AverMedia Live Gamer Ultra S GC553Pro review

Capturing gaming content has never been easier or more affordable than it is today. You can walk into an electronics store, pick up basically any capture card off the shelf, and walk away with a functioning solution. Better yet, do some research and get a great solution for an affordable price. AverMedia is one of the bigger players in the capture card space who are always angling towards more bang for buck, and the Live Gamer Ultra S (or GC553Pro) might be some of the best bucks I’ve… banged?

Straight out of the box, the GC553Pro is a unit with cyber chic in mind. It's a relatively small and slim rectangle box, with ports and vents seemingly everywhere. So much so, you can see through to the PCB inside, which appears to take up only a small fraction of the actual unit. When purchasing you can choose between a black or white model. It's not a tonne of options but it's more than most, and the simple colourways should match most gamer's kits quite nicely.

Regardless of colour, the faceplate features angled cut outs giving glimpses to a vibrant red underlay with the AverMedia logo proudly displayed and an easy to read LED indicator. Then you have the HDMI 2.0 ports input and output on one side of the box, while the USB Type-C port sits on the other. It's a simple setup, but these three ports are what make the GC553Pro a proper piece of kit, which is really good value for $150 USD.

Having HDMI 2.0 ports for both input and passthrough means this card can take full advantage of the technology. Many capture cards will have you lose out on things like 4K at 60 fps or rob you of your HDR experience, but the GC553Pro lets you have it all for both recordings and passthrough. It also supports VRR so you don't wind up with tears in your gaming experience. It's one of the few capture cards I've used recently that I haven't noticed any difference between how a game looks plugged in through it to my TV vs directly via its own cable.

Having games still look good when you're playing them is a huge benefit here. I'm a bit sick of having to miss out on the best fidelity experience just because I want to be recording it instead. This card lets you have your cake, eat it too, and record the whole thing in brilliant 4k 60 fps. Well. If you use the software.

Plugging in the card directly to your computer via the USB-C port will get you some basic recording functions, though they'll be at lower settings by default. If you want to get the best quality recordings, or use features like the ultrawide resolutions while maintaining quality, you're going to need the Streaming Centre Software to dial all those things in. It's not the most intuitive software, and you likely want to run this through OBS as well, but it still works fairly easily. Just not as plug and play as it feels it could be.

I turned everything up to full specs and spent a few hours running around the world of Avowed on my Xbox Series X. It's easy for me to lose track of time when playing a meaty RPG, so I had the GC553Pro running non stop for around six hours, happily recording while I hunted down the dreamscurge. The next day I did the same while Webslinging through New York on my PS5 and, once again, the card was happy to provide me passthrough and video recordings for the entire time. My PC got tired of it all long before the capture card did.

Image 1 of 7

But that is definitely a factor with this capture card, you're going to need something good enough to run it. Not only do you need to have USB ports on your computer that are capable of receiving the high quality signal, but you also need to be able to store and read all that media.

My laptop which I often use to stream gave it a fair go and did fine on the lower quality recordings, but simply didn't have the ports needed for better and would have run out of storage really quickly if it had somehow managed. This capture unit doesn't do any of the heavy lifting for you aside from allowing those signals to pass through easily, so your PC needs to be up to the task. So long as your rig can run it this is a really handy capture device, beyond just high quality game footage.

A friend of mine has been trying to use Elgato's CamLink to provide passthrough for high quality camera footage for his stream. Looking at it we thought the GC553Pro should be up to the task, so gave it a crack. It took some work within the AverMedia app, and we had to set it up as a virtual camera, but by the end of it we had high quality camera recording far better than CamLink had ever managed to provide. Then, we left it running for several hours with no complaints—something the Elgato couldn’t reliably perform.

The AverMedia GC553Pro is a keen augment for your PC, allowing you to record high quality video while still playing in high quality pass through with relatively little fuss. It doesn't mind if it's from a console, a phone, or a camera—as long as it can use HDMI, it seems this thing can do it. If you want lower quality, then it'll work with almost no fuss, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a card that can record and passthrough at this level for a better price.

Best gaming setup 2025

👉Check out our list of guides👈

1. Best gaming chair: Secretlab Titan Evo

2. Best gaming desk: Secretlab Magnus Pro XL

3. Best gaming headset: HyperX Cloud Alpha

4. Best gaming keyboard:Asus ROG Strix Scope II 96 Wireless

5. Best gaming mouse: Razer DeathAdder V3 HyperSpeed

6. Best PC controller: Xbox Wireless Controller

7. Best microphone: Shure MV6 USB Gaming Microphone

8. Best webcam: Elgato Facecam MK.2