I Spent a THOUSAND Dollars on HDMI Cables.. for Science

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We told you we’d do it, and here it is! Testing a whackload of HDMI 2.1 and 2.0 cables to find out if you’ve been wasting your money on cables for no good reason.

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:27 HDMI Basics
2:22 Shady back alley deals
3:06 HDMI Specs
4:58 Methods
5:58 Initial results
9:15 Class is in session
11:11 Other failures
12:12 Macro view

[LinusTechTips]

A follow up: Belkin reached out to explain the results we saw with their cable: "Our coax design is that pins 2 5 8 11 and 17 are connected to a common ground shield to create a shield loop – so it would fail a continuity test – but it doesn’t mean that the cable fails. The reason Belkin chose this design is because it creates a shield loop to protect it from interference."

[marxmaiale]

The Included cables with 'Anything' are of key importance. We all get them. Add a segment to any product review about the Included cables.

[SethEverman]

i spent around $330 USD on my 65 foot active optical HDMI 2.1 cable, to reach the projector i have. does not work <3

[ntb]

This is the kind of content that basically only LLT can do and is amazing to see your team doing

[SirWade]

Sweet! Can we do the same thing now.... with DisplayPort? 😅

[ytQrash]

For computers, HDMI has been my second choice. I prefer to use a DisplayPort cable. In the past, the specs for DP cables have generally exceeded those of HDMI. So I'd like to see a similar check or DP cables.

[georgen]

Hi, ex-professional network cable installer/designer here. Relevance: we tested all runs, existing and new, with a calibrated cable certifier before any project could be called completed. (Trust me, that is a *lot* of cable testing!) A few comments:

1) That used-in-office ROG cable that "failed" may have actually been good when it shipped. You mentioned that it only failed continuity, and the video showed the continuity only failed on the shell -- the shell is by far the most common point of failure for a cable after repeated use, as it commonly takes the brunt of the beating from even typical bending of the cable where the housing ends. A few severe angles there under stress from some accidental yanks can do a number on them over time. (That said, get rid of it anyway: the shell ties to chassis ground, and a floating ground of any type can be hell on signal integrity. It served its time honorably; it's time to retire it. But props on ROG for sourcing a good quality cable.)

2) Seeing the same pairs fail across a number of different cables is actually remarkably common. Particularly with high signaling speeds, crosstalk across wire pairs can be a serious limitation on the performance of the overall cable, and the internal layout of the pairs relative to each other within the cable are very commonly the same not just across different cables or batches, but even across multiple manufacturers. There is more detail wrt why that is, but I doubt anyone's *that* interested. :) (This is, incidentally, true even when one takes into account different OEMs -- a consideration that I wish the video had at least mentioned, considering neither Amazon nor Monoprice manufacture their own cables. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Belkin doesn't for the majority of their cables either...)

3) For HDMI 2.1 in particular, you're right that long cables are much less likely to pass, but for that info to be useful to "the average consumer", you should probably note what that *actually* means. A lot of the HDMI 2.1 spec doesn't require bandwidth greater than the 1.4/2.0-era Cat 2 spec. Specifically, if you're running up to 4K 60Hz without HDR or 4K 30Hz with HDR (or 1080p with pretty much any fancy feature you want), an HDMI 2.0 ("Premium") rated Cat 2 cable is well within spec for those HDMI 2.1 applications -- which also means it's much easier to find longer runs that are spec-compliant, assuming no interference issues with the run of course.

If you do need Cat 3 spec'd cables, just don't even plan on long runs without active components or the like, honestly. AFAIK there hasn't even been a single HDMI cable by any manufacturer certified to run past 15-16ft, and I'm pretty doubtful that we'll ever see a certified passive 25ft Cat 3 any time in the near future if at all (bad spec design on HDMI's part -- another long story the details of which I'm not throwing in here; this is long enough already). And if you're doing any long runs *at all*, you will want to stick with the officially certified Premium or Ultra High Speed products, with the HDMI.org sticker on them. (And verify their cert, of course!)

[USMC-esyy]

Some purchase recommendations at the end would have been nice!

[nickglover]

I'd love to see the HDMI cables that come with consoles, especially PS5 and XSX, tested. As far as cheap brands go, I mostly buy from Cable Matters these days as I have had pretty good luck with them working as advertised and not immediately breaking, but I'd love to see more objective data. I think another good follow up to this video would be durability testing. I don't really know exactly how you'd go about it, but figuring out not just how the cables perform out of the box but how they perform in a few weeks/months would also be good to know.

[SimplyStave]

I’m actually curious to see if Display Port cables follow similar trends to the HDMI cables. If you have the capability, it might be worth tossing a few in the next batch for science!

[AwesomeBob]

Dude! This is some of your best content! PLEASE keep doing this investigative work as much as feasible! Loved the scientific break-down of signal quality, jitter, etc. Makes the whole science of signals across the wire so approachable and understandable. I feel like an informed consumer again and your production quality is top-notch as usual!

Thanks Linus and team!

[mallerschwab]

These kinda scientific videos on consumer tech are far and few beyond, and should just get more regular with your new lab. So I am really excited you guys are doing this

[connorhearne]

I've been waiting for so long for this, I can't wait for the usb-c one

[FrostbiteB]

I was seriously expecting Linus to test that THOUSAND dollar HDMI cable that he bought several years ago. He literally said that he wanted to use an oscilloscope to see the tiny gain in conductivity of something like that. THE CABLE CAME IN A CARRYING CASE WITH AN AUTHENTICITY CERTIFICATE!!!

[jkrtkdq]

Please do this for USB-C cables too!
There was a Google engineer years ago that used to test them and post which ones actually were in spec but as far as I know he hasn't been doing it for quite a while now.

[Bharathkumar-gvft]

People in the world of tech would rarely go through this kind of hellish process. Kudos to the team who did this painstaking work. Their work has provided knowledge to around ~2.5M people!!

[Davidx_]

I'd love to see a roundup like this video done on DisplayPort cables since they seem to be a lot more troublesome if you don't ensure they're Vesa Certified

[argh]

So Linus is the guy who has all my HDMI cables when I need them !

[neilmehta]

I wish you has included Cable Matters in the testing. They talk about how their HDMI 2.1 cables meet the specs and can hit the 48 Gbps requirements. It would be nice to know if that is true since I replaced everything in my setup with their cables last year.

[abbasx]

... "One failure is a fluke, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern." LOVE IT -- this is wisdom that transcends HDMI cables and tech