Elgato Game Capture 4K X review - King of the cards

At £229.99, the Elgato 4K X isn’t exactly what you’d call an affordable option, but it’s hard to look past what it offers. The 4K X offers a much-needed upgrade over the older HD60 X in both a visual and functional sense. With HDMI 2.1, VRR, and HDR10 added without making the unit any bulkier, it really is a “one size fits all” kind of capture device that’s easy to use and produces great results.

Elgato Game Capture 4K X review - King of the cards

At £229.99, the Elgato 4K X isn't exactly what you'd call an affordable option, but it's hard to look past what it offers. The 4K X offers a much-needed upgrade over the older HD60 X in both a visual and functional sense.

With HDMI 2.1, VRR, and HDR10 added without making the unit any bulkier, it really is a "one size fits all" kind of capture device that's easy to use and produces great results.

Images via GGRecon | Elgato

The main thing anyone wants when capturing gameplay footage is quality and ease of use. We now live in a world where our media needs to look the best and run with the smoothest FPS rate it can. It's 2024, and gone are the days when simple 60 FPS and 1080p videos are the best we could capture and share.

Now, we crave the smoothness of 4K with 120FPS, providing us the smoothest viewing experience possible. That's where the Game Capture 4K X comes into play, Elgato's latest capture card.

The company has become the industry standard when it comes to both capturing content and streaming live to viewers, and with good reason. Their hardware goes above and beyond, and the 4K X easily fills the boots left by those before it.

Despite offering fantastic capture quality, it remains so impressively small that it really needs to be seen to be believed.

GGRecon Verdict

At £229.99, the Elgato 4K X isn't exactly what you'd call an affordable option, but it's hard to look past what it offers. The 4K X offers a much-needed upgrade over the older HD60 X in both a visual and functional sense.

With HDMI 2.1, VRR, and HDR10 added without making the unit any bulkier, it really is a "one size fits all" kind of capture device that's easy to use and produces great results.

Plug and Play

Elgato Game Capture 4K X in reviewer's hand

One of the big positives there is that the 4K X will play nicely with both MacOS and iPadOS. The previous 4K capture model would not work with Apple hardware, or at least struggle a lot when it came to connecting everything together.

You get two HDMI 2.1 ports here, which let you stream or record at up to 4K at 144Hz. You could also record at 240Hz as well, although that'd drop the quality down to a maximum resolution of 1080p.

Still, there's minimal lag here when hooked up to a PC, and you can plug headphones directly in via a 3.5mm jack for zero-latency audio. All the power comes from the USB 3.2 port, so you can literally plug and play - ideal for content creators attending events where capture needs to be set up with minimal fuss.

Here are the specs in full:

  • Capture resolutions: 1080P60, 1080p240, 4K60, 4K144
  • Input: HDMI (Unencrypted)
  • Output: HDMI (lag-free passthrough)
  • HDMI interface: HDMI 2.1
  • Connection: USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 3.5mm line in
  • Features: VRR passthrough and HDR10 passthrough
  • Included in the box: Elgato Game Capture 4K X, USB-C 3.2 cable, HDMI 2.1 cable

Quality Like No Other:

Elgato Game Capture 4K X with cables connected

So that's a lot of specs being thrown around there, but what does it all mean? Well, granted you have a monitor that supports it, the 4K X is the best quality device you can get on the market right now when it comes to both streaming and recording your games in the highest possible quality.

I work with game footage on an almost daily basis now and I would always choose to watch something which is much higher quality, and the 4K X has quality in spades. It's also easy to set up. You will need one additional HMDI cable, but you're likely to have one of those if you're playing on a console anyway.

There are no fancy or extra additions that you need on your PC or Macbook, you just plug it in and launch whatever software you choose to capture with, and you are good to go. You'll need to install Elgato's capture utility to make it work initially, but you could then use OBS if you wanted for streaming purposes.

Naturally, if you're part of the Elgato ecosystem, you can trigger your capture with the Stream Deck, too.

Ideal for newcomers

Elgato Game Capture 4K X

I tested the 4K X on three separate systems to see if there was a dip in quality or if it was consistent throughout, with test footage recorded on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

On both the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X, it ran beautifully via the 4K30 input with no latency or stutter issues. The quality of the gameplay when recording stayed consistent throughout, and it saved in 4K quality as promised. Even on games running at 120Hz, it didn’t break a sweat.

The Series S caps out at 1440p, but the recording was smooth as butter, with no dips in quality or need to change settings on any system. That means, in many ways, the 4K X is ideal for newcomers to content creation, especially if you don't want to set a variety of presets and simply want to capture your content with minimal fuss.

The Verdict

At £229.99, the Elgato 4K X isn’t exactly what you'd call an affordable option, but it's hard to look past what it offers. The 4K X offers a much-needed upgrade over the older HD60 X in both a visual and functional sense.

With HDMI 2.1, VRR, and HDR10 added without making the unit any bulkier, it really is a "one size fits all" kind of capture device that’s easy to use and produces great results.

5/5

Review unit provided by the manufacturer.

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