There's also the AVerMedia Live Gamer Ultra, a capture card that doesn't hide behind misleading marketing when it comes to its pass-through capabilities. As an added bonus, the Live Gamer Ultra can capture in 4K as well as pass the video through, and it isn't a million miles away from the XR1 on price. AverMedia’s Live Gamer Portable 2 is one of the most flexible capture cards on the market, and it’s cheap. For specs, it supports 1080p passthrough at 60 fps while recording at the same resolution and frame rate. You don’t need a computer to record, either. The Live Gamer Portable 2 includes an SD card reader, so you can record your gameplay independently of a computer. There are also inputs for a microphone and headset so you can provide commentary on the go.

The footage came out great and it was easy to pull clips from the SD card via card reader. To be honest, I've had more issues managing the video files using the Elgato 4K Capture Utility software. This software is the only place to make changes to the capture card and adjust picture settings.With the hardware encoder, you can get by with a less powerful computer. AverMedia recommends a third-gen Intel Core i5 with a GTX 650 or better and 4GB of RAM on Windows, and a quad-core i5 with a GT 750M or better on Mac. It’s important to note that the system requirements are for streaming. If you’re just recording gameplay, you can use almost any Windows computer. Whether you're gaming on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, or the last-gen consoles, the XR1 is perfectly capable of being a good quality stream tool. It can't match the true titans of the space, like the AVerMedia Live Gamer Bolt, but for streamers especially, it's very good. It can pass through video at 60 FPS at up to 4K resolution, while simultaneously capturing at 1080p60, which is what you want for streaming to services like Twitch. On the contrary, a good capture card could increase the quality of your stream, potentially lighten the load on your main PC, and improve the performance of your games while streaming. That’s what impresses me about the Live Gamer Duo the most. It does everything it advertises with relatively low effort. The full HD recording and high-enough-frame rate streaming just works and is immediately recognisable by third party software.

Elgato's HD60 X offers the best combination of performance and price, which gives it the edge on this list. The HD60 X is essentially a follow-up to the HD60 S+, a capture card that was on this list until we tested the HD60 X. The HD60 X is a sleek and compact external capture card that can capture video in 4K resolution at 30fps. If you want a faster frame rate in your recordings, you can also choose to record in 1080p at 60fps. It features an APT (Advance Pass Through) button on the dial that'll let you toggle between 1440p/120fps passthrough and 1080p 60fps capture on the fly without needing to swap cables or force you to change the display settings on your gaming PC when you're not streaming.Because I didn't read everything in full, I assumed that this meant the XR1 supported 120Hz pass through from my Xbox Series X in the same way all the other capture cards I've tested over the years supported pass through. The XR1 is a good capture card, but it's also no better than any of the competing, more established products. And while many old hands have no issues using OBS, both Elgato and AVerMedia with their easy-to-use apps, are more welcoming for newcomers.