First Look: Cooler Master’s MasterHUB Is an Awesome Snap-Together Power Tool for Creators

pcmag.com:

TAIPEI—Cooler Master, the day before Computex 2023's official start, opened its new, ultramodern Taiwan headquarters to invited international press and demoed the MasterHUB, a nifty-looking modular peripheral designed for gamers, streamers, and content creators. Building on the signature feature of competitor Corsair/Elgato's Stream Decks—a grid of programmable hotkeys with integrated LCDs on each key—the MasterHUB does it one better. Or, you might say, it could do it several times better, depending on which and how many of its special input modules you install.

The MasterHUB comprises a series of modules that can be swapped around and laid out in a huge variety of configurations. At the center of it all is a baseboard peppered with pogo-pin contacts, like so...

MasterHub modules snap magnetically onto the board, and the board, dubbed FlexBase, plugs into your PC via USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 (allowing for DisplayPort over USB connectivity for the screen modules). You can drop on modules for different-size touch screens, knob tri-clusters, or a single scrubbing-type dial with a programmable LCD in the center. Also available will be a thin scroll-bar module, a slider module, and more. In essence, you can assemble an array of modules that suits your specific use case, placed in the positions you find best. Plus, Cooler Master will eventually offer multiple “baseboard” sizes.

How does this translate in practice? A streamer, for example, might want one of the Stream Deck-style button-shortcut modules, along with a fader panel. In contrast, a video editor might prefer the scroll bar and the scrubbing dial. The modules take up different footprints on the baseboard, so you'll need to plan accordingly, depending on the available