AmazonBasics HDMI Cables

Steedie

Steedie

Steedie

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Joined
29 Jun 2004
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Hey guys,

One of my cables is on the way out as it’s started producing the odd white sparkle on dark areas. Swapped it around today and it’s fixed it so I’m going to replace all of them, can’t just replace one as I’m weird and have to have the the same cables :p

Are these any good? I know they say they are rated to 4K/60 and all the other good stuff but a few reviews seem to have suggested otherwise with people either getting no picture at all or dropouts, which I’m guessing is more faulty cable than a product issue.

I’m only using 2m max so don’t need anything long

Or any other alternatives? I quite like using eBay as you can get braided cables that look a bit nicer for the same price that are still high speed. Again, I’m weird I know...

Thanks
 
The braiding is purely aesthetic, as I'm sure you know. It makes no difference to the performance, but if it's something you like then go for it. Other stuff that is purely aesthetic is gold plating. It's not thick enough to change the conductivity characteristics versus nickel plating, and the corrosion resistance isn't much cop when the few micros of gold flash have been scraped off with reconnecting a few times. Still, it looks pretty. :D

The principle differences with HDMI cables are:

* Copper vs copper coated aluminium (CCA) conductors - all-copper is better - less brittle, more signal, more robust
* Conductor thickness (AWG) - lower AWG numbers mean thicker - 28AWG (approx 1/3rd mm diameter) is already pretty thin. On its own AWG diesn't guarantee performance. A cable might advertise 24AWG but the signal integrity could still be crap due to high capacitance and/or high inductance. The only real merit is any advertiser stating the AWG is at least thinking about cable specs rather than just punting out on looks, vague performance promises and price
* conductor shielding / inter-pair shielding / outer shielding - no measure for this except cable thickness overall and whether it is specifically mentioned

With most short cables very little of the above makes any appreciable difference unless some hardware in the chain is borderline performance. A decent cable won't improve that, but a bad cable might pull the system performance down to a point where there are sparklies or no picture at all (HDMI Eye Pattern collapse).

From the rain forest site, have a look at the Securomax cables. The company selling them is making mostly the right noises except they get a bit confused over SNR because higher is better, not lower as they mistakenly claim. Lifetime warranty too, so that's okay.

Same site, the "Kanddit HDMI" cable at £3.99 for 1 mtr length looks a reasonably-safe budget choice with braiding.
 
Bit delayed but I finally ordered some, 1x 3m and 4x 1.8m.

Have to say, for the price you pay they are fantastic. Sure they look boring, but they are built really well and don't feel cheap. And I've finally got rid of the odd sparkle effect that I had on my 4K Apple TV that I seemed to get with every cable I tried.

Can't recommend them enough for anyone looking to get high speed cables but concerned about the price and "you get what you pay for"

Thanks again for the feedback guys
 
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