A. Dent says:

Just to clear any doubt, this cable works as well as any other 6-9 ft. HDMI wire, including the premium ones and it’s no better than those that sell at Amazon for one penny (I actually have one in use right now).

I was in the process of upgrading my AV receiver and I needed a couple of extra wires, some replacing some older HDMI 1.2-rated cables. So, I purchased this Amazon branded HDMI cable and the shorter AmazonBasics High Speed HDMI Cable (6.5 Feet / 2.0 Meters) [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging] and not very expensive ‘premium’ brands or less expensive ‘discount’ brand because…

AmazonBasics vs. Other Discount Brands

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It’s not an easy call between an AmazonBasics-branded wire and someone else’s that sells for less (plus shipping ) but, here’s why I went with Amazon this time.

If you look carefully, you will find the probably hundreds of HDMI ‘brands’ offered at Amazon (exclude the ‘premium’) fall in about 3 ‘types’:

a – usually under $[...] plus shipping

b – usually under $[...] but over $[...] that qualify for Super Savers free shipping

c – listed for as low as 1 penny plus shipping

AmazonBasics beats category ‘a’ on price and it’s more or less on-par with category ‘b’ as far as price is concerned. Category ‘c’ saves you a few dollars – and I did order a couple of these myself – but, Amazon has a few extra advantages worth considering if you don’t mind paying a little extra.

- EASY RETURN – I know because I had to return quite a few items for various reasons. Amazon makes it very easy and, if you are returning the item because it came defective or damaged Amazon pays for shipping.

- WARRANTY – these wires come with a 1-year warranty (talking about future-proofing). If an HDMI cable performs for one year, the ods that it would stop working after that are pretty close to zero. It’s possible that the other vendors back their inexpensive cables too (I never checked) but I am highly confident that Amazon will be around to honor its warranty and I’m not so sure about vendors I know less.

- QUALITY ASSURANCE – I’ve never had any problems with ‘cheap’ HDMI cables but it may be reassuring to have Amazon’s name on a wire. My assumption is that Amazon did insist on some quality checks before they stamped their logo on the product.

HDMI Background and the FUD of Premium Cables

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Let’s face it, HDMI 1.3x cables have become a commodity these days. There are ‘premium’ brands, for sure and some look prettier than others (for something that goes to the back of your equipment and no one else will probably see) but the fact is that nearly all of today’s makes and models qualify for ‘high-speed’ or ‘Category 2′ (see HDMI 1.3 specs below). Just to eliminate the confusion, it’s worth stating that:

The FUD (see definition below) campaign attempting to attract buyers toward the more expensive brands makes a series of claims. I will address them, as they may apply to this specific cable.

- Practically all HDMI 1.3x certified cables are HIGH-SPEED or CATEGORY 2. Only the Category 2 (high-speed) cables support 1080p resolutions.

- The HDMI official site advises that even HDMI cables under 15 ft. (5m) that were made BEFORE the HDMI 1.3 specification can work as Category 2 cables. The FUD claim that signal attenuation is less over a more expensive cable may be true, nut that’s irrelevant on a 6 ft. length.

- The ‘ultra high-speed’ claim that some premium brands make means very little or ‘nothing’. As far as I know, there is NO official HDMI specification for ‘ultra high-speed’ and, every time I checked the specs of cables labelled as ‘ultra’, all I saw was the familiar HDMI 1.3 specifications and nothing more.

- The ‘premium’, very expensive HDMI cables are NOT ‘future proof’. The HDMI 1.4 specs that add an Ethernet channel, an audio return channel, support for 3-D and 4K by 2K resolution use a physically different connector – in other words, the highly-expensive and the ultra-expensive ‘premium’ cables do NOT work with HDMI 1.4.

- At this length – 6 ft., you will get as good a service from a no-brand or Amazon-labeled cable as you would from a super-expensive rip-off. Any HDMI 1.3 cable should be able to carry, error free, all the signal your electronic equipment may put out.

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Here are the HDMI 1.3 specs supported by this cable the premium brands and the less expensive alternatives:

Maximum signal bandwidth (MHz) 340

Maximum TMDS bandwidth (Gbit/s) 10.2

Maximum video bandwidth (Gbit/s) 8.16

Maximum audio bandwidth (Mbit/s) 36.86

Maximum Color Depth (bit/px) 48

Maximum resolution over single link at 24-bit/px 2560×1600p75

Maximum resolution over single link at 30-bit/px 2560×1600p60

Maximum resolution over single link at 36-bit/px 1920x1200p75

Maximum resolution over single link at 48-bit/px 1920×1200p60

sRGB

YCbCr

8 channel LPCM/192 kHz/24-bit audio capability

Blu-ray Disc video and audio at full resolution

Consumer Electronic Control (CEC)

DVD-Audio support

Super Audio CD (DSD) support

Deep Color

xvYCC

Auto lip-sync

Dolby TrueHD bitstream capable

DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream capable

Updated list of CEC commands (only on HDMI 1.3a,b,c)

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Note: FUD Definiton

FUD – Fear, uncertainty, doubt.

According to Wikipedia, “the term originated to describe disinformation tactics in the computer hardware industry and has since been used more broadly. FUD is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.”

Still Wikipedia, quoting Eric S. Raymond: “The idea, of course, was to persuade buyers to go with safe [...] gear rather than with competitors’ equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with [...], but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors’ equipment [...]“.
Rating: 5 / 5

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