Are the expensive HDMI cables worth the high price tag?
I went into my local electronics store the other day (I won’t mention any names) and I was shocked at what I heard. Some poor guy came in and asked for a cheap HDMI cable. The sales girl said . . . and I quote . . . “those two words just don’t go together.” Really? They don’t? I was pretty sure that doing a quick Google search would prove her wrong. So guess what I found:
Yep. I knew it. $8.95 for a 10 foot HDMI cable and I have seen them much cheaper on www.slickdeals.net from time to time. Hmmmm . . . so there ARE cheap HDMI cables out there. But are they worth it? Well, another Google search later and I came across this article from Popular Mechanics. For those of you that don’t want to read, let me highlight the most important point:
HDMI is digital, meaning you either get the feed or you don’t. High prices and gimmicks like gold-plating don’t affect 1s and 0s. Our advice: Purchase your wiring online for cheap, and use the saved money to upgrade to a larger flat screen.
Still don’t believe me? Here are some more opinions on the subject:
http://reviews.cnet.com/hdmi-cable/
or this:
http://gizmodo.com/282725/the-truth-about-monster-cable-+-grand-finale-part-iii
My favorite quote of the day comes from the above article and it pretty much sums up the argument nicely:
The only people who should buy Monster cable are people who light cigars with Benjamins. Fortunately for Monster, there are plenty of those people. They’re not even suckers, they are just rich as hell, and want the best. This testing did not prove that Monster is not the best. It just proved that the best is, for the most part, unnecessary.
Now let me give the people at Monster the benefit of the doubt. There are times when the more expensive cables might help provide a better image. If you’re doing long runs, like over 15 feet, then you might want to try a well-shielded cable. Perhaps you’re using HDMI cables as part of your edit suite. I would suggest that you do some tests of your own. I have tested my Monoprice HDMI cables against some expensive Monster Cable HDMI cables and I don’t see enough of a difference to spend the extra $150, but you might. However, if you’re just looking to go from your cable box or blu ray player into your HDTV then cheap is the way to go.
The argument for the more expensive cables is that they last longer but look at it this way; if you buy a $10 cable and it goes bad in a year (it won’t) then you just buy another $10 cable. You could do this for 10 years and still save money compared to buying a high priced cable from an electronics superstore. By the way, I’ve had my cheap $6 HDMI cable at home for three years now and I haven’t had any issues. I suggest that if you’re on the fence about this, purchase both and do your own test. You can always return the cables. Let me know what you find out.
Photo: Sam Catchesides
