Power your laptop, while capturing its video output, with Avermedia's new 100W GaN charger
It's one seriously beefy charger but how many can claim to be a capture card too?
Picture a scene where you have a great gaming laptop and you want to stream footage of your awesome gaming skills, to show off to your friends. You've got also Discord open on your phone, to offer friendly tips and insults to your teammates. So you'll need a charger for both devices, plus a capture card for the video, right? Not with the new Avermedia Elite Go GC313Pro—multi-device charger, USB hub, and 1080p capture card all in one.
Okay, so that all sounds like it's a setup for a cheesy infomercial, but that's exactly the kind of scenario that Avermedia has in mind for its new GC313Pro. The base part of it is a 100W GaN charger, which is good enough for lots of entry-level gaming laptops, but it also sports a USB 3.0 Type-A port, to allow it to act as a docking station for other devices.
Not satisfied with that, Avermedia stuffed an HDMI port (supporting up to 4K at 60 Hz) inside, letting you connect your laptop to a TV, for example, while charging it from the same unit. How there was room for this, I'm really not sure, but then there's the main event—1080p, 60 Hz video capture, via a USB Type-C port.
Of course, if your laptop doesn't support DisplayPort Over USB-C, then you probably won't be able to capture anything at all, and you'll have to rely on something like OBS Studio. That works very well but it does take up some of your laptop's performance to capture, convert, and then stream the video signal.
Alternatively, you could use a standard capture system, but then that misses the whole point of the new Elite Go unit.
All of the GC313Pro's features mean it will get a little clustered with cables around the unit if you plan on using its charger, capture, and HDMI functions all at the same time. But still, if you travel a lot and still want to do a fair bit of game streaming, this could be the ideal solution for you.
If the streaming side of things isn't something you need, then Avermedia also has the Core Go GC313, which is practically the same as the GC313Pro, just minus the 1080p capture system. You still get the 100W charging functionality, along with the 4K HDMI output and USB hub, but the second USB Type-C port is now for additional device charging.
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Both devices are part of Avermedia's Premium Go series, which now also includes a docking station with video capture, for handheld gaming devices. No clear word yet as to prices for all of these and when you'll be able to buy one, but I should imagine the GC313Pro won't be the cheapest GaN charger on the market.
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Nick, gaming, and computers all first met in 1981, with the love affair starting on a Sinclair ZX81 in kit form and a book on ZX Basic. He ended up becoming a physics and IT teacher, but by the late 1990s decided it was time to cut his teeth writing for a long defunct UK tech site. He went on to do the same at Madonion, helping to write the help files for 3DMark and PCMark. After a short stint working at Beyond3D.com, Nick joined Futuremark (MadOnion rebranded) full-time, as editor-in-chief for its gaming and hardware section, YouGamers. After the site shutdown, he became an engineering and computing lecturer for many years, but missed the writing bug. Cue four years at TechSpot.com and over 100 long articles on anything and everything. He freely admits to being far too obsessed with GPUs and open world grindy RPGs, but who isn't these days?