On the surface it may not look like much...
But look a little deeper, and you might see the truth. To get a clear picture, we must go back....
(Flashback) "I would kinda like to see AVerMedia and Elgato step it up with the more
beginner-friendly, cheaper capture cards... And I think it's 100% possible, but I think
they aren't doing so because it would kind of sabotage their current product lineup.
It's here. The capture card you've been waiting for. 4K60 passthrough, 1080p capture.
Uncompressed YUY2. 60 frames per second. All for the low low price of just $60. It's here.
The EVGA XR1... Lite. But not too light.
I'm EposVox, the Stream Professor, and I've reviewed countless capture cards on this channel
over the years - which is why you should hit the subscribe and notification buttons so you can
stay informed - and a request I made in spring 2020 was for capture card companies to deliver
a barebones capture card that worked well for under $100. We've seen a lot of capture cards hit
the market, but most of even the basic ones from Elgato and AVerMedia stayed over that price point.
And THEN... we went on this adventure of exploring capture cards under $100 and most of them... just
aren't good. They pretty much ALL lie about being USB 3.0 when they're not, they use poor quality
MJPEG encoding, and they mostly all - including the $4m raising Kickstarter project the Genki
Shadowcase and the Atomos Connect - use the same MS2109 chipset which is quite literally
incapable of actually processing 60FPS at 1080p. And that's assuming yours didn't overheat and
die a sad death because the particular one you received didn't include a heatsink.
Well, EVGA stepped up. The XR1 Lite delivers this exact request I made at the start of the pandemic.
This small plastic box looks unassuming. It lacks the flash
and flair of the mirrored shine and RGB-clad top of the main EVGA
XR1. It also lacks the cool headphone amp and mic input that made the XR1 such a good buy.
But what it does have is a USB 3.0 type C plug, and HDMI 2.0 input and passthrough.
Specs-wise the XR1 Lite supports up to 1080p, OR 4K 60hz input, scaled down for 1080p capture. If
it's not cooperating with your USB 3.0 ports, such as my front-panel USB ports, it will only allow
you to capture up to 720p in OBS, but using ports on the back of your motherboard resolves this.
This spec is perfect for capturing the majority of game consoles out there today - Nintendo Switch,
Playstation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series consoles. You can play at 1080p or 4k and
capture and stream at 1080p or lower. It also supports 480p! More on that later.
However, this capture card does NOT support HDR passthrough or
capture. You must play in SDR and can only capture in SDR. This capture card also does
not support anything higher than 60hz. No 1080p120 from your PC or newer consoles,
and definitely no 4K120 since that requires HDMI 2.1 and there aren't any HDMI 2.1 capture
cards available. If you play at 4K60 on PC, this will work for you as well.
Both NV12 and YUY2 uncompressed modes are available over USB 3. This is great,
that means you get low-latency captures to sync up with audio more easily, and no
blocking or artifacting baked into your video feed before you even compress it to stream or
record - something that's a big issue with most of the budget capture cards we have looked at.
Super simple and basic, but that's just fine.
What about 1440p?
Well, that's a little complicated. It was my original belief that
they went with hardware (or otherwise artificially limited this in software)
that did not support 1440p passthrough or capture as to not cannibalize the market
for their flagship XR1 capture card. This may still be the case.
BUT, while the spec sheet does not list 1440p support, some investigative helpers on my
Discord server who got the capture card before I did thanks to a shipping hiccup on my end,
1440p actually works. But you may not actually be able to use it that way.
Here are some screenshots - thanks, Rodney - that show 1440p directly going into the capture card
and OBS still taking it in scaled to 1080p. However this ONLY works if you
have a monitor who's EDID only lists 1440p or lower as being supported.
That may sound silly, but my primary 1440p 144hz monitor can actually take other higher resolutions
and just awkwardly (and laggily) scale them down to 1440p - as can my 1440p ultrawide. Which means
these monitors present to the capture card, and thus the PC, as supporting 4K. Even my ancient
Dell 1440p side monitor which doesn't display ANYTHING above 1440p does this, weirdly enough.
This is a problem, because there's apparently a bug with how the Nvidia Control Panel
handles custom resolutions where if your display reports supporting anything higher,
you cannot send a true 1440p signal to it. So I have some gameplay here of my
PC rendering everything at 1440p but outputting 4K, but that's it.
I have screenshot proof of the XR1 Lite accepting 1440p input and passing it through the other end,
but it's not something I can do with my hardware, and you may not either.
It doesn't officially support it for a reason, clearly - but there's a CHANCE you could make it
work? Especially with an EDID manipulation tool. But you're still limited to 60hz, regardless.
If you're desperate for a capture card for 2 PC setups while you game at 1440p
or high refresh rate, you could always extend your display to the capture card
and output OBS Projector Preview to it instead. No tearing!
One quick note, I did experience a weird issue where switching resolutions a bunch on PC
outputting to this resulted in the image being misaligned. it was weird,
but just deactivating and reactivating the source in OBS fixed it, so not a huge deal.
The EVGA XR1 Lite is a UVC capture card. This means it works plug and play without
installing software and also shows up as a webcam device in Zoom, Discord, Windows 10 Camera app,
Nvidia Broadcast, and so on. This means you can use it for screensharing, game streaming, or
camera capture for your video conferencing apps.
This also means it works fine on Mac and Linux, as well!
Testing the input latency to OBS's preview, I'm seeing about 78ms - which is on the higher end
and will require a bit of an audio offset to sync up the video feed with your audio source,
but isn't the worst thing I've encountered.
I'll have a link to my StreamGuides page with all of these numbers in the description below,
and I'll be updating all of these soon with more accurate testing methodology, as well.
Quality-wise, the card looks fine. It is a little
soft if you're forcing 1440p through it - likely due to the scaling - but otherwise,
you're getting uncompressed 1080p60 in 4:2:0 for NV12 or 4:2:2 for YUY2,
free of artifacting or pixelization. Definitely leagues better than all of the cheap MJPEG cards.
It perhaps feels a tad undersaturated to my eye, but that's easy to compensate for.
Retro gamers can rejoice! The EVGA XR1 Lite seems to be the perfect little capture card for retro
games. It supports 480p from the RetroTINK 2X line of scalers and devices like the GCHD and Super64.
But it also supports all modes from the OSSC and Super Nintendo despite the weird
refresh rate. 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x, all read without weird frame positioning.
Plus RetroTINK 5X users can use all modes as well! 1080p, 1200p,
6x 1440p and even the lower res modes. This is fantastic,
we don't often come across a card this flexible, so I'm super stoked for this.
If you like what you see here on my channel, then you'd probably dig our merch. We've still
got a little bit left of our limited run of high-quality, blank VHS cover desk mats,
enamel pins, and stickers. Stick em on your computer, your Xbox, on your friends. Plus,
you get a free trial to Nebula - my own streaming service with ad-free copies of my videos,
often extended from the YouTube versions - along with your purchase. I've never done
merch before this run and I'm super stoked with what we cam up with. Head over to
[eposvox.gg/merch](http://eposvox.gg/merch) to check it out!
I'm both impressed and not impressed with the EVGA XR1 Lite. It's nothing special,
in fact it lacks everything that made the original XR1 awesome and worth it,
but it also lacks all the confusing complication of that XR1 with the "Advanced Passthrough"
nonsense. It's just a 4K passthrough, 1080p capture card that does the job.
I also originally started out this review pretty disappointed with this - as the original launch
price I was told was $100. $99.99. You know, the same price the full-size XR1 is almost always
on sale for. I could not see myself recommending this one over its big brother for the same price.
However, they launched it with an EVGA Insider discount dropping it to $60, and it now lists
on Amazon with $60 being the base price. For that price, this card is a phenomenal deal, and exactly
what I requested early last year. For that price, this card maintains my "Stream Professor Approved"
badge. It doesn't do anything super special but delivers a quality product for a perfect price.
A playlist link with other Stream Professor Approved products will
be linked below with the product links.
While you're there, hit the like button and join our Discord. Remember: Be kind, rewind.