Capture card manufacturer Magewell has unveiled two new highly-capable 4K capture cards sporting a highly unusual M.2 form factor. The new card's are known as the Eco Capture HDMI 4K Plus M.2 and Eco Capture 12G SDI 4K Plus M.2. As the names suggest, one model is designed to work with HDMI connectors while the other is designed to work with SDI ports, which is a video connector used by the professional video production industry.
M.2 capture cards are not something you often hear about, but the ultra-compact form factor has many advantages. One of the biggest advantages is integration with newer motherboards that sacrifice most of their smaller PCie x8, x4, and x1 slots for M.2 slots. In these cases, having an M.2 capture card instead of a traditional half-height or full-height PCIe card can be really effective, especially if a system is already using the remaining one or two standard PCIe slots for graphics cards, audio cards, and/or ethernet cards.
