Elgato is a brand of consumer technology products. The brand was manufactured and designed by Elgato Systems, founded in 1992 by Markus Fest and is headquartered in Munich, Germany, until 2018 when the brand was sold to Corsair Components.
History
The brand, Elgato, was formerly a brand of Elgato Systems. The Elgato brand was used to refer to the company gaming and thunderbolt devices and was commonly called Elgato Gaming. On June 28th, 2018, Corsair Components acquired the Elgato brand from Elgato Systems, while Elgato Systems kept their smart home division and renamed the company to Eve Systems.
Elgato introduced a Thunderbolt docking station in June 2014. A computer is plugged into the dock using a Thunderbolt port in order to gain access to the dock's three USB ports, audio jacks, HDMI and ethernet. It is typically used to plug a Macbook into an office setting or to provide additional ports not available in the Macbook Air. A review in The Register said it was compact and useful, but Windows users should consider a USB 3.0 dock. The Register and CNET disagreed on whether it was competitively priced. Reviews in TechRadar and Macworld gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
Thunderbolt SSD
Elgato introduced two firewire external hard drives in September 2012 called Thunderbolt Drive. Benchmark tests by MacWorld and Tom's Hardware said that the hard drive was slower than other products they tested, despite being connected through a faster Thunderbolt port, rather than Firewire. The following year, in 2013, Elgato replaced them with similar drives identified as "Thunderbolt Drive +", which added USB 3.0 support and was claimed to be faster than the previous iteration. A CNET review of a Thunderbolt Drive+ drive gave it a 4.5 out of 5 star rating. It said the drive was "blazing fast" and "the most portable drive to date" but was also expensive. An article in The Register explained that the original drives introduced in 2012 didn't perform well in benchmark tests, but the newer "plus" version had impressive speed results during testing.
Game Capturing
Game Capture HD, which connects to gaming consoles to record gameplay, was introduced in 2012. It was created in response to gamers that were hacking EyeTV products for gameplay recording. The device connects between a gaming console and the TV and is powered by a USB connection. It captures video as the console sends it to the television, compresses and stores it. A review in iPhone Life gave it 4 out of 5 stars and noted that it could also be used to record iPad games with the right setup. In October 2014 Elgato released a new version called HD 60. It recorded in 60 frames per second and 1080p high definition video, whereas typical low-end video game recording devices capture in 720p and 30 frames per second. The Telegraph gave it four out of five stars. A review in Gizmodo said that it captured extremely high-quality footage, but it may be higher-end than needed for many gamers that would be satisfied with the recording features built into the console.
