The other day I was looking for a HDMI cable to connect a laptop and a monitor. Although the standard has been there for years already, I never had to actually buy a cable before, therefore I didn’t know anything about it.
Turns out, there are a lot of expensive scam (like with Ethernet cable category): a HDMI cable eieither work or it does not. More expensive mostly doesn’t correlate with better quality 1 .
The fact is, 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.
As shown by this picture 2 , it’s pretty clear when a HDMI cable is faulty:
Basically, the main (and shall I say only) factor for choosing a HDMI cable is its length: longer means more attenuation of the signal. This is true above 7.5 meters. In that case a more expensive cable may be worth it 3 :.
The next criteria is personal preference: I found out that nylon braided cables are a huge improvement and are much sturdier than the standard rubber or plastic material used in most cables. Fortunately they aren’t even more expensive than their plastic counterpart.