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When it comes to capture cards, you don’t want to sacrifice quality for price. It’s one of those pieces of equipment for streaming that you can’t skimp on.

High-quality streaming with no lagging requires the best of the best. Sometimes to be a professional, you have to throw in some money on your streaming business.

At the end of the day, that’s what gamer streaming is and evolves into. A business.

To help you grow your streamer business, we did our research on the best capture cards for PCs.

Check out these 4 capture cards so you can project your gameplay from one computer to another. So, you can stream it on your favorite platform.

1. Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket Portable Game Capture Card

Type of Capture Card: External capture card/USB capture card 

Type of Consoles: PCs, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, XBox One, Wii U 

PC Requirements: Windows 7/8/10 

Resolution: 1080 pixels 

Frame Rate: 60 frames per second 

Cool Features

You can take this game capture card on the go. It’s small enough that it can fit in your hoodie pockets. You can take it everywhere.

It has a built-in microphone jack. You can give commentary while you’re gaming at your best. There’s no hassle of connecting everything.

You plug in your microphone to the 3.5mm jack and you’re set to go.

This capture device has a record button. You don’t have to go to your PC to get it ready. With the push of a button your recording and with another push it’s off.

It uses an H.264 format so it records high-quality gaming videos. And you know how high-quality videos take up a lot of space? Not for this capture card.

It takes up a third of the disk space that MPEG-2 files take up. 

Our Rating: 4 stars out of 5

2. AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus Capture Card 

Type of Capture Card: External capture card/USB capture card

Type of Consoles: PCs, Macs, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, XBox One

PC Requirements: Windows 7/8.1/10 with Intel Core i5 CPU i5-3330, NVIDIA GTX 650/AMD Radeon R7 250X, 4 GB RAM

Laptop Requirements: Windows 7/8.1/10 with Intel Core i7-4810MQ, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870M, 4 GB RAM

Recording Quality: Records and streams in 4K quality video

Resolution: 1080 pixels 

Frame Rate: 60 frames per second

Cool Features

AVerMedia’s gaming capture card promises no lag between gameplay and streaming for all your friends. It uses an integrated pass-through to achieve such quality.

Everything you’re doing will be happening in real-time.

It has plug-and-play technology. You don’t have to install it inside of your PC or do an hour-long setup to get it going.

It has UVC technology. The technology doesn’t need any extra hardware or software or installation to start.

All you have to do to get started streaming is to plug the card into both PCs.

You don’t need a PC to use the capture card if you’re traveling. You press the hot button to record your gameplay. It’ll save your gameplay on an SD card.

Our Rating: 4 and a half stars out of 5 

3. MiraBox Game Capture Card 

Type of Capture Card: External capture card/USB capture card 

Type of Consoles: PCs, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Wii U, XBox One 

PC Requirements: Windows 7/8/10, Linux, Windows Media Encoder software, Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder software, Real Producer Plus software, VLC software 

Resolution: 1080 pixels 

Frame Rate: 60 frames per second 

Cool Features

This MiraBox capture card is another plug and play model. There’s no installing software or hardware. There aren’t any drivers to install into you gaming console. You can get to streaming right away.

There’s a pro camera to webcam solution. Yes, you can use it to project footage on your camera or cam to your PC. It’s great for more than gameplay.

There are several possibilities with this capture card.

The USB port has a high-speed transmission. It’s another tool to prevent lagging between gameplay and streaming.

Speaking of lag, there’s zero latency when you use the HDMI input port too. Yes. We said ZERO latency.

This capture card will impress you when you test it out. 

Our Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5 

4. Elgato Game Capture Card HD60 Pro

Type of Capture Card: Internal capture card/PCIe x1

Type of Consoles: PCs, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, XBox One 

PC Requirements: Windows 10 (64-bit), Intel HD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 600, Intel i5-4xxx quad-core 

Resolution: 1080 pixels 

Frame Rate: 60 frames per second 

Cool Features 

This internal capture card uses an advanced and onboard H.264 encoder. The encoder lets you record as much footage as you can. All in near-perfect quality for your viewers.

Despite the high-quality streaming, it also can save the footage without taking up a ton of space.

And there’s no lag between your gameplay and the streaming. They have Instant Gameview which creates low latency. Always a plus.

You get to control your streaming. You can add your webcam while streaming. Plus, you can even use overlays.

It has Live Commentary so you can record your voice while streaming your gameplay. It records and streams your commentary as you go.

The flashback recording is one of the best features of this capture card. With flashback recording, you can go back to your gameplay to record it.

It’s great insurance in case you forget to record while you’re playing.

Not only do you get a capture card but you also get a high and low profile bracket and a 6.5 foot HDMI cord.

Our Rating: 5 stars out of 5

Final Thoughts

We’ve shared some of the best gamer capture cards on the market. Our favorite, by far, is the Elgato Game Capture Card HD60 Pro. It’s for the professional gamer and business person. Whatever capture device you choose, make sure you do your research prior to purchasing.