NOTE: Elgato Capture JUST updated the day this review goes live to support direct 4K60 capture from 4K X and Facecam Pro. W00T!

dude the production in the editing of this video alone is amazing.

The themes, coloring, editing... Fantastic job. I totally cow farm mushroomed right back to my 80's teenage years and had to stop the video just to get a better look at the ambiance. Lots of effort and it shows. 👍☕🐢

Patiently waiting for what seemed like an eternity for something like the 4K X. Ordered mine as soon as it went live. Can't wait to try it out.

The 5.1 audio capture is the more interesting news to me. I know it adds more bandwidth, but I really hope they can get that working with the 4K X at a lower resolution.

Omg I should have watched this video first. I just upgraded to the 240hz monitor and just bought the 4kpro when I should have got the 4kX nooooo. Dnt know what I was thinking as I always come to your page for information for my tech. Great video love the editing and information you give, thanks

I got the Elgato 4k X and have a had a lot of issues with it because my signal was technically "above" what the capture card could handle (it could still handle it with just a few hiccups here and there tho). Never before this video did I actually even think of just getting a splitter that simply downscales the signal in resolution! That's exactly what I needed to fix all my problems with this capture card! Since I don't stream in 4k 120 and just wanted to play in 4k 120 while capturing it.

Just Ordered the 4K X..Im coming from the HD 60 S+ AND im pretty sure this thing is gonna run way smoother and my streams are gonna run way better.Hopefully it ship fast

Amazing coverage and excited to have a decent USB 4 capture device finally!

It sucks the PCIE card doesn't capture 4K120, but at leas we now have something reasonably priced that does it in the 4K X.

I absolutely love your content and we all appreciate your hard work.

I was so excited when these were announced, but to learn I'm not able to capture 4K60 HDR whilst playing at 4k120/144 HDR is mind-boggling. In my case, it can't do anything more than what I currently can, so I guess I'll stick with my 4K60S+ for now.

So no multi-app with the USB 4k X only 4K Pro? It's not easy living for new tech.. Great video as usual!

Thank you for including the latency to preview and to keep a historic data of it, many outright skip that part. For more casual games I use my HD 60 Pro without passthrough and play it on the 4K Capture Utility instead, couple more generations and we might have a capture card where you might be able to play without noticeable input lag on the Preview.

Hey there! I can't seem to get a working 4K 120 recording from my PS5 with 4K X. I did get 4K 120 file eventually, but only in 7mbit bitrate and very laggy, using OBS. I got 4090 and 14900k, so my hardware shouldn't be an issue.

I love that you always give a review that is in depth, simple, and to the point to help assist with any purchases or thoughts of purchases, keep it up my man!!

I got the 4k Pro, maybe I got the wrong card. I cannot put it to passthrough 4k120 and capture 4k60 in OBS which was my intended use. It's outputting only 1080p in the properties, I think that is what you meant in 5:40. Will the 4K X be able to output 4k60 in OBS while passing 4k120? I dont want to buy it wrong again 😭

I have the 4k pro mk2 pci capture card and 2 cam links but just ordered the 4K X to go along with it, thanks for the video

Hold on.. 16:18 so it records 4K at 120Hz at MJPEG format only? Not NV12!

Great review as always. Thanks. And I think AVerMedia lost me... Elgato brought exactly what I wanted for an external card, even with the limitations that a USB capture card has. I just got frustrated with the internal card. Really, they could have gone further. But I've already decided which one I'm going to use now in my setup.

Interesting how the 4K Pro didn't receive any upgrades to the capture hardware over the 4k60 pro m2 but the latency was nearly halved, any thoughts on why that is?

You deserve more recognition man, keep doing your thing

Great video! Did you try it with Vertical plugin? Going on TikTok or another stream? For some reason it creates an encoding overload

Damn was hoping the 4k pro would allow 4k60 while passthrough 4k 240.

From a nerdy technical side the new cards are great to know, but from a painfree use side of things, the HD60X will be part of my rig for the foreseeable future. PCIe cards are messy not by themselves, but from the PC side of things, as any really usable PCIe ports are connected to the mainboard chip and not to the CPU, limiting the overall bandwidth to whatever is available on the connection between the chip and CPU. And that's a nightbare, since MANY parts in and around the PC are part of that party, including some M2 SSD connections, the ethernet, wifi and bluetooth connections, onboard sound and many usb ports as well. And the latter will keep me from going 4K on a usb card as well. Until I upgrade my PC, I will not stream in AV1 as well, so even in theory, HDR is out of the question here. Many things, I don't need to think about for now. Oh, one thing thats really nice to have on the HD60X: It gives me a seperate audio input for Windows. Do the new 4K X and 4K Pro have this feature as well? Because that - to me is even more crucial to consider.

You always surprise me with different editing styles and presentation when it comes down to these. Well, what feel like "Passion Projects" as such. P.S You always the first person I know is going to make the most informative and educational video and about capture cards and encoding. Rock on and solid work.

Hi there! I'm using a 4K Pro to capture PS5 (I want to game in 4K but stream & record at 1080p) but my colors look super washed out, regardless of HDR on or off. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Great and helpful in depth video!!! Appreciate the video!

What's most disgrunteling me is the fact that Linux is not always fully supported. Especially from the PCIe cards :/ Would wish that companies would at least open their drivers or work better together with OBS so that Linux users can at least run them to their full potential without too much headaches :/

Nice video man. I was waiting for this video

For someone who lives in Canada thank you for adding the Canadian price. got a follow from me!

I applaud the effort you put into these videos, thanks for all the info!

I love how 4K60 Pro Mk.2 can handle literally ANY resolution it has bandwidth for! YUAN also has Linux drivers for it... but Elgato doesn't care. I have that YUAN 8K60 card. And it's a pain. It requires 8 lanes of PCIe which are very hard to get. My MB supports 8+4+4(NVMe) bifurcation so 2nd slot is only 4x. All modern AMD chipsets can do is also 4x PCIe. You ether need ThreadRipper CPU with much more lanes, a rare MB that can do 8+8 and sacrifice 8 lanes of your GPU slot or capture 8K30 max.

Thanks for the review. Updating my PC soon and only ‘view’ the content on pass through rather than in OBS and I think I’m gonna see if the price drops on the 4k60 pro mk2

Why does HDMI suck so badly? And why oh why isn't there any DisplayPort Capture Card?

After when I upgrade my streaming system to something a bit more modern, the latest 4k60 Pro (I guess it would be considered Mk. III, don't know what happen to that bit in the naming scheme) is something I'm gonna get. Lower latency is always good.

Great review, love the new transitions!

After Avermedia disappointed me with the Live Gamer 2.1, I really wanted the Elgato 4k Pro because at the time it was sais Elgato won't mess it up... Unfortunately they did, because the PCIe card can't even record 4kVRR60HDR, let alone 4kVRR120HDR, so no reason to buy an Elgato 4k Pro anymore. Well, maybe in a few years someone will be able to make a real HDMI 2.1 PCIe capture card, until then I'll be playing in 4kVRR120HDR but can only record 1080p120HDR. So the only real new thing is that the Capture cards now are able to record FRL and VRR inputs, that's all, because the resolutions supported were already supported by the 5+ year old cards.

If you use passthrough, is there ANY added latency to the gaming PC?

i bought both, needed newer hdmi spec devices. great review/info!

Getting a 4K X. I've been waiting for a decent USB capture card for 4K, let alone 4K at 60 FPS. Used the link, I support supporting good creators.

Great video. Took a couple years but it finally seems to be happening. Proper 4K high fps capture on the one side, AV1 support on the platforms ... maybe another year or two and it might become the new normal. On the other hand one has to ask if all of it is even necessary. 8-10Mbit AV1 at 1080p in HDR would tick every box for me as a viewer and not blow up my connection. And I think that is true for at least everyone who is watching on a mobile device as well.

Hello man, thanks for the great job you do, im a streamer and i stream with dual PC, been watching the video but i still dont know if is worth to get one of the new cards, i always want to improve my stream as much as possible, so would love to know if it would improve my stream the 4k Pro, when i already have the 4k60 PRO, when my main monitor is 1440p 144hz, thanks in advance for your answer. Keep going strong.

The question is... Do I need a 4000 series GPU or is an Intel Arc good enough for a dedicated stream PC??

Ok, so it seemed glorious at the beginning, but I can't capture 1440p 60 if I passthrough 1440p 240 Hz makes it pointless since I already have the 4K60 Pro MkII and capture at 1440p60/120.

upgrading from an elgato hd60s+ that has up until restricted passthrough to 4k60. the elgato 4K X will allow me to have 4k120 hdr passthrough and capture in 1440p60 hdr @£230 i think

I haven't used a capture card since the Elgato HD 60 came out so I decided to get the 4k X. I'm using it for my ultrawide Samsung Neo G9 so we'll see how that goes. I also have my gaming laptop so I can use it for that whenever I'm traveling.

how would any of you capture a 1080p 360hz monitor for a 1080p60 livestream?

Damn wish I knew you had an affiliate link sooner! I would have bought it through there instead.

Is the future 5.1 audio update truly limited to the 4k Pro? Other outlets are simply saying it's coming with no mention of model restrictions. I suppose it could be somewhat assumed due to usb bandwidth, but between video compression (which you've noted), resolution/framerate downscaling, and potential audio compressions it doesn't seem like an impossibility for the 4K X to me.

‪Guys my elgato 4k x won’t connect to my monitor. Yes I change the resolution to match on my ps5 and my Mac book pro 2018 and yes I download the uility thing to change my thing from merged to display, and yes I changed different hdmi cords and yes I changed the resolution on obs. ‬and elgato I changed to 1920x1080 and my monitor is asus rog 2018 something ,, someone helpppp

I know this isn't the focus of this review, but how is the audio delay on either product? I ask that because I need to extract the audio without using these cheapo Amazon HDMI 2.1 Audio Extraction devices that never seem to last. It would be great to monitor that input in real time and ditch the cheap hardware. Maybe there is better purpose-driven hardware I'm missing. Using VRR on consoles with a PC monitor that has no dedicated audio out is a mess!

Wonderful video! Excellent advice. I do have a question though. I’m getting the 4K Pro because I think HDR will be more important and prevalent as ours TVs and monitors continue to improve. How do I ensure my PS5 and LG G2 are limited to 4K60 so I can do full resolution HDR recording? I’m fine streaming 1080p, because 4K streaming is still…impractical, at best. But I want to ensure I can make full quality VODs.

thanks, it seems clear now that i may go for the "4K X" since im mostly worried for having that good quality on videos, as for streaming on twitch, i can just use my old HD60 PRO i guess (which is not important atm) im mostly focusing on youtube and i want those 4k playthrus to be good, what ya think?

Thanks for the review. I"m looking to record at 1080p 240Hz, not for streaming, but just to record. The PC is a prebuilt HP Pavillion with a Ryzen 1700 cpu and an RX 550 and a 240 Hz 1080p monitor, ports are USB 3.1. We are simply recording the windows desktop which is showing some lab software and a video stream from a USB camera. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

First off, amazing color grade, colors looking sweet!! Question….What encoder option settings did you use on your Mac ultra? For my M1 Pro Mac, it only plays back smoothly when using ProRes encoder, but then a 1 min clip is 7GB! All other Mac encoders give me overload error, & laggy playback. What gives?

Way better than what AverMedia recently released. Will have to wait until they patch in LCPM 5.1 audio passthrough (at a minimum) before I consider buying a 4k Pro though.

I love your videos and how in depth they go. So I currently have the 4K60 Pro with a 3070 RTX, 32 GB of Ram and a Ryzen 7 3700X. I use my capture card to record PS5 gameplay with the 4K Utility Software from ElGato and I use OBS to record my webcam ( I do it like this so I can have full control of my webcam when editing, since I edit/export at 1440p 60FPS). Would you recommend me getting one of these capture cards to upgrade mine or should I just really stay with mine? I definitely want to eventually upgrade the GPU and CPU in the near future.

Does this mean that I can capture 4k30p 10-bit 422, slog 3 footage from my Sony cameras into OBS onto the capture card, and color grade it in premiere? I've wanted to consider 10 bit capture recording from the 4k hdmi capture card from blackmagic because it does 10-bit, but was waiting to see if competitors would do something about it. Curious what this new gen of elgatos can do.

One thing I'm glad I did was buy a upscaler to use my hd60 with my PS5, hopefully one day I could afford something better since I think my HD60 is dying after years of use.

I have a Linux box I'll be using for capture. Any updates in Linux performance 5 months later? Still weird USB issues/odd formats or all sorted out?

What reason do you have to believe that the Avermedia HDMI 2.1 card doesn't suppory ALLM while this one does? In the PS5 settings it says that if VRR is on, then ALLM is automatically turned on as well?

hi. Tell me, maybe you know. I capture 4k 60 with sony fx30 before that I did it comlink 4k now I bought elgato 4k x and when capturing 4k x there was a lot of noise not even in the shadows? what could this be related to?

If you wanted, could you use the 4k x to record on a single pc. I want to buy it for my current xbox series x but plan to get a pc in the future. Would I be able to use it for that pc instead of needing to buy a recording software?

Good to see this supporting UW (3440x1440) monitors, even if Elgato hasn’t officially announced that yet. Has anyone been able to get SUW (5120x1440) working yet?

I wonder when the creator of the Retrotink 4K decides to make a PCI-E capture card? One can dream

3:45 it makes no sense to me why the hardware for the PCIe card wasn't upgraded, so with the 4K Pro i can passthrough 1440p240 HDR VRR but cannot record 1440p120 4:4:4 HDR VRR? but i can record 1440p120 4:4:4 HDR VRR with the lower priced USB version???? what is this nonsense??? I hate this :/

love the review!

Love the editing

I've got a Dell Alienware AW3225QF which apparently has DSC always on. I'd like to use 4k240 passthrough and capture at 1080p60. The documentation for the 4k Pro says, "4K Pro does not support the capture of video signals utilizing Display Stream Compression (DSC)." is this true? Will it not work at all?

Hey, great video! Do you have any advice on how to fix screen flicker with 4K X ? My TV screen goes black for a couple of seconds, but not in OBS or the capture utility. I've been trying to fix that for almost a week now. 😒

Great editing, love the VHS/crt vibe. What plugin did you use? It doesn’t look like red giant at all

Great quality video as always Adam! Is there any information about the experience on having the new 4K 240hz monitors that have DSC compression... how well that will work together with the passthrough and capturing?

Apologies for the follow-up question (and I appreciate it may be difficult to say), but is the 4K X currently THE external capture device to get for retro and modern captures? I know there's been recent competitors from Genki and AverMedia. Not sure if it's in the video, but the weird refresh rates of certain retro consoles... does the 4K X deal with these? I haven't a RetroTink 4K yet, but I know there was a triple-buffering mode in the 5X to help with this. The original OSSC would potentially present it with more problems in how it line-doubles.

Great review, picked it up today. Do you happen to notice posterization/color banding in passthrough when using 4k 120hz HDR? It seems to happen with a 422 chroma signal, which the PS5 outputs with that combo. I don't get the posterization with a direct connection.

Great video! Quick question - for the 4K X, do I need to use the USB 3.2 C-to-C cable or can I use a USB C-to-A cable similar to the HD60 X? Just asking as I have limited USB C inputs on my motherboard.

Would you be willing to review the TUF GAMING CAPTURE BOX-4KPRO? I'd be interested in your thoughts on it. I've been using it for a while. It works really well. At first it did have an issue with audio buzzing, which was fixed via firmware update. Other than that, the only remaining concern is the automatic firmware update in their software doesn't work, however I was able to successfully apply the update manually. Let me know your thoughts.

5:52 the fact that it cannot record in 4k60 from a 4k120hz feed makes the avermedia the clear winner. I was worried for a sec I got the GC553g2 over this lol. (EDIT: lol nvm saw your comment) But I am still having handshake issues with the PS5 to the OLED :( (Edit 2: I just saw the end of the video where you talk about ALLM, is that really not supported on the GC553G2?!, could that be the reason why I am having handshake issues since that is enabled??) Where does it say that this capture card supports that feature while the Avermedia one doesn't ?? I feel scammed knowing that wow... Thanks in advance & awesome editing in this video. THUMBS UP!

These products take me back to the ps3 and xbox 360 days. Are these products really needed when the consoles themselves stream themselves? Interesting.

sad to see no 4k 60fps HDR capture.

Though im happy with my 4k60 mk2 that I snagged for 180 USD, I'm excited to see what elgato has to offer with these new capture cards!

Great review. Can you confirm whether or not HDR capture is possible on macOS?

Thanks for the review! Is 4k limited to 4:2:0 on the 4k X?

apparently only shows up as 5gb on macos tested with my mac 16 pro intel and heard the same about apple silicon

I know it ain’t much, but it’s honest work LOL. This was so well explained and well made, thank you so much! I have a question, I have an M3 MacBook Pro, and would like to use it as a display for my Xbox Series X/PS5. Will the Elgato 4K X work and display the full resolution at the MacBook’s screen?

[ WARNING ] It will NOT record anything above 4K 30 FPS on a mac M2. Not sure what Mac EposVox is using but on a M2 and even M2 Pro, 4k 60 and above is not a thing.

Can't it help single stream computers if I need to connect a camera with HDMI out? Even cameras that support webcam mode usually only does that in 1080p.

I know it's a rude question, but the comparison is so hard to make, so I'm commenting. Would buying the GC575 be a much better choice in the end? I thought it would be hard to notice the difference between 30ms and 60ms, although the Inputlag is definitely higher at 60ms.

Hi, I followed the extra steps for audio for game capture for macOS within OBS - but there's still no audio being captured. Just video. Please help!

So how do i use this mjpg codec and where? to record 4k 60 with 5Gbps usb-c on my older laptop? Thanks

Thanks for the overview! Do you know if a 165hz monitor would work through passthrough 1440p or does the card lock at 144hz or 240hz?

looks like we are gonna have to wait for another generation to be able to stream proper ultrawide. Thanks for the review!

I own a 4k pro mk2 and was considering this downscaler you linked, but AFAIK it does not support downscaling VRR, so its not worth it. Might as well suck it up and get the new 4k pro

And I had just bought the avermedia. Time to return.

I am returning my 4k Pro because I wanted to capture 4k HDR while passing through. I did the Elgato suggestion and it says if I have a Ps5 playing HDR at 120hz that it can record in 4k 30 HDR which would be fine for me. But your spreadsheet says that if I have a 4k 120 HDR input I won't be able to?? Who's wrong?

Good video ! Is the codec AV1 compatible with this card ? And what the maximum bitrate recording ?

Hey, I cant find anything on the internet about this, but I have foundcomments saying youre the best in the business. My question is: Is there a known way to have your chat overlayed on top of your gameplay, but only when viewed from Twitch? So that it's not on my screen, but is on theirs? I get that it seems "pointless" on the surface, but I think viewers like to know exactly at what point the streamer sees their message/effectively conveys how much delay there is between the two, and it's also just a bit of a comfort thing for them seeing their messages "officially" pop up. But Ive only got one monitor and dont mind using my phone. Thanks in advance.

U should review the genki shadow cast pro 2 its really good from what ive heard

Why can’t it passthrough 360hz tho???!?!??

What is the benefit of 10gbps USB over my current HD60S+? Improved latency and stability? Thanks.