Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Elgato HD60 S, External Capture Card, Stream and Record in 1080p60 with ultra-low latency on PS5, PS4/Pro, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One X/S, in OBS, Twitch, YouTube, works with PC/Mac

I can run my Elgato HD60 Pro through my PC, to my cable box, and I can watch and record TV on my PC

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 24, 2018

The ViewHD 2 Port 1x2 Powered HDMI Mini Splitter does, in fact, break that irritating HDCP protection, whether it's TV, streaming, or gaming.
I can run my Elgato HD60 Pro through my PC, to my cable box, and I can watch and record TV on my PC now, and I can record kids shows from Netflix for my 5-year-old and transfer video to her TV's USB. It keeps her occupied so I'm happy. It also makes watching TV better because now I can use the 10.2 Surround Sound that's hooked to my PC for cable. My HDTV is HDCP protected, as is my cable box, yet the splitter helps bypass both on its own to success.

ViewHD 2 Port 1x2 Powered HDMI Mini Splitter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004F9LVXC
Elgato HD60 Pro: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014MQIVPS

The Elgato software called "Game Capture HD" is very, very good. It can be a little confusing setting it up to your personal needs, but it works once you get the hang of it. For me, I only use this for TV, so all I need to do is record the .ts file without encoding or streaming. However, I do stream my TV to Facebook sometimes, and it does an incredible job at it. It's fun sharing what I'm watching with friends. There's a section on the program that allows you to choose multiple streaming platforms other than Facebook, such as Twitch, or straight RTMP links. You can easily choose your audio devices, and stream multiple audio and video in one feed, plus record it.

The installation of this device was extremely simple. You just place it in your normal PCI slot in your PC, lock it up, boot the PC, install the software, restart, and ta-da... all done. Works like a dream.

Video quality is phenomenal. It can go as high as 1080p @ 60fps @ 21Mbps bitrate. There are also simple visual effects such as brightness and contrast, and for the streamers out there, it comes with pre-rendered stream overlay layouts.

Here's my PC specs:
Windows 10 Pro x64
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
Intel i7-2600K
12GB RAM

With my specs, I can run the Elgato, my baby monitor camera, and a video file all together, and still easily browse the internet or do some photo editing in Photoshop. No lag at all. It uses about 25% of my CPU and takes up 320MB of RAM, and clearly my CPU isn't the most powerful, but works fantastic with this card.

Looking for something to stream with or record with? Get this. It won't let you down. However, it does require you to have Windows 10 only. A bit of an issue if you ask me, but everyone should have Windows 10 by now. It's the most superior OS in the Microsoft line.

****** EDIT 05/14/2018: This card now has serious bugs on Windows 10 Spring Update 1803. It no longer reads the card, the driver doesn't recognize that the card is present, and the troubleshooting on the Elgato website for the 1803 update is only a chance, not an actual fix. Currently, many people buying this are unable to use their HD60 Pro. It seems Elgato needs to release a new driver once they figure out the problem. As of right now, I cannot use my card. It's collecting dust, and the return windows for the item is gone. I'm currently in talks with Elgato Support, trying any method that one of their employees is trying to give me to remedy the issue. It's been three days, and so far no luck.I attached a new photo showing the issue at hand.

****** EDIT 12/05/2019: I have figured out the problem, after a year of minor on-and-off attempts. One day I just sat down and did my best to figure it out. The answer? It's the PCI slot. You should have a few PCI slots on your motherboard, and one of those slots is like a 'master slot'. I've had mine in the third PCI slot, but there is one above my GPU, but below my CPU that I call 'PCI slot 1'. Once Windows 10 upgraded to 1803, it somehow stripped the ability to use any of your PCI slots that aren't your main PCI slot 1, and now it requires the use of only the master slot. There is some sort of hardware/software communication issue after the Windows 1803 update.

I have tested this card on 3 PCs. Here are my results:
- The first PC has an old copy of Windows 10 without any internet. I tried it in each slot (2 slots on this one), and it worked every time.

- The second PC has the 1803 Windows 10 update. I tried it in each slot (2 slots in this one), and it did not work on PCI slot 2, but it did, however, work flawlessly in PCI slot 1.

- The third PC(my current main build) is the same as the second PC with every current update as of December 5th, 2019. I ended up with the same results as the second PC, except this one has three slots, not two. I tried all three, and only slot 1 works. The first slot on the top, closest to the CPU, seems to be like the 'master slot'. As long as you find the correct 'master slot', it works.

I have returned my rating back to 5 stars, but Elgato Support needs to understand this issue and give support for it. There are many people feeling abandoned and left out who can't figure out the answer.

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J S

Be aware of what you are getting here. Game Capture HD60 Pro (the internal one) review.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 2, 2016

Style: HD60 PROVerified Purchase

Be aware of what you are getting here. Game Capture HD60 Pro review.

I read all this info on the product page and thought it would do things that it does not. Perhaps that's my own fault, or perhaps the wording is misleading or unclear. It's probably some of both. I'll go over things I thought it would do and general usage issues below.

First off, I had hoped this thing would work as a way to offload CPU and GPU usage away from streaming software, which it... doesn't really do far as I can tell? Ideally I was hoping I could stream PC games using OBS Studio and have this card encoding both the stream and a high quality local copy at the same time (or even just the local copy), which the description seems like it says it could probably do. Turns out these encoding chips only work within it's own software, so that's out immediately. If you were hoping to buy a card to cover all your encoding for you and get a nice looking stream and a perfect local copy, this ain't gonna do that. In fact even using it's own software, the master copy encode seems...very encode-y. There's artifacts and stuff. Definitely not what I was hoping this device would accomplish. In general I wouldn't suggest this hardware for "same PC" gaming and streaming. It seems more geared toward capturing console stuff. You can't select the device as an encoder choice in OBS, at all. Oh and if you are thinking of trying to just run both programs, if it's being used in OBS the other software will just say "device is being used" or something and do nothing.

The pass-through seemed to have issues too. Immediately I noticed the color settings were totally different, which is annoying for something that was supposed to just be a pass-through. If that's different, who knows what else is? I didn't bother using it very long to find out. You can fiddle with the settings to adjust this, but again, it's a pass-through. I guess it's intended usage is more for sending the pass-through signal out to a TV? I also tried using my GPU's HDMI into this device and display port for my monitor, and cloning the displays. This seemed to work OK, although I also didn't bother testing this extensively and just went back to GPU to monitor directly. Either way you do this, you're still ending up with capturing the entire monitor in OBS or the included software, which is less than ideal for PC gaming for various reasons. Again, for console capture, it seems OK, but don't bother for same PC stuff. Maybe if you are capturing another PC's output it would be more useful?

If you are capturing a console via HDMI, you can indeed use this device as a video capture input in OBS, which is good. If it didn't do this, I'm not sure what it would be good for! I played some Xbox 360 on it for awhile and it seemed alright. Even just looking at the OBS preview screen was playable for awhile, so that's nice but nothing to count on. The annoying part here is how audio is handled, which after screwing around with it for several hours now, I couldn't even really explain it. There is a separate Audio Capture software that it comes with that lets you mess with settings but it's pretty unclear and feels like it's missing a lot of my devices. It also totally screws around with default audio devices, sets stuff you didn't ever tell it to as default, etc. If you use the program Audio Switch for quick and simple changing of playback devices, it totally crashes it. I can't even open the program anymore. Looking at the 360 HDMI capture in OBS, the device gets a volume bar of it's own but never seems to come in through it no matter what setting you use. That includes manually adding the audio signal as a separate source. If you mess with settings enough, you can eventually get the game audio coming in through the Desktop Audio channel, which is less than ideal, but the only thing I could seem to get to work. Anytime you change any of these settings there's a decent chance your default audio device has been changed too so have fun manually setting back to your headphones every time, especially now that Audio Switch has been rendered useless! Edit: OK, Audio Switch only crashes if the Audio Capture software is open. It has a taskbar icon so it might be hidden. Closing it makes Audio Switch work again. Still sucks, but at least it's not system wide.

So I haven't had a great day with this hardware. Granted, it's only been a day. Maybe I'll figure some of this stuff out eventually. Since it's effectively useless for the PC gaming stuff I wanted it to do, the 60 FPS is probably unimportant and I would have likely been better off getting the Elgato Game Capture HD with the more versatile video input options. It seems like all the Elgato products are missing one big feature and none of them have them all. If the HD could do 60 fps or the HD60 Pro could do non-HDMI signals they'd probably be the clear choice. The HD60S doesn't have master copy, but having played with it on this device, it wasn't really all I had hoped anyway, so who knows. I feel like I probably overpaid for a device that does less than what I had hoped and been led to believe it could do by it's description. Again, I'm not sure if this is my failing to read or their failing to be clear. I'd be a lot less annoyed at this product if it had the "retro" inputs available to it.

Elgato if you want to make this thing awesome, try and make it do some of the stuff I'm talking about here. Perhaps there are hardware limitations in play that I'm not aware of, but I don't see how it can do encoding inside one program but not another. And I don't see why the master copy looks so bad when everything's cranked up to max quality. I think I'll try and see if there's an option to install only the drivers and not the software, see if that helps my usability problems any. I know this review sounds incredibly negative, but it's mostly just the information I wish I had available to me before buying it. I'm sure this thing works better for console captures, I just thought it would do more for same PC situations than it does.

Side note, the requirements claim you need a 2nd gen i7 processor for Stream Commander to work but (I think? I didn't mess with it a lot but I pressed buttons and stuff happened) it worked fine for me on a i5 4590. This is something I wondered before buying and didn't see an answer to so here you go. Stream commander sounds like it's a different piece of software in the description but it's just part of the existing video capture software, far as I can tell.

Side side note, open the box using a knife or something. I used my thumbnail and now I have a pretty painful cardboard cut under it!

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Nate D

Good card, misleading advertising, longwinded RMA

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 15, 2022

Style: HD60 PROVerified Purchase

I ordered this card for the exclusive purpose of recording competitive Splatoon 2 gameplay for vod review purposes. This Nintendo Switch game runs at a consistent 1080p 60fps, which the HD60Pro is rated for.

Two significant notes:
- You'll need a fairly good CPU to encode. I use OBS and an AMD Ryzen 2600 with x264 "faster" preset. Results weren't perfect as I had to change the preset around a bit to prevent overloading but the results are decently good, definetely enough detail to make out what's going on for review purposes.
- Elgato advertises "Instant Gameview - an instant preview on the computer monitor to reflect what you see in game including your reactions on webcam and live commentary." A good-faith assessment of this interprets the HDMI passthrough as providing the "instant" preview, but the wording of this statement makes it sound like the rendered preview is "instant." In reality, the preview window lags the game in the multi-digit millisecond range, which might not be noticeable for some but absolutely matters for competitive play (on the other hand, you could raise your elo by 300+ points if you've been accidentally playing on the preview this whole time ;) )

I owned this card for less than a year with usage for a couple hours several times a week. However, I started to encounter intermittent display loss issues, where the card would stop outputting video through the passthrough for a second or two before re-starting as if nothing happened. Clearly unacceptable for a competitive game, I contacted Elgato on February 15th. Correspondence was slow due to (understandable) high order volume and I thank the customer service representative for being helpful; but there were multiple times where I had to wait 7+ business days for a response. After a long process of checking inventory, the rep finally told me they had no more 60 Pro models in stock and could offer me either an external HD60 Pro S+ or an internal 4K60 Pro MK.2. As I have a desktop I opted for the latter, and while Elgato/Corsair waited for my return to arrive before they shipped the replacement, the final step in the process was fairly quick. All said, however, due to the slow service the RMA was not completed until April 5, 48 (!) days after I opened the ticket.

So in summary, it was a good card while it worked with some deceptive marketing-speak. My largest complaint comes with the very slow RMA process, but I do appreciate that Elgato/Corsair corrected the issue in the end.

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Samuel Smylie

it works pretty well

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 31, 2022

Style: HD60 SVerified Purchase

You're gonna need CPU power and some solid amounts of RAM for this thing. When the capture program's just idling, the operation eats up a lot of power, RAM, and disc space but the end results is full HD crispness for whatever you're capturing. I'm sure the 4K version goes harder but for a beginner's needs, this thing is perfect.

Pros: works as intended as long as your machine can handle it

Cons: lots of glitches when the thing's been running for a long time because the capture program's constantly recording while idling, sucking up two full HD hours worth of disc space and RAM, for whatever reason

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Al Grove

Works great!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 16, 2022

Style: HD60 SVerified Purchase

So I'm usually pretty bad about leaving reviews, but as this was used I figured it was a good idea. It works perfectly and I am very impressed with it. I have Windows 10 and I saw a lot of people having issues with this card. I had to go to the website and download/install the drivers but it worked when I did that. It arrived quickly, in good condition and has worked great since I received it about a month ago.

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Andrew G.

Great for Discord streaming Nintendo Switch

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 24, 2022

Style: HD60 SVerified Purchase

This review does not vouch for usage with Twitch, an OBS, or adding any special effects. Simple Discord streaming.

- Regarding Input Lag
This is the streaming device that you are looking for. As I stream Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the most crucial aspect of buying a capture card is whether I would experience input lag during gameplay. Happy to say, after dedicated testing of user inputs, there is either no delay or it is so minimal that I could not perceive it (keep in mind I was actively looking for any delay). And this translates well into actual competitive matches, as I saw no impact on my combos & precise attacks.

- Technical
It captures at 1080p, 60 fps. There is a noticable visual delay between your live gameplay and what is streamed to the device, however the audio actually syncs up to your gameplay which I prefer. Works great on Discord, just choose to steam the software's window for audio to work. No clue how microphone recording is, as I don't use it for that.

- Setup
Setup is easy, as you go to the website included in the packaging, download both the streaming software (4K Capture Utility) & hardware driver for the product (Legacy HD60 S). One thing to note is when you are using 4K Capture Utility, there is a feature that automatically records & saves your footage, whether you want it or not. If you don't want to see your storage space drain, make sure you disable "Flashback Recording" in Recording settings.

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Jonathan D Tankersley

Elgato/Corsair will fight you if you need to return a faulty product.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 23, 2019

Style: HD60 SVerified Purchase

This is my story of receiving a faulty card and the trouble that ensued afterwards as I tried to troubleshoot the card and get the card replaced.

This card comes with one HDMI cable and a USB-c to USB-a 3.0 cable. The USB-c side plugs into the capture card, and the USB-a side plugs into your computer. I made sure before purchasing the card that I actually had USB 3.0 ports on my computer. Upon getting the card and setting everything up, the card worked perfectly for 5-6 days. After this it began disconnecting from the USB intermitently, and would give the error "Game Capture HD60 S needs to be connected to a USB 3.0 port to function properly." To get it working again, I had to unplug and replug the USB cable and then disable and re-enable the video capture screen in OBS. It only did this every few hours, so I didn't worry too much about it.

As time went on, these USB disconnects became more frequent. I ran through every walkthrough I could find online to make sure that ports were getting adequate power, that all the USB sleep settings were turned off, etc. I even went and bought a replacement USB cable because several users said that they were given a faulty cable. None of this worked. Eventually it got to the point where it would disconnect as often as every few minutes. As of right now, I can keep my picture and audio for 2 minutes to 40 minutes, and there is no way of knowing how long it will stay up before it drops again.

I finally called Elgato technical support, and explained what was going on what troubleshooting I had already accomplished. They sent me an email asking me to download their diagnostic software, and send them the resulting log. I did this and was told that I needed to update my video drivers, so I updated them. They had me change the encoder/decoder settings to "software built-in" to see if there was any difference. Then they had me download a more recent version of the Elgato driver. The issue kept happening. They then wanted me to get a USB-c to USB-c cable to see if that worked. I checked every store in my area, and could not find a single place that had a true 3.0 cable (I spent about 5 hours just looking for this cable).

I finally gave up and told them that if they want me to use a particular type of cable, they need to send it to me themselves. I then told them that if they were unwilling to send me the cable that they need to either send a replacement or a refund for their non-working card. Then they tried telling me that the problem was that my video drivers were not up to date (you know... the ones I JUST updated). I double-checked to make sure these drivers were up to date, and then let them know that they were mistaken... and that my video drivers as well as every other driver on my computer were completely up to date.

After this, I was told that they were escalating the case to a senior technician, and that someone would contact me again in 1-3 days. No one ever contacted me. I had to call them to find out what was going on. It turned out that the person handling the case was on vacation, which is why no one contacted me. They re-assigned the case to someone new. FINALLY, after going through all of this, they decided that they needed to do a product replacement. They said they would be emailing me a pre-paid shipping label that I could use to return the capture card.

When I received the email, I read the instructions carefully to make sure I didn't have any more problems. I was told that the shipping label would say which which shipping service was being used so that I knew who to call to schedule the pick-up. Well, the label they sent me had three things listed on it; my address, Corsair's address, and a barcode (no information about shipping company). I called them back to find out information about the shipping service. I reached someone who told me that all the people who handle returns were out of the office and would not be back until Monday. They claimed to have no information about what shipping service was to be used.

Over the weekend, someone emailed me to tell me that I would be using UPS to return the card. I took the card and my shipping label to the UPS store to get it shipped as quickly as possible. When I got to the front desk, the UPS clerk gave me a funny look and told me that the label was not a UPS label. Surprise, surprise... it's not like Elgato/Corsair had provided much help up to now, why did I expect them to give me a valid shipping label? I went back home and called technical support, explaining the entire situation for about the 8th time since all of this started. They tried to tell me that the label was just expired. I told them that wasn't true, because UPS did not even use the type of barcode listed on my label. They didn't really have a response to that, but offered to escalate a request as "urgent" to have a new label sent to me.

It has now been almost two weeks since I initially contacted Elgato with regard to my faulty card, and I have yet to even get a correct mailing label to send the faulty card back to them. Please note, that they will not send a replacement card until they receive the broken one. Don't get me wrong, I understand why they do this (to prevent fraud and theft). But you would think they could make an exception when the whole reason it's taking so long in the first place is their own constant screw-ups. I am now being told that I should get another mailing label within another two days.

My conclusion with all of this is that Elgato/Corsair operates with the mentality that once they have your money, they don't give a crap. Their goal seems to be to feed you nonsense until you give up and stop pursuing a replacement/refund. I'm still sitting here in limbo, still unable to use the capture card that I already spent $150 on... and that's not even considering the replacement HDMI and USB cables that I purchased at their request while troubleshooting, as well as money lost while not publishing new content. Technical support/customer service is terrible and their process to return faulty products is even worse. I can promise you this... Elgato/Corsair is at the very bottom of my list of companies I will consider doing business with in the future. I have never had such an awful experience with any company in my life.

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Shinji

Excellent capture device with knowledgeable support staff and amazing performance

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 17, 2017

Style: HD60 SVerified Purchase

Before I get to the review I'll quickly detail my computer specs since it may matter.
i5-4690k
16gb ram
nVidia GeForce GTX 1070
1TB Samsung 840 Evo SSD which I had the software set to use for recording storage

So I actually purchased this on May 11th so I could record my (admittedly rather bad) gameplay from my consoles. When I got it I had a few issues which I'll detail but first I'll go through the pros.

First off the unit is really easy to setup. Just download the software from the website and install it then connect the device. If you wish you can install the software ahead of time while you wait for a unit you ordered to arrive.

The software itself is pretty stable. I didn't have any real issues during recording. The only one I had, which may of very well been user error, was that it seemed to be "recording" where the clock was moving but it didn't record. I had messed with some settings prior so I reset everything to default and it worked fine after.

I'm actually able to get full 1080p 60fps without issue. This worked fine out of the box. It may have to do with my specs though and as such your mileage may vary. There are steps on the Elgato help site that can work towards improving performance if for some reason you are not able to get that.

The recording was clear and didn't have any frame drops. Please be aware if you are trying to play the video via VLC and getting frame drops or what appears to be a scrambled picture please try another player that might actually use the system decoder. VLC uses its own decoder and it seemed to have issues when I tested my first couple of recordings. When I used a different player it worked fine. If people have to know I do use K-Lite Codec Pack but I don't think that was what fixed it but it may affect what system decoder was actually used. The fact that I use that doesn't constitute an endorsement or recommendation of that software. The issue with VLC may be resolved in a future update of the software if it isn't already.

Elgato Support is very very good. They communicated via email and there may be a delay but responses are from actual people and I didn't have any troubleshooting based auto-replies. I did get one for the initial email receipt but that just gave appropriate response timeframes so that expectations could be established. Kudos to them for doing that.

You do not have to hook up the HDMI out if you don't want to. For me I was just using it to hook up to the computer and using the software is perfectly acceptable.

The delay is pretty much invisible. I was able to play the game using purely the feed from the software without any real issue.

Now for the cons.

My unit had a seemingly loose USB connection. When moving the unit would sometimes disconnect. I did get the unit replaced with Elgato where the issue continued. As a second step they actually sent me a replacement USB 3 to USB C cable (same as what was in the box) and that seems to have resolved the issue. So... if your unit seems to drop out while you are moving it then it may be advisable to just try a different cable and see if the issue persists. I can only guess there was a loose wire in the connector that plugged into the Elgato HD60 S.

If the unit does happen to disconnect while the Game Capture HD program is running then it may crash. This may result in the loss of the recording or corrupted data in it. For the most part, this is a minor issue because it shouldn't disconnect on its own anyways.

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