Elgato Game Capture HD60 X Review

How Much Does it Cost?

Let’s not beat around the bush here, it’s £189. Yup, that’s a hundred and eighty-nine quid, not a typo. It’s expensive, but frankly, I’m not surprised, as this is some seriously impressive hardware. The ease of use, the great range of features such as the higher resolution and framerate pass-through, and the fact that Elgato has proven consistently that they’re the masters at what they do. Basically, you get what you pay for, and it’s as simple as that. However, I’d suggest spending another £70 and getting yourself, at least, the Streamdeck Mini too, it’s well worth it.

Overview

There are only a few big names in the capture card market, but it’s not hard to say that Elgato is one of the more premium options. They’ve had a few capture devices before, both external and internal, but to date, I’d say this is their most user and consumer-friendly model. For PC gamers, there are likely better setups that support the higher resolutions and frame rates for capture. However, the HD60 X is extremely well suited for those who don’t want to deal with 4K video files on their streams or channel. Full-HD at 60 FPS is a nice sweet spot for gaming content and makes for a pleasant viewing experience overall. Plus, if you’re using the latest consoles and still want to see 4K and 120Hz on your TV, the pass-through easily allows you to do this.

VRR

I love that it also supports VRR, and on a week when this feature is starting to roll out on the PlayStation 5, it couldn’t be better timed. Furthermore, the HDR capture is a welcome feature too, given it’s pretty much becoming started to play games in HDR these days. However, through software, you can stream in both HDR and SDR to supported online platforms simultaneously.

Great Quality

There’s really nothing but praise for the overall capture quality, and it really is at a what you see is what you get level. You can tinker with settings to change bitrates and the like, but for your average user, sticking with default settings seems to work really well. It’s designed to be user friendly, which is great because streaming live content can often be full of headaches, so anything that streamlines part of the process is welcome.

Add Elgato Strea,decl!

The device lacks any controls, but the software is easy to use on PC, and while you can use Stream Deck as an interface too, there’s also a virtual Stream Deck mobile app that can be used if you’re not ready to make that extra investment. However, for a lot of users, just hitting record and leaving it running while you gaming will work just fine, and you can just go edit the video files and chop it up afterwards as you would in any video editing software.

You must ensure you keep the audio chain through the HDMI the same bitrate for capture too, however, keep in mind some consoles can turn off HDMI audio if using a headset. However, so long as you use the built-in audio jack you can monitor there, or listen to the audio via whatever device is on the HDMI. If that’s a monitor, I suggest putting your speakers into the displays headphone jack to solve the lack of audio from your system. It’s more a quirk of game capture rather than something Elgato did wrong. However, more advanced capture devices usually offer audio in/out ports too.

Should I Buy One?

This device certainly isn’t the cheapest out there, but it’s a sensible price for sure a serious product. This may be a little above the hobby streamers’ budgets, but if you’re looking to make some professional content for your channel, this is a solid foundation and a worthy investment and it’s perfect for the Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5, and of course, PC.