I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve wanted to record gameplay or a computer screen
via HDMI while I was in a situation where I couldn’t hook things up to a desktop capture
card setup.
And I’ve also received never-ending comments of gamers trying to record on their laptops
- which often doesn’t go over well.
AVerMedia has released their latest solution to this problem - the Live Gamer Portable
2.
I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier to understand and more fun via free educational
tech videos and let’s review another capture card - one of my favorite kinds of videos
to make.
This Toblerone-looking device takes your 1080p60 or lower HDMI signal, passes it through to
your TV or monitor and records it to a MicroSD card without the need for a computer!
It’s like magic.
I’ve covered a lot of capture cards, and I can only repeat the same concepts so many
times so let’s keep this review simple - the design is weird, but the functionality is
pretty cool.
Kay, thanks for watching bye-just kidding.
The design does turn me off a bit, but you know what?
It’s a tool for recording.
It doesn’t really matter what it looks like.
It’s no Atomos Ninja or Shogun, but it’s a gaming capture card and it looks like it.
The front of the device features the giant record button, which glows red if it’s not
ready to record or anything, blue if it’s ready to go, and pulses red while recording.
There’s also the mode switcher for switching between PC Capture Card mode for recording
with their RECentral 3 software, PC-less mode for recording directly to the MicroSD card,
and card reader mode for allowing you to access the files on the MicroSD card on your computer.
It is worth noting that changing the modes will reset the device and cause your output
signal to cut out for a moment while it changes modes.
There’s a volume rocker for your headset sound and a 3.5mm 4-pole passthrough setup
for taking chat audio from your game controller and passing it back out to your headset, and
vice versa for your headset microphone.
The bottom features great rubber gripping to avoid slippage, which is great at gathering
dust.
The back features the HDMI in and out ports, the MicroUSB jack for hooking up to a computer
or power source, and the MicroSD card slot.
For my testing, I had a SanDisk Ultra 64GB SDXC MicroSD card and I had no problems with
it with this device.
So the main point of this product is the idea that you can record without a computer.
Like the high-end camera recorders, you record to a MicroSD card without needing a powerful
computer to handling the recording.
The device still needs power over USB to function, however.
Not a big deal since everything has a USB port these days - but I did have some issues.
The first weekend I received the capture card, I was house and dog-sitting for my parents.
I took my WiiU with me and planned on playing and recording it while I was there.
However, while the LGP2 was connected to the USB ports on the WiiU, it would not record.
The light would come on, but when I hit start recording, it wouldn’t record and the light
remained red.
This is primarily because the USB ports on the WiiU are notoriously underpowered even
to plug in external hard drives.
But with only a bi-color LED to indicate what’s happening, I spent half the weekend re-reading
the instruction manuals to figure out what I was missing about the setup process.
Laptop and console USB ports will vary, but they do include a wall wart if you want to
power the device that way - which I highly recommend.
There IS one major sacrifice that comes with recording to the MicroSD card instead of to
a computer as with standard capture cards - the quality.
In my testing, the internal recording recorded to about a 20 mbps bandwidth at 1080p 60 fps.
This is higher than YouTube compresses to for sure, but still much lower than I’d
ever deliberately choose.
But I love high bit rates and huge file sizes.
I can’t directly compare the quality of recording with it on the PC to recording with
the MicroSD card since I only have 1 unit and can’t use both modes at once.
So what I’ve done is passed the game feed signal first through AVerMedia’s Live Gamer
Extreme capture card (which I’ve reviewed previously) to record to my computer at a
full 60mbps, and then to the LGP2 to record internally.
You’re seeing some of the results, possibly.
Differences in bit rate are hard to convey over YouTube since everything gets trashed
in compression anyway.
But that’s not a bad thing - the less you can tell the difference in the footage, the
more useful a tool the LGP2 becomes.
I did notice a bit more washed out color and more blockiness or artifacting with the MicroSD
recording than the local recording, but the quality was surprisingly adequate regardless.
I will have a couple playlists linked in the video description which feature direct uploads
of all sample clips used for this video if you want to look at the full clips themselves,
along with Amazon Cloud Drive downloads for each.
Given its target purpose, AVerMedia’s Live Gamer Portable 2 is perfect for those who
don’t have a good enough computer for game recording, or want to record on the go.
You sacrifice a bit of quality and control for this functionality, but a tradeoff worth
making for the price.
I hope this review has been helpful for you.
If it was, smash the like button, get subscribed for more awesome videos, and consider purchasing
this capture card via my Amazon affiliate links in the description below.
See you next time.