AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme Video Capture GC550

Been excited to try\this product, been waiting along time. I have had the elgato game caputre hd, I currently have the elgato hd 60 (dont use) and currently using the avermedia live gamer hd on my pc (custom build). Not a huge fan of the software for devices, had issues with crashes or desyncing or lag and locking up on the elgato. For the avermedia hard to set up for pc/console, having to switch hdmi through each devcie, and still havent gotten it to work right with the pc. I was interested in the u3 but wanted another hdmi for passthrough. Went with the Live gamer hd, minus the pc set up issue i have been very happy with the live gamer hd, but wanted a portable capture card for my laptop (msi i7 4710hq 2.60ghz 16gb).

Amazon shipped the package quickly with prime. The package for the LGX is gorgeous, sleek and minimal. The box includes the LGX, usb 3.0, 3.5mm audio, hdmi, component, component to ps3, quick start guide, backup screw, a cover (already in the window) and a 3 month xsplit card.
Installation of the recentral 2 software was fast and easy. The LGX itself is lightweight & about the size of a nintendo ds. the usb is used to connect the device to your laptop or pc. Hdmi to the device & your gaming device. The hdmi out goes to your monitor. PC gameplay and Ipad can be recorded using the hdmi in directly to your laptop or pc. Recentral 2 can be used to capture your gameplay or stream. Simple and easy to record, you can adjust settings in the recentral software, use overlays or webcam. The device has an aux input (can stream music directly into the device) as well as a mic input on the device. If streaming straight from the recentral 2 software makes adding music & audio directly into the stream.

The software has a nice black grey red and white dashboard, simple interface, full of options & easy to figure out. A beginner would be able to figure it out easily. the drop downs on the left has video, device audio, pc audio options, a recording tab and a live editing option as well as a streaming tab to stream (twitch, ustream, youtube, niconico(never heard of) or rtmp. There are a couple of preset scene option basic, record, stream, chat and away which can be edited or deleted. there are three options for settings, folder and record.Settings menu is simple and clean options to control microphone social media, streaming profile, folder path. The streaming setup automatically picks settings after signing in with your twitch profile, you can make changes if you’d like. The quality is auto set to high. To edit stream settings once signed into streaming platform you can adjust with the pencil icon and custom. The software is great, huge improvement to previous software which i stopped using due to difficulty of navigating & changing settings. I wish i could use it with my live gamer hd as well.

The quality of the picture is amazing and clear. For streaming through obs recentral does not need to be opened. Selecting video capture device works,quality is great and simple to use as well. Settings can be changed through properties. Set up was very simple. The only issue i came across was in obs when changing custom resolution under properties of the capture card I received an error message back. I set the resolution under settings in obs to downscale. Set up on xsplit was extremely easy! I normally stream with obs but had been considering trying out xsplit. seeing how simple it was to set up was a great comfort. There was a little lag at first but that was due to to many things opened on my laptop using memory be gpu. The latency when streaming from the Recentral software was very low.

All in all i think the LGX is a huge improvement over other capture cards, it is possible to stream in 1080p 60fps as well as record. Being able to record pc game play from the card as well as stream pc game play easily from the card is nice.You can choose to do game capture(straight from pc) or video capture mode(from the avermedia) for obs or xsplit. The design is sleek and nice the window for a custom cover if you choose to make one is a nice self customazation feature. He software for the cover downloads when downloading recentral. Avermedia did a great job with this device.