to my range hood in the kitchen, which I thought was a brilliant idea. Apparently Elgato had the same idea, which is why I didn’t take a picture of it. However, you can really do an infinite number of things with it. Whether in the home office, for a TikTok video, for a cooking video or simply on the go. Now, you have to be careful with electronic devices, but as long as you keep them away from the external hard drive in your backpack, you should be safe.

Key Light Mini – versatile and damn chic. pic.twitter.com/33X8h1cchV

— Elgato UK (@elgatoUK) February 10, 2022

Elgato Key Light Mini – LEDs and features

On the right side of the Elgato Key Light Mini, in addition to the on and off button, we have a reset button and a USB-C port. It can be charged relatively quickly with a maximum of 15 W. The switching regulator, with which the brightness can be adjusted, is more interesting here. If you press this in, the function changes so that you can adjust the color range. It creates a brightness of up to 800 lumens and covers a color range from 2900 to 7000 Kelvin. Not only does it cover a larger area than my video lights, but it’s even brighter. So bright it’s blindingly bright on the highest brightness setting, which is a pleasant surprise given I have so much more latitude than some of my other video LEDs. It is very nice that, as always, high-quality OSRAM LEDs are used here, which are generally very durable and also do not have any problems such as flickering, which is why they are perfect for videos.

But I mean dazzling relatively, because usually you don’t use the full brightness, where I get along very well with less than 50%, for example, since 800 lumens is quite a lot. Whether in the office during a video call or during a video shoot. The diffuser of the Elgato Key Light Mini is multi-layered. You have a light guide disc that allows even diffusion across the entire panel, a translucent grid panel that splits the light into millions of rays, two diffusion layers and opal glass that distributes the light rays well and LED frame lighting on the frame and again indirectly on the edge is illuminated. So they really thought about it for video creators, live streamers and photographers. I recently got it for one of mine Social Media Cooking Videos used. I don’t do this lightly as it’s what I do for a living and the video quality has to be amazing. Fortunately, the result was not only good, but I also had no interference or unwanted light reflections.

Elgato Key Light Mini Software and App

Of course, you can not only operate the Elgato Key Light Mini manually, but also control it in a smart way like all Elgato products. To do this, we have the Elgato Control Center app for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. Recognizes the Elgato Key Light Mini immediately if both are in the same network.

Here you can switch the LED on and off, adjust the color temperature, activate studio mode if you only want to use the light via the cable and also automatically activate an energy-saving mode, for example WLAN is deactivated. Overall, you get up to hours of battery life, which should certainly be enough for most shoots. However, if you are planning longer conference days or a 24-hour stream, the cable will not let you down, as it is not only very long, but also charges faster than the Elgato Key Light Mini discharges.

By the way, full Streamdeck integration is also supported here. You can then use this to assign commands to your Elgato Streamdeck so that it not only turns on and off, but also sets e.g. 5300 Kelvin and 43% brightness at the push of a button. So you are prepared for different scenarios.

Elgato Key Light Mini Pricing and Availability

The Elgato Key Light Mini LED is already available and costs €99.99. You can certainly also get other lights from Amazon for half the price (I also have several from here), but the Elgato Key Light Mini has better brightness and battery life despite its smaller format, a higher setting range, better diffusion and build quality and, of course, smart features . Not to mention the magnet feature. Accordingly, the price is absolutely fine, considering that the OSRAM LEDs are very durable.