Why retailers love selling you $100 HDMI cables (and why you shouldn’t buy them)
How much is too much for an HDMI cable? When considering two cables with the same specifications and length, is it worth paying for the more expensive model? In some cases the answer may be “yes”, but in the vast majority of cases, high-end cables are just a waste of your hard-earned money.
Why are there expensive HDMI cables?
There’s probably a good reason
Retailers love high-margin accessories, and HDMI cables are one of the easiest upsells in the book. If you’re already spending a fortune on a fancy new TV or other audio-visual equipment, spending an extra $30 doesn’t seem so unreasonable.
Now, according to the official HDMI website, there are several real standards for HDMI. There is also a voluntary premium cable certification program. This can help avoid buying a fake HDMI cable.
This means that a given cable has been tested to ensure that it at least meets the HDMI standard it claims to meet. So if it says it’s an HDMI 2.1 cable, then it has been tested to support all features and meet minimum bandwidth requirements.
However, just because a cable is not officially certified does not mean it meets the standards it is labeled with. Making a cable conform to these standards, certified or not, can make it more expensive. Certification makes a cable more expensive, and some types of cables, such as active HDMI and fiber optic HDMI, are more expensive because they contain more complex components. These are all legitimate reasons why an HDMI cable costs more.
However, some expensive cables simply cannot justify their asking prices. You end up paying for the marketing, packaging and perception of higher quality rather than something that impacts image quality or performance.
- Length(s)
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16.4-32.8 feet
- Ability
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48 Gbps
Digital signals do not work like analog signals
Do or don’t, there’s no trying
The most important thing to keep in mind is that HDMI signals are digital. There is no gradual degradation. HDMI has error correction to a point, and problems can manifest as intermittent screen blacking or stuttering, but in the absence of obvious problems like these, it’s all the same. A $10 cable and a $100 cable that both pass the test for a given resolution, refresh rate, color bit depth, and features like HDR and VRR will have identical picture quality.
Either the cable works according to specifications or it doesn’t. There is no midpoint.
What really matters in an HDMI cable
Instead of focusing on price or brand, you should worry about whether the cable meets the technical requirements of your setup.
Cable length is also an important factor. Uncertified passive cables longer than five meters are more prone to dropouts. For longer cables, it’s worth paying for a premium certified cable so you know it works at that length. Otherwise, you might end up spending money on active HDMI repeaters beyond what you paid, or buying an extra cable anyway.
If your cable meets specifications, that’s it. That’s all you need. Gold plating, braided cable jacket, etc. are optional. Premium durability features don’t matter for a cable you plug in once and never touch for several years.
When You May Need to Spend More (But Not Much)
Pay for the right reasons
Sometimes it’s worth spending more, but never for those extremely expensive home theater boutique cables. No HDMI cable is worth hundreds of dollars unless it’s a fiber optic cable that can run the length of a house.
What I would say is worth paying for, besides the certified extra length, is the durability of the cables you plug and unplug frequently. For example, the cable you keep in your laptop bag to use for presentations has to withstand far more stress than the one that connects your PlayStation to your TV.
How to Buy the Right HDMI Cable Without Wasting Money
It’s not that complicated
To avoid paying too much for an HDMI cable, I think you just need to follow a few steps.
First, figure out what your devices need. For example, if you have a current generation console and a 4K TV, you need a cable rated for 4K 60 Hz if your TV maxes out at that refresh rate, or 4K 120 Hz if the TV is capable of that. Anything above this value would be useless since neither your TV nor your console would be able to use it.
Second, avoid luxury HDMI cable brands, but also avoid no-name cables. Stick to major cable brands at reasonable prices.
Third, watch out for buzzwords like “gold plated”, “audiophile”, “theater quality”, “premium armored”, etc. This doesn’t make any sense. If the cable meets the specifications you need, none of that matters. If it doesn’t meet specifications, it matters even less!
Finally, don’t try to future-proof your cables too aggressively. Simply purchase the cable that meets your current needs. The only time I would break this rule is if you were doing a permanent installation, in which case the hassle of ripping out the old cable one day might outweigh today’s added cost.
