Non Branded 4K HDMI to USB 3.0 Capture Card Review

Hello Guys, Today I brought a non-branded 4K HDMI to USB 3.0 capture card for under 20 dollars and here is my review of the product.

So, this is a 4K passthrough 1080P 60FPS capture card, that means the HDMI OUT inside this capture card has 4K resolution out at 60hz. 4K passthrough doesn't mean that it can record 4K videos. The max resolution at which this capture card can record/stream is 1920x1080 at 60FPS.

This was the cheapest capture card that I was able to find inside Flipkart and amazon, that had the EDID HDCP 2.2 marking. EDID "Extended Display Identification Data" which means that it can automatically identify and adjust to the display that we are connecting it into and HDCP 2.2 which stands for "High-bandwidth digital Content Protection" which means it can protect the 4K visuals coming out of your Setup Box, TV, Blu-ray Player and etc from recording via capture cards (it prevents those signals from capturing using this capture card). if those video players have the support of HDCP 2.2 in HDMI. This is kind of like an anti-misuse protection provided inside the capture cards these days.

If I know about this, before I brought this capture card, I should have gone for a capture card that only has EDID. 😁

Unboxing and Review

Whats inside the box?

Inside the box, you will get a USB 3.0 cable, User Manual and the Capture Card.

No HDMI Cables Included

How to setup this Capture card?

If you are going to use this capture card with your laptop you will only need 1 HDMI cable but if you are planning to use it with your PS2/3/4/5 then you will need 2 HDMI cables.

While using it with a laptop you will only need 1 HDMI cable, if you are not using an external monitor. You can get the same visuals on both the screens by going into display settings and applying duplicate display (win) or mirror display (linux).

For using this with PS4 you will need 2 HDMI cables as shown in the diagram.

After setting it up launch Streamlabs or OBS Studio or any other video capture application and follow the steps shown below.

Click on the + icon near the source and add a video capture device. Then click on add source.

Click on add a new source and give a name to the source. Then click on add source.

From the device change it from your webcam to USB Video. After that, you can close the window and start recording.

recording sample MotionJPEG 1080P at 60FPS

Questions and Answers

Does it overheat?
No, it doesn't overheat even if you record/stream for 1hr - 2hr
Does it support a 144 Hz monitor?
No, its max Hz at high resolution is 60hz
How is the quality?
This capture card is made of aluminium with excellent build quality. Doesn't feel cheap at all.
What are the problems faced while using it?
Screen tearing, no support for 144hz monitor, Duplicating monitor impacting performance, HDMI bad colour accuracy and etc.
What will happen if we record and play games on the same computer with this capture card?
This capture card is not made for that purpose and if you do like that it will make no sense of using this capture card. You will lose the performance by a lot. It is identical to not using a capture card with extra screen tearing.
Does enabling the V-sync fix screen tearing issue?
Inside the game slightly fixes the screen tearing issue but not in the recorded footage.

Details of the display outputs and inputs this capture card supports

mentioned in the user manual

How bad is the screen tearing issue?

The screen tearing issue is very bad.

Conclusion

From my testing, I can say that this is not the best capture card for recording FPS gameplays due to the screen tearing issue but anything that has less motion to it can be captured using this capture card without any problem like for example Photoshop Tutorials. We all know how hardware-consuming the Photoshop program is, if we are recording at the same time then the editing process will get very laggy, and that will destroy the fun of editing and that's where these capture cards come in place. These capture cards can capture visuals with less motion as you can see from the "sample MotionJPEG 1080P at 60FPS" video that I have provided above. I'm not recommending this capture card to anyone as this is not good for recording gameplays.

All the images used inside this blog are my own. I used my redmi k20 pro for taking these photos. Screenshots are taken from valorant game and from my computer. I used photoshop for editing my images and the video was recorded using canon g7x.