If we assume that each square box is approximately 1/60th of a second, which I believe is an accurate assumption, then the delay introduced by the capture device is between three and four frames, or about 50-67ms. This is actually a very decent result, and most games would be playable in this case, though with some handicap. Games that are turn-based, like RPGs, would be just fine.

So now that we've gotten the caveats of this device out of the way, I have to point out the many great things about it. My wife has a Vidbox, and while that one does have a rather useful HDMI passthrough port, this one is less than half of the size! (That device also requires proprietary software to operate, and it's limited to Windows only.) It's also USB-C, and even has a power delivery 3.0 port, which allows it to charge some devices (but not all; my GPD Win Max wouldn't charge, but my phone would). Speaking of which, in case your cellphone camera didn't meet your needs, you can stream video from this capture box to your phone! While I don't have a need for this, it could be insanely useful in a pinch.

It also has a microphone jack, a headphone jack, and a switch to control mixing between the mic and the HDMI audio. Both audio jacks are 3.5mm, which is great because headsets and microphones are common and easy to come by, making it easy to work with for recording, and potentially bypassing an otherwise necessary mixing step.

If you are using this device to connect it to a camcorder for live blogging, it has a pair of cold shoes to assist in mounting it to camera mounts. While I don't need this for my use case, I can definitely see the utility there.

One other thing that I absolutely love about this device is that it uses a standard UVC camera output format. What this means is that OBS and other software that supports webcams can just use this device without any drivers, software, or configuration - it just works. It works on virtually any modern operating system - macOS and Linux included. It did seem a bit finickier on some computers than others, but on my desktop PC it worked flawlessly first try. I had difficulty on one of my laptops, but once I got it figured out it worked perfectly. And I can honestly say that having a portable streaming station, with the tiny laptop I own (GPD Win Max) and the j2create that's also tiny? Well, let's just say that combination is going places.

The j5create JVA02 Live Video Capture Adapter is honestly fantastic for what it does in its tiny form factor. Yes, it stinks that video loses chroma subsampling, but that's not a problem for most video or gaming content. Yes, I do wish it had a HDMI passthrough port, so I didn't have to use a splitter. But overall, it's a super tiny HDMI recording device that makes a truly portable Nintendo Switch streaming station a reality, along with some neat audio mixing features. And for that I can't help but be grateful. If this sounds appealing to you, then I think the $89 asking price is fair. If you just want HDMI capture alone, and don't care about the mixing or the ability to mount it to larger camera equipment, connect it to Android, or various other ancillary features, then other capture devices do exist for less money, though I haven't been able to test them for quality.