Which Hdmi Cable Should I Buy

To get both audio and video from an HDMI connection, you'll need to make sure that your TV and receiver or sound bar have ARC capabilities. They should support HDMI version 1.4 or higher, and have connections labeled "ARC." You will also need a high-speed HDMI cable that supports HDMI 1.4 or higher.

which hdmi cable should i buy

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If your TV and AV receiver or sound bar support HDMI 2.1 and eARC, lip-sync is supposed to happen automatically. If it doesn't, you may need a firmware update. Or you may need to activate eARC through the settings menu on one or both devices. You should be using a high speed or ultra high speed HDMI cable for eARC to work.

Still have questions about which HDMI cable would work best in your system? We know these products inside and out. Feel free to leave us a comment below, or get in touch with one of our expert Advisors.

Shopping for HDMI cables should be a simple process. However, the wealth of choices, the wide range of prices, and a handful of potential holes to stumble upon can make it seem confusing and difficult. You need the right cable for the job and, ideally, you want to spend as little as possible. After all, it's just a cable. Right?

HDMI 1.4 and 2.0 don't matter nearly as much as their speed ratings, which the HDMI Forum and HDMI Licensing Administrator also define. Those specifications indicate maximum bandwidths, but they don't specifically define every cable. That's why HDMI cables are classified under one of four speed categories: Standard, High Speed, Premium High Speed, and Ultra High Speed.

Standard is the most basic (and slowest) HDMI cable you can get. It has a bandwidth of 4.95Gbps, which is enough to send a 1080p signal to your TV, but not much more than that. Standard HDMI cables are rare to find in stores, but if you find an unmarked cable in a bucket somewhere or hooked up to a home theater system that hasn't been upgraded in five years, it might be Standard. These don't support 4K video at all.

High Speed is over twice as fast as Standard, with a minimum bandwidth of 10.2Gbps. The vast majority of new HDMI cables you shop for will be High Speed or above, which means they can carry a 4K signal. The hitch is that the bandwidth will support only 4K video at 24 frames per second. That's fine if you want to watch movies on Ultra HD Blu-ray, but if you are streaming TV shows or have gaming hardware that can push 4K at 30 or 60 frames per second, it won't be sufficient. High Speed HDMI cables do, however, support HDR and wide color gamuts.

Premium High Speed pushes the bandwidth up to 18Gbps, which covers any consumer-level video source you deal with. They're also very common now. Premium High Speed cables support 4K60, or 4K video at 60 frames per second, with the capacity for BT.2020 color space and 4:4:4 chroma sampling. Basically, they can handle any 4K video you throw at them. These are future-proof cables that will keep you running for the lifespan of 4K content. They can also support 8K and higher resolutions, though with certain frame rate and feature restrictions.

Otherwise, if you just see the High Speed descriptor on the cable package, be sure to look for any associated numbers; specifically, the bandwidth and video resolution. It should clearly say 18Gbps or 48Gbps, and possibly 4K60 or 4K120 or 8K somewhere on the box, bag, or listing, depending on the rating. If those numbers aren't there, you can probably watch 4K24 video, but that's about it. And if it doesn't say High Speed anywhere on the package, save it for your old DVD player.

If your components are three, six, or even 15 feet from each other, you should be fine with regular cables. If you're running long cables between, say, a projector and a closet full of home theater components across the house, you need to make sure your cables can handle that distance. For commercial and high-end home installations that use long runs, you should seriously consider an extender system that either amplifies the signal so it can travel further along the HDMI cable or sends the signal over Ethernet for most of the distance, switching back to a shorter HDMI cable once you run the easier-to-manage Ethernet through your walls or ceiling.

On paper, if you have a 4K TV or plan on upgrading to one, you should get a Premium High Speed or equivalent cable. The HDMI Forum would likely recommend going with a certified Premium High Speed cable with a QR code for security, but after looking at the variety of cable options available, we're not so sure.

Packaging can be deceiving, but cable prices can also be inflated. To determine whether you should err on the side of caution or frugality, we decided to run in-house tests, and the results were slightly surprising.

Note that all these tests are for up to 4K60 video, and not 8K or 4K120. You should be well covered to watch any content on your 4K TV with these cables, but as both 8K TVs and 4K120 sources are still a rarity, we haven't tested those higher rates yet.

To our considerable surprise, every cable we tested worked with every test signal, with two exceptions. The Monoprice 75-foot Commercial Series Standard Speed HDMI Cable could carry a 4K24 signal both with and without HDR, but once we moved up to 4K60, the signal failed. The Zosi HDMI cable (a brand that primarily sells home security cameras) we ordered from Amazon, which specifically said on the product page it's only intended for up to 1080p, also failed when we tried to send a 4K60 HDR signal with 4:4:4 color sampling through it. But even then, the cable managed to handle a 4K60 HDR signal with compressed colors well enough; it was only when we bumped up the color sampling that the screen flickered and blacked out.

If you have a 4K TV but don't have a 4K120-capable gaming system and don't plan on keeping your home theater components too far away, nearly any HDMI cable you buy new will work for video content. In fact, some of the cables you already have lying around might work just fine, though you should test that by making sure your Blu-ray player, media streamer, or gaming system is set to output at the highest possible resolution and display HDR when it can.

This doesn't mean you should sneer at cables from Amazon or Best Buy, or even most unknown brands you can order online. Amazon's AmazonBasics cables are slightly more expensive, while Best Buy's Insignia and Rocketfish cables are significantly more expensive, but they're all still perfectly functional. And if you buy them new and pay attention to the packaging, cheap no-name HDMI cables are also likely to work with any video signal you throw at them. For high-end gaming, however, be sure you take a closer look at the specifications.

By paying attention to bandwidth rating, refresh rate, and price, you can avoid unreliable cables. Options outside of the better-known inexpensive brands (AmazonBasics and Monoprice are currently the top two) can be tempting, but some budget cables have weak electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, which can disrupt your Wi-Fi network, and they might cause visual artifacts and signal drop-outs. If you see a two-pack of High Speed HDMI cables for the same price as a single Monoprice or AmazonBasics option, proceed with caution.

Active HDMI cables should not cost exorbitantly more than their passive counterparts. While prices do go up, you can find them for well below the usurious rates of highly marketed cables at Best Buy and similar stores. On Monoprice, for example, a 6-foot 4K Slim High Speed HDMI cable costs less than $9; its active counterpart is priced at $28.

The type of cable needed depends on its intended application. There are two primary considerations when selecting a cord type: classification and distance. You should also consider transfer rates and resolution when deciding on an HDMI cable.

Ultra High Speed HDMI cables present video in up to 8K resolution and supply up to 48 Gbps of bandwidth. You can achieve up to 10K resolution and refresh rates up to 240Hz on an HDR TV or 4120Hz refresh speed for video data with lower resolutions. This kind of cable is optimized for HDMI 2.1 and primed for new technology, which makes it a great choice for tech enthusiasts. In the meantime, you can enjoy games with frame rates that exceed 30 frames per second and leverage all the features of HDR TV.

Once you decide which classification of HDMI cable you need, you should then determine how long you need the cable to be. Try to select a cable that is just long enough for your application and to maneuver connected devices.

Syncwire uses a nylon braided cable for extra durability. The company claims that it can withstand over 20,000 times of plugging in and out. At 2m in length, it should be plenty enough for the majority of devices.

Standard is the most basic HDMI cable, designed for earlier consumer applications. The cable has a bandwidth of 5Gbps, which supports 1080i or 720p resolution. Standard HDMI cables do not transmit 4K and later resolutions.

To ensure your cable meets the specifications in this category, look for one that has a Premium HDMI Cable Certification Label. Each certified product label includes a unique holographic fingerprint and a QR code which you can scan for verification using the HDMI smartphone app.

A. Although there are different HDMI standards, with HDMI 2.0 being the most recent, there are only two HDMI cable standards: Standard and High Speed. Standard is out-of-date now and supports lower resolutions; High Speed supports everything, including the HDMI 2.0 standard, which gives you 4K TV at 60fps (Ultra HD).

Scientific explanations are all well and good, but it's practical testing where the talking stops and the evidence starts. To prove the doubters wrong, we upped the ante and decided to test full-motion video to prove that changing cables makes no difference. In order to test scientifically, we turned to our Digital Foundry TrueHD card, which captures the RAW and uncompressed HDMI signal. Crucially, it performs no error correction, so we can accurately compare the output from different cables and spot any errors. 041b061a72