AVerMedia GC311 Live Gamer MINI - 1080p60 USB 2.0 Capture Card with Full HD Passthrough, Plug & Play, Low Latency Streaming for Switch, PS4, Xbox, OBS, YouTube, Mac, Windows 11, PC, Beginners

I bought this to record Nintendo Switch gameplay. I wasn't expecting the picture quality of the recordings to be so good and the framerate to look so smooth because of the price but it does. It's obviously not going to look as good as using an Elgato capture card but it still looks really good.. I ran in to some issues setting it up tho. At first, the audio quality was terrible but I found a fix online by just changing a couple of sound settings on my computer and it's fine now. I also ran in to an issue with it saying something like Copy protected content in OBS but I found a fix for that too. I noticed later on that there was crackling/static in the audio but I found a fix online for that too. It was a lot of messing about to get it set up right but I've got no problems now. I was slightly worried about it not being able to run properly because I haven't got a dedicated graphics card and all that on my laptop. It's just for general use but the HDMI passthrough in the capture card takes a lot of the strain of the CPU when recording. It was only at about 9% while recording. I didn't notice any stutters in the recordings or anything like that. It works great. I did add 16 gig of ram to my laptop, that probably helped, idk. If you're worried about buying this with a low end PC, I wouldn't be. It's a great budget capture card.

Super easy to use, just plug it in and load up OBS. It has very low latency so you can use it to play games if you want to display your switch on your PC monitor for example, whilst still using your pc. The only way I could even notice any latency was when I compared it side by side to the switch! Even then, it was only barely noticeable. It can capture at 1080p60fps, which is more than enough for most people, and also at quite a cheap price point! Overall quite happy with this so far, especially for the money.

While this is an affordable device for getting started with game capture and/or streaming, prospective buyers should be aware that it's a USB 2.0 device. This means that while it is capable of low-lag 60fps capture (meaning you can play all but the most timing-sensitive games via the capture window in something like OBS), there will be some noticeable compression artifacts on the video it captures, particularly obvious in areas with gradients of contrasting colours. This is because the bandwidth limitation of USB 2.0 means there's a limit on the bitrate of video the device can pipe through to your PC. The quality of the video via the HDMI passthrough is unaffected, however, since that's not touching the USB side of things. This may not be a big deal to some, but it is worth noting for those who require (or desire) high-quality video capture. For those who do require high-quality footage, spend the extra money and get a USB 3.0 device like an Elgato HD60S+ or better. For those who just want to see if YouTubing or streaming is for them, this is a perfectly acceptable device to get started with -- just be aware you may want to replace it before long if you find you're bitten by the video-making or streaming bugs!

Great essential item for streamers and the lag is non existent and audio is amazing

Does exactly what we needed (passthrough to a projector, while capturing on laptop). We had the AverMedia LGP Lite device previously, which began giving hardware issues, but was always a poor performer in terms of latency (around 500ms), whereas this unit is near instant in terms of latency (sub 50ms), so very pleased!

When it works it works well, but I'll be damned if it works due to the software. I bought this for the purposes of streaming splatoon 2 from my Nintendo switch and not one day in I've already had a ton of problems getting it working. First time I used it, recorded 2 seconds of gameplay without sound and kept doing it till I reset the computer. Then it messed with my audio devices making my dac unusable without a restart. Then when I tried to stream but the software froze and wouldn't work until I again reset my computer. in less than 12 hours I've had more trouble with this than any other piece of tech I've ever used, and due to this im heavily considering a refund and just buying a capture card from razer, all because of the god awful software. The software is mandatory but it preforms awful, it's slow and buggy

Caught the streamer bug after being unemployed during Covid-19 lockdown. I have a good knowledge of AV working in film/tv, but I'd say even the most novice user would find this a piece of cake to use. HDMI pass through has zero latency and I can't notice a quality difference between the passthrough signal vs the HDMI straight into my monitor. It provides an encoded 1080p signal at 60 FPS (which is a big selling point for this card over other similarly priced products) meaning your stream can be sent out at 60fps in all it's glory. Since using for a week or so every day I've had no issues with lag or performance problems when using mac or windows. Really easy to set up and was surprised at how "plug and play" it really was. Brilliant product, just wish it would make me better at COD.

just letting you know there is the tinest latency increase on the passthrough mode, splatoon 3 felt ever so slightly slower compared to straight from the hdmi cable. i would personally spend the extra money and get an elgato which pros usually use to capture gameplay on fast paced shooters x the delay would never be noticable on games that arent requiring you to be at your peak performance fyi, rpgs and such will work wonderful on this card and the quality is great. it's weird this card is usb 2.0 though.