I have seen it time and time again where people are spending $9.99, $99.99, or $499.99 on what salespeople call “high quality” HDMI cables.
Remember who you’re buying from, salespeople, people who get a profit from a sale that they just gave you. Or companies like Monster who trick their customers into thinking their cables are better than others.
It’s plain and simple: all HDMI cables are the same. They’re all made in the same country in the same factory.
When looking at specifications from an HDMI cable we see basically the same output between an eBay HDMI cable costing $3.50 and a Monster HDMI cable costing more than $50.00. A HDMI cable is what takes an input of video and audio from a device and outputs the codex to a TV or monitor.
The signal carried within the HDMI cable is called Transition Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) which in basic terms means a high-speed digital transmission. You can’t change the function of an HDMI cable meaning they all use TMDS. Unlike how a PC uses a bunch of random ones and zeros, HDMI’s use a version of 8bit/10 bit encoding that allows faster signal transfer with fewer errors.
Let’s face it; most of us do not care about how the signal works, but how well the picture looks on our TV or monitor. You may hear that “a gold plated HDMI cable improves quality”, but all that gold is really doing is acting as a nice protector and doesn’t help your picture in any way. The quality depends much more on how good your TV or monitor is and not the HDMI. Remember when buying a TV or monitor to make sure that the type of panel is high quality and if you’re not sure check my guide here.
Let’s take a look at a test done by Tested.com who performed a HDMI test between a cable costing $12 and one costing $200. As you see in the tests below the difference is almost impossible to see. You might even say that they were the same test.
Figure 1 – A 6FT $12 HDMI cable
Figure 2 – A 15FT $200 HDMI cable
If you don’t take my word for it that all HDMI cables are the same then I encourage you to take the time to Google “Why all HDMI cables are the same”. You’ll see many test results and review articles that come to the same conclusion, i.e., that all HDMI cables really are the same. So remember, next time you’re at a retail store buying HDMI cables, don’t listen to the salesperson who is selling you a $20 HDMI cable but buy your HDMI cables online. I would recommend not spending more than $5.00 on any type of cable. Personally, I purchase all of my HDMI cables from eBay.
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