The Best HDMI Cord

Buying Guide

For a world that’s supposedly going more wireless by the day, we sure need a lot of cables. There’s USB cables, charging cables, telephone cables and the bulkiest of all the household connectors: HDMI cord.

HDMI stands for “High Definition Multimedia Interface.” You’ll find HDMI cords behind most any modern TV, connecting it to video game consoles, cable boxes, audio receivers and more. And while they may seem thicker and are certainly more expensive than older analog cables, they do a lot of extra work.

First and foremost, HDMI cords can transmit both audio and video signals, and they can handle a lot of bandwidth. That makes them crucial for most any 4K or HD Smart TV. Data can travel back and forth over HDMI cords, allowing peripherals such as speakers and transmitters to sync up with the sound and images on your TV.

HDMI standards have been upgraded a number of times since the technology was introduced in 2002, and each new iteration has brought a new version of HDMI cable to take advantage of it. Right now, the most common version of HDMI is 2.0, and it’s the number you should look for if you’ve got a 4K TV or comparable gear. If you’ve got an older TV with an HDMI connection, don’t sweat the numbers too much. Each generation of HDMI cable has been backward compatible with older versions.

Those with a truly up to date home theater system might want to invest in some HDMI 2.1 cables. This newest standard of HDMI technology represents a pretty big leap in bandwidth and capabilities over previous versions. How big? HDMI 2.1 cables are able to handle up to 48 Gbps, compared to the 18 Gbps bandwidth cap on HDMI 2.0 cords. That’s a lot of extra data, and it will be used to provide visuals for the 8K TVs that are already in some stores today, as well as a lot of extra bells and whistles in the next generation of home video game consoles.

The short version? If you’re happy with the picture and sound on your 4K TV, HDMI 2.0 cords will be perfectly sufficient. You can always wait until you buy the next generation of gear to get those fancy 2.1 cables.

• One great thing about HDMI cords is there’s very little grey area between a defective cable and a high-functioning one. By the nature of the way they transmit their signals, a broken HDMI cable won’t result in fuzzy or poor quality video — it simply won’t send any image at all.
• If you’re planning to use your cords in excessively, consistently moist or dusty areas (a bad idea for most Smart TVs in general), then you might want to invest in HDMI cords with gold plating that can offer some marginal protection against corrosion. Otherwise, it’s a frill that’s not worth paying for. Gold plating generally won’t affect the transmission one way or another.