**The Bean USB Capture Card: A Mixed Bag**

I recently had the opportunity to test out the Bean USB capture card, and I have to say that my experience with it was...mixed. The card is capable of 4K pass-through at 1080p capture, which is its primary use case. This makes it a decent option for those who need to record gameplay or other high-definition content from their console or PC.

However, the card's limitations become apparent when trying to use it for anything outside of this specific use case. The MJPEG codec used by the card results in significant compression loss, which can lead to artifacting and other issues. I was able to test this out myself by recording directly from my camera to 4K, then passing that signal through the Bean USB capture card to a monitor. This revealed the full extent of the MJPEG's limitations.

For example, even without any recompression, the resulting video showed noticeable artifacting and loss of detail. I also tested the card with some retro consoles using the Open Source Scan Converter (OSS) software, which is designed to handle older formats like 1080i and 240p. While the OSS worked well with 480p in the 3x mode, it did not work at all for 4x scaling, and had a sync issue when trying to scale up 5x.

In terms of compatibility, the Bean USB capture card is generally compatible with most modern consoles and devices, including PS4, Xbox One X, and PC. However, its poor scaling capabilities make it less than ideal for use with older systems or non-standard resolutions. When I tried to hook up my Super Nintendo game using the Retro Tank 2X, the card was able to detect a signal and capture footage at 240p, but when scaled back up to standard resolution, the video looked severely degraded.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Bean USB capture card is its scaling performance. While it works fine for 4K input and 1080p output, it has significant issues with resolution switching and scaling artifacts. This makes it less than ideal for use with programs like VirtualDub or OBS, which require more flexibility in terms of resolution settings.

In conclusion, while the Bean USB capture card may be a decent option for those who need to record high-definition content from their console or PC, its limitations become apparent when trying to use it for anything outside of this specific use case. Its poor scaling performance and reliance on MJPEG make it less than ideal for many users.

**Specifications**

* 4K pass-through at 1080p capture

* MJPEG codec used

* Limited compatibility with older consoles and devices

* Poor scaling capabilities, particularly with non-standard resolutions

* Works well with PS4, Xbox One X, and PC, but has issues with other modern systems

* Compatible with Linux, but may have issues with some programs

**User Experience**

I was able to test the Bean USB capture card using a variety of different devices and software, including my camera, retro consoles, and gaming PCs. While it worked well for 4K input and 1080p output, its limitations became apparent when trying to use it for anything outside of this specific use case.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Bean USB capture card was its poor scaling performance. When I tried to scale up footage from my retro consoles using the OSS software, the video looked severely degraded. This made me realize that the card is not well-suited for use with older systems or non-standard resolutions.

I also tested the card's compatibility with different programs and devices, including VirtualDub and OBS. While it worked fine with these programs in terms of resolution settings, its poor scaling performance made it less than ideal for many users.

Overall, my experience with the Bean USB capture card was...mixed. While it may be a decent option for those who need to record high-definition content from their console or PC, its limitations become apparent when trying to use it for anything outside of this specific use case.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe diamond in the rough i called this this is a 4k usb 3.0 hdmi capture completely out of focus here this is a 50 to 60 dollar capture card that compared to all of the other can't link knock off capture cards if you missed my 15 capture card review we're talking about that it's not bad but it has some issues and it's a little weird as with all of these cheap ones but for under 70 bucks at worst it's available from like 50 million different companies on amazon because all of these are just remanufactured and resold because they're not they're just clones of a clone of clone this might make a lot of people happy especially if you're on linux or if you're on mac because you've been looking for something that will work there instead of windows the one i specifically have is from elycliff but like i said there's a bunch of different ones and i have like 10 links to different options available to you in case they sell out like what happened last time we're gonna review it today right after this so this little 4k hdmi usb 3.0 hd capture was one that was recommended to you all after my original 15 can't link or cam link knockoff capture card review back in june and i'm slowly trudging my way through my capture card backlog i have a ton to work through but this one struck me as pretty interesting because it's cheaper than some of the others i've recommended which can go up to 100 150 bucks this one is available for under 60 in most cases on aliexpress or amazon lots of links in the description below and if you want to pick one up for yourself uh they are affiliate links this seems to be a pretty solid option especially since it is uvc so it will work on mac windows and linux but there there's some quirks about it as i said first and foremost it uses a youtube usb a2a cable which is always really frustrating there's nothing inherently wrong with it i guess given that it's just usb but it's annoying because they only ever include short cables and it's not something you're gonna have a spare cable for lying around unless you hoard capture cards like i do and i still only have like three of these because i've only had three capture cards that use it it is kind of annoying it does however have a headphone output and a microphone input in case you need to connect your audio for using it for a camera pretty cool and then it has hdmi 2.1 or 2.0 not 2.1 an hdcp 2.2 input and output for 4k 60 pass through which is pretty cool it does support 4k 60 pass through sdr only however a couple of these models you will notice on the amazon page say hdr somewhere while i haven't tried those specific models i can guarantee you with almost a 90 99 certainty that they don't support hdr in any way no hdr pass through no hdr capture none at all they're not built for that that's not how the drivers are set up there's no tone mapping software built in i can basically promise you that's not going to happen it comes with a nice metal shroud but when i took it apart you can see here there's no heat sinks so like with some of the cantling competitors you or knockoffs you may find that this gets hot and burns out on you over time because that happened to a lot of people who got bad clones of the cantlink because you know they're all clones of the clones of the clone random knockoff chinese stuff has mixed or non-existent quality control and so mine doesn't have a heatsink mine could overheat at any point in time so far it hasn't i've tested it for hours it's good so far doesn't mean it won't as mentioned this is a uvc capture card so it'll work in most of your video chatting apps like zoom skype discord windows camera app things like that and it does work across all operating systems windows mac and linux i tested and confirmed this as you all keep getting annoyed when i skip out on that latency wise you're looking at 128 milliseconds of latency which is not great but not the worst in the world you could do much worse in fact some of the other canteling clones had like 400 milliseconds of latency so yikes the main limiting factor here for me is the capture quality which is ironic but sucks um it's not amazing it's not the worst i've seen and there are certainly worse ways to go but it is 4k pass through 1080p capture and that is its primary use case anything outside of that is kind of hit or miss but it's mjpeg only so you're looking at only motion jpeg which is a very compressed codec which will work on usb 2.0 as well so this bean usb 3 basically serves no purpose it is a very lossy codec that will result in artifacting even if you record completely losses you see the way that i do a lot of these capture card tests is i record the direct native yui to mjpeg or whatever stream that the card provides available to me that way there is literally no recompression at all and even in that mode because it is motion jpeg literally jpeg images per frame there ends up being artifacting without compression even applying so it's not the best and i showed it here with my a6400 running through it and you can already start to see little blocking on my head and things like that and then that shows up in gameplay as well if you're using it for capturing games now i hooked it up ps4 xbox one x both detect 4k as a pass-through option but again no hdr support to be na or heard of uh only supports uh four or four four chromosomes as well not 420 which is a little weird may cause some issues for certain receivers or displays but for the most part should not be a concern overall compatibility wise with your game consoles and things like that it works fine i was able to play record lots of different games from my ps4 and xbox one x the ps4 pro and xbox one x no issues there the limitations of this device really kind of reared their head when i started looking into scaling capabilities because in all of my capture card tests i test retro console stuff using the open source scan converter the retro tank 2x things like that as well as formats like 1080i so running through the open source scan converter the oss 2x and 3x modes work fine so 480p in the 3x mode seemed to work fine 4x did not want to show up at all so that's a thing and then 5x mostly seems to work but there's some sort of sync issue so for me at least the frame kept like jumping up and down where the top would bleed into the bottom bottom would bleed into the top that was a little annoying so it has some compatibility with the open source king converter but probably not what you want then i wanted to hook up the retro tink 2x and try to test some of the lower resolution formats that most capture cards don't support such as 240p from a super nintendo i finally got a one ship model so the super nintendo footage generally speaking should be higher quality moving forward my old non one chip snez actually died unfortunately so rip uh 240p kind of works here it detects a 300 ish something by 240 signal and lets me capture from it however as you can see when you scale it back up it is trash you see i don't know the exact hardware on board here in fact the main hdmi receiver chip is a lattice uh chip which i've never heard of i will have the product number in the description below and try to have a uh a macro photo of this in the video as well chips i've never heard of are usually seen on these capture cards and i don't know what scaling hardware is at work here but the scaling quality and performance here is abysmal outside of the 4k to 1080p scale so if you set it to anything other than 1080p you get wonky performance and then using non-standard resolutions being scaled can often end up very weird so 240p has all sorts of scaling artifacts despite the fact that it seems to be native and then 480i doesn't seem to work at all 1080i technically works but again it looks like ass there's weird scaling artifacts here and the whole way through it just absolutely hates resolution switching it messes up every program i use virtual dub windows camera app obs you have to deactivate and reactivate and hope it works it just hates switching resolutions and it doesn't play well with anything but 4k input and 1080p input there you go for 50 to 60 bucks if that's all your budget you have for a capture card and you don't find a nice elgato usb 3 or pcie or enabler media one used for that price you could do worse like this this is not a terrible solution especially again if you're on linux and you're trying to get something that's compatible with linux because not a lot of stuff is sothe diamond in the rough i called this this is a 4k usb 3.0 hdmi capture completely out of focus here this is a 50 to 60 dollar capture card that compared to all of the other can't link knock off capture cards if you missed my 15 capture card review we're talking about that it's not bad but it has some issues and it's a little weird as with all of these cheap ones but for under 70 bucks at worst it's available from like 50 million different companies on amazon because all of these are just remanufactured and resold because they're not they're just clones of a clone of clone this might make a lot of people happy especially if you're on linux or if you're on mac because you've been looking for something that will work there instead of windows the one i specifically have is from elycliff but like i said there's a bunch of different ones and i have like 10 links to different options available to you in case they sell out like what happened last time we're gonna review it today right after this so this little 4k hdmi usb 3.0 hd capture was one that was recommended to you all after my original 15 can't link or cam link knockoff capture card review back in june and i'm slowly trudging my way through my capture card backlog i have a ton to work through but this one struck me as pretty interesting because it's cheaper than some of the others i've recommended which can go up to 100 150 bucks this one is available for under 60 in most cases on aliexpress or amazon lots of links in the description below and if you want to pick one up for yourself uh they are affiliate links this seems to be a pretty solid option especially since it is uvc so it will work on mac windows and linux but there there's some quirks about it as i said first and foremost it uses a youtube usb a2a cable which is always really frustrating there's nothing inherently wrong with it i guess given that it's just usb but it's annoying because they only ever include short cables and it's not something you're gonna have a spare cable for lying around unless you hoard capture cards like i do and i still only have like three of these because i've only had three capture cards that use it it is kind of annoying it does however have a headphone output and a microphone input in case you need to connect your audio for using it for a camera pretty cool and then it has hdmi 2.1 or 2.0 not 2.1 an hdcp 2.2 input and output for 4k 60 pass through which is pretty cool it does support 4k 60 pass through sdr only however a couple of these models you will notice on the amazon page say hdr somewhere while i haven't tried those specific models i can guarantee you with almost a 90 99 certainty that they don't support hdr in any way no hdr pass through no hdr capture none at all they're not built for that that's not how the drivers are set up there's no tone mapping software built in i can basically promise you that's not going to happen it comes with a nice metal shroud but when i took it apart you can see here there's no heat sinks so like with some of the cantling competitors you or knockoffs you may find that this gets hot and burns out on you over time because that happened to a lot of people who got bad clones of the cantlink because you know they're all clones of the clones of the clone random knockoff chinese stuff has mixed or non-existent quality control and so mine doesn't have a heatsink mine could overheat at any point in time so far it hasn't i've tested it for hours it's good so far doesn't mean it won't as mentioned this is a uvc capture card so it'll work in most of your video chatting apps like zoom skype discord windows camera app things like that and it does work across all operating systems windows mac and linux i tested and confirmed this as you all keep getting annoyed when i skip out on that latency wise you're looking at 128 milliseconds of latency which is not great but not the worst in the world you could do much worse in fact some of the other canteling clones had like 400 milliseconds of latency so yikes the main limiting factor here for me is the capture quality which is ironic but sucks um it's not amazing it's not the worst i've seen and there are certainly worse ways to go but it is 4k pass through 1080p capture and that is its primary use case anything outside of that is kind of hit or miss but it's mjpeg only so you're looking at only motion jpeg which is a very compressed codec which will work on usb 2.0 as well so this bean usb 3 basically serves no purpose it is a very lossy codec that will result in artifacting even if you record completely losses you see the way that i do a lot of these capture card tests is i record the direct native yui to mjpeg or whatever stream that the card provides available to me that way there is literally no recompression at all and even in that mode because it is motion jpeg literally jpeg images per frame there ends up being artifacting without compression even applying so it's not the best and i showed it here with my a6400 running through it and you can already start to see little blocking on my head and things like that and then that shows up in gameplay as well if you're using it for capturing games now i hooked it up ps4 xbox one x both detect 4k as a pass-through option but again no hdr support to be na or heard of uh only supports uh four or four four chromosomes as well not 420 which is a little weird may cause some issues for certain receivers or displays but for the most part should not be a concern overall compatibility wise with your game consoles and things like that it works fine i was able to play record lots of different games from my ps4 and xbox one x the ps4 pro and xbox one x no issues there the limitations of this device really kind of reared their head when i started looking into scaling capabilities because in all of my capture card tests i test retro console stuff using the open source scan converter the retro tank 2x things like that as well as formats like 1080i so running through the open source scan converter the oss 2x and 3x modes work fine so 480p in the 3x mode seemed to work fine 4x did not want to show up at all so that's a thing and then 5x mostly seems to work but there's some sort of sync issue so for me at least the frame kept like jumping up and down where the top would bleed into the bottom bottom would bleed into the top that was a little annoying so it has some compatibility with the open source king converter but probably not what you want then i wanted to hook up the retro tink 2x and try to test some of the lower resolution formats that most capture cards don't support such as 240p from a super nintendo i finally got a one ship model so the super nintendo footage generally speaking should be higher quality moving forward my old non one chip snez actually died unfortunately so rip uh 240p kind of works here it detects a 300 ish something by 240 signal and lets me capture from it however as you can see when you scale it back up it is trash you see i don't know the exact hardware on board here in fact the main hdmi receiver chip is a lattice uh chip which i've never heard of i will have the product number in the description below and try to have a uh a macro photo of this in the video as well chips i've never heard of are usually seen on these capture cards and i don't know what scaling hardware is at work here but the scaling quality and performance here is abysmal outside of the 4k to 1080p scale so if you set it to anything other than 1080p you get wonky performance and then using non-standard resolutions being scaled can often end up very weird so 240p has all sorts of scaling artifacts despite the fact that it seems to be native and then 480i doesn't seem to work at all 1080i technically works but again it looks like ass there's weird scaling artifacts here and the whole way through it just absolutely hates resolution switching it messes up every program i use virtual dub windows camera app obs you have to deactivate and reactivate and hope it works it just hates switching resolutions and it doesn't play well with anything but 4k input and 1080p input there you go for 50 to 60 bucks if that's all your budget you have for a capture card and you don't find a nice elgato usb 3 or pcie or enabler media one used for that price you could do worse like this this is not a terrible solution especially again if you're on linux and you're trying to get something that's compatible with linux because not a lot of stuff is so\n"