Get a 6-foot HDMI cable for $3.19 shipped

Pay more than a few bucks for an HDMI cable and you're getting ripped off.

(Credit: Amazon)

As regular Cheapskate readers know, HDMI cables are insanely overpriced. Pity the uninformed consumer who walks into, say, Best Buy, and walks out $40 to $90 poorer. Happens all the time.

But it doesn't have to. Help me spread the word: Eforcity (via Amazon) has a 6-foot HDMI cable for just $3.19 shipped. (Actually, the cable's only 21 cents, shipping costs $2.98. That drives me nuts, so I stayed focused on the total price. Which is awesome.)

Update: I'm not sure why, but sometimes that link takes you to the same cable offered by a different vendor (and for a slightly different price). If that happens, look for the Eforcity deal on the right side under More Buying Choices.

In case you're not familiar with them, HDMI cables carry digital audio and video signals between your TV and gear like game consoles and Blu-ray players.

Are they all created equal? No, but there's ample scientific and anecdotal evidence that dirt-cheap generic cables perform just as well as their pricey big-name counterparts (cough *Monster* cough). Don't get suckered into buying the latter.

Need more proof? This particular cable has a whopping 1,863 user reviews on Amazon, and the average score is 4.5 stars out of 5. 'Nuff said.

[jbailey3]

I've had several of these. The first one that I ordered was a 30 ft. cable. It didn't work properly, but eforcity replaced it quickly, for free. I just had another 6 footer poop out on my blu ray, so I just ordered 3 more.

Most of them work, but I've had about a 75% success rate. I'd rather buy 10 of these than 1 of the other!

[traxx09]

Monoprice.com also offers great deals on cables and more. I haven't bought as many or as long of cables as jbailey but the ones I (and friends and relatives) have bought have had a 100% success rate. Now in 5 or so years they may poop out, but at these prices they're practically disposable.

[InkyRed]

Everyone hates on Monster. Even though I'd never buy from them either, i'd love ttheir business model. The world is full of suckers!

[bryanb867]

Great deal! As far as 'expensive' cable quality (aka Monster Cable), there was an article I read a while back that metal clothes hangers work just as good as Monster Cables (the test was done on speaker cable, but I think the same principles apply - Monster is NOT worth the price - stick with the el cheap-o cables).

[dkbraves]

Hey Rick, yeah this is a great deal, but I think your link is setup wrong. It takes me to a hdmi cable sold by BrilliantStore for .71. I see Eforcity on the right hand side under "More Buying Choices" though.
Great Deal like I said but it sucks for me because I'm going to college and will be poor soon (no xbox, no flatscreen to plug my laptop, etc.)

[rickbroida]

That's weird. When I click the link, it's the opposite of that: Eforcity is the main vendor, BrilliantStore is under "More Buying Choices." Huh.

[Eludium-Q36]

Cool, Walmart is $13 for 2-m, Ebay is $5. Just make sure it's HDMI v1.3 compliant.

[Eludium-Q36]

Followup: there are plenty of negative reviews for this product on Amazon, too. Rick, you should've mentioned this. Many people complain that it's NOT v1.3 standards compliant, they get no audio, picture anomalies, some work for two or three weeks then fail, and alot of "you get what you pay for" statements. I'll add another cliche, if it's too good to be true it probably is. I'll pay a bit more thank you, to ensure its quality and reliability.

[Sausagebiscuit]

All 5 of mine work fine, were 1.3a compliant, and are used on a variety of devices from blu-ray to dvd to computer devices.

I'd rather risk $3 (eforcity has awesome customer service) than waste $40+ at bestbuy.

HDMI is digital, so either signal gets there or it doesn't. It is not like analog where signal degradation affects quality.

[stepyourgameup]

I have friends who swear that more expensive cables are better. Monoprice.com is AWESOME.

[Eludium-Q36]

I'd agree. Here's a confidence inspiring description for the Monoprice that you WON'T get from the one Rick is foolishly recommending from Amazon:

The latest revision for HDMI doubles the bandwidth of the original and has opened the door for a host of potential new advancements in Home Theater Audio/Video performance. New features such a ?Deep Color,? higher color gamut, and high resolution, multi-channel audio formats like Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio will make higher bandwidth demands than ever before. Category 2 testing ensures that the standard set by this new requirements are adhered to. Be ready for what the future has in store with our Monoprice HDMI 1.3a, Category 2 certified cables. These cables have been designed to meet the high bandwidth performance standards set by HDMI 1.3a and has passed stringent Category 2 testing. Monoprice cables are constructed to the highest quality with full triple layer shielding from end to end, strong, solid wire welds and the highest quality materials including high purity copper, gold plated connectors and tin plated conduits. ($3.56 + shipping. Yeh, I feel much better about this one.)

[rtallent2]

+1 on Monoprice. I went with them for several cables, including a 12-foot HDMI cable. Works great, fast shipping. It's like the B&H of cables.

[MadLyb]

Monoprice is simply the best for cables. I have been using for years with absolutely no issues.

[theosq]

I've gotten dud cables from Monoprice before.

So I don't really trust their quality control, but at least it only costs me $3.

You can often get Belkin or Monster branded cables on ebay for cheap. I'll pay a little more for known quality.

[Holris]

I have always had better cables and support from firefold.com. They always ship same day and I get my package in just 1-2 days. The firefold cable is 1.3b and not the lesser 1.3a so i wont have to worry about not getting the latest and greatest from someone else.

[Sam Papelbon]

depending on what kind of interference your particular set-up has to deal with, cables with better shielding could make a huge difference. but obviously not everyone has problems like that, so cheap cables can be perfectly fine.

[ArsFragica]

Nice item spotlight Rick, yeah, I bought one of these babies 3 weeks ago to hook up my Xbox 360 with my 50' plasma. 360 automatically upscaled everyinthg to 1080i (my 2 year old TV didn't support 1080p), but everything looked vastly amazing compared to the old tube TV that I used to play on. These HDMI cables work like a charm, have had them for a while and still working fine. 5 stars.

[troyoverton]

Does this cable come with a gold-plated fuse?

\inside for anyone who reads the works of other CNET blogs.
\\Yes, I realize that HDMI does not have an inline fuse.

[denis9834]

i think cnet never heard of monoprice

[rickbroida]

You know, what's weird about this is that the supplier keeps changing. One minute it's Eforcity, then it's Abacus, and so on. Not sure what's up with that. But fwiw, it does say "1.3b" in the product name, which I'm assuming means 1.3 support.

I find it interesting that people come out of the woodwork to pimp Monoprice on those occasions when I *don't* mention it. What, do they wash and wax your car with every purchase or something?

[One-Eared Gundark]

LOL. All Monoprice ever did for me was pull the weeds out of my garden. :-\

[stepyourgameup]

It is just an automatic association for me. Cheap cables = Monoprice.com. I have saved hundreds by buying their cables, and they all work flaulessly.

[MadLyb]

This is the way Amazon works. You link a product, not a specific vendor...and yes, it drives me nuts as well because I only buy from Amazon directly.

And people (including me) always mention Monoprice because they sell Tier one cables for basically the same price as these 'specials' you guys keep mentioning. Try one and you will realize that there is no better supplier of high quality, but inexpensive cables.

[trhoads82]

the cable just jumped to .70 while I was on the page.

[Sausagebiscuit]

dang, what a ripoff!! I mean about 50 cents more. What are these clowns thinking???? /sarcasm.

[j_a_s_p_e_r]

These cables raise an interesting dilemma... how to NOT call your friends that paid $50 per cable idiots. I mean how do you break the news.

[nate736259]

Don't call them an idiot for buying it, call the vendors "greedy" or some such for selling it. Blame it on anyone but them and you'll come out a hero. (Saved my Dad over $100 by telling him to take back the 2 HDMI's he'd picked up at Best Buy and replace them with the Eforcity deal.)

I personally own 3 of them and have gotten others to order 5 or so. As far as I know none of them have crapped out yet. (I've been using mine for about a year.)

[mogley2005]

This is what I don't get from all those people that claim that expensive cables such as Monster and monoprice are superior. The principle behind an HDMI cable is it sends a digital signal, 1's and 0's from one device to another. Based on that, how exactly can you have a BETTER cable? The only improvement would be either 1) sending more 1's and 0's across the cable, or 2) the quality of the actual cable, meaning it would be harder to break. I don't get why anyone would buy monster cables. On a side note, I used to work during college at the now defunct, Circuit City, which by the way is now back online as a web based business only, and I had to pedal the monster cables too...but honestly I never saw any reason for people to spend that money, didn't see any improvement over the store brand.

[aaul]

"expensive cables such as Monster and monoprice"

monoprice is just about the best place to go for consistently high quality cables for "el cheapo" prices...I think that people are asking why would anyone deal with amazon when monoprice has awesome products.

[adrianstovall]

While it's true that an HDMI cable is basically a high-speed serial cable (like USB or Cat-5/ethernet), there are ways that cables can be made better or worse.

Monster does some ridiculous things to prevent interference and make sure that you get a clean signal. triple shielding being one example (the reason their cables are thicker is because of the extra foil inside the cable.

That said, making sure that the inner wire pairs are twisted at the proper rate, that they are very close to being exactly equal in length, and making sure that the connections between the wires and the connectors are solid makes a big difference in whether high-bitrate signals are successfully transmitted (the longer the cable, the more important the details are).

Shielding *shouldn't* matter in most instances...unshielded twisted pair cabling is commonly used in gigabit ethernet connections, after all...but in noisy environments or with longer lengths of cable, you might need it.

I think I paid 15 bucks for the cables I bought (online...cheapcables.com, I think), and they're fine. $70 is ridiculous, and .70 is probably a little bit too cheap for me (unless they're .5 meter cables).

[MadLyb]

Monoprice expensive?

An extremely high quality 6' HDMI at Monoprice is $3.56 plus shipping. If that breaks your bank, then...well...wow.

[Sausagebiscuit]

adrianstovall: the signal is digital. either it gets there or not. there is no inbetween.

[lordmorgul]

"adrianstovall: the signal is digital. either it gets there or not. there is no inbetween."

Clearly you should read a little bit about this subject. There are plenty of 'inbetween' scenarios for digital signals traveling along a length of cable in an imperfect environment (READ: ALL CABLES CARRYING SIGNALS). There is no perfect digital signal in the real world -- this only exists in simulation.

Some issues that can arise: time it takes the signal to travel down the cable, whether all signals arrive at exactly the same time (those first two are not the same), whether interference changes some of the data, whether interference causes delays in the data. There are more.

Buying excessively expensive cables is dumb. Buying very poor quality cables will give you poor quality sound. This might be a cheap usable cable, I don't know since I don't have any of them. But just because a signal is digital does NOT guarantee that it 'either gets there or not'.

[Dan_DTC]

Monoprice.com. Nuff said.

[quasi888]

Well, I tried to purchase 8 cables for $2.00. Halfway through the checkout process, I discover that they want an additional $23.60 to ship it. Still a good deal, but I refuse to support such deception. No thanks.

[quasi888]

Actually, I recant my comment about deception. $2.98 shipping per item, as stated in above article.

[mnl1121]

Its true. Cheapo HDMI cables are just as good as the overpriced ones. Fact is that digital signals aren't really prone to react to interferance. Another good place to find all types of cables for cheap is Monoprice.com. I'm not affliated with them, I've just got an HDMI and audio optical cables from them for like $5 each.

[Sausagebiscuit]

yay for common sense. Like you said, the signal is digital. Either it gets to it's destination or it doesn't. There is no in between.

I think the author was trying more to point out that HDMI cables can be had for $3 than he was trying to promote any vendor in particular. Eforcity/Amazon just happened to be the one found at the time. Many other places exist of course.

[lordmorgul]

Noise and interference in digital signals exists. I won't be posting the same argument a hundred times as you people repeat this non-truth about what being digital means, but it is an over-simplification to say there is no inbetween (its frankly just wrong).

Hopefully noone is foolish enough to take comments here as truths without doing some reading on the subject.

[11001001]

lordmorgul is right, you can get noise and interference in digital signals. yes, its essentially a bunch of 1's and 0's, but interference can switch some of those 1's to 0's and vise versa. And you're still just sending an electrical signal through a piece of wire, so the laws of physics still apply, you're still subject to impedence and signal degredation over longer runs of cable.

now, i'm in no way advocating buying monster cable (i used to work at tweeter before it went bankrupt, i know what snake oil is), but i'd be suspicious of a 3 dollar cable, especially with larger, high quality displays that can actually show you the difference, and over longer cable runs.

Guys monoprice.com has the same exact price its .01 cent cheaper.. (don't advertise it in less its a lot cheaper) honestly your that cheap, look around outside i'm sure you'll find a penny, and 1.3a vs. 1.3b is pretty much the same (do a search, i did)... i brought 5 from here, one which i'm giving to a buddy for 5 bucks.. and the others to tvs, xbox & ps3 :) happy camper

[Sausagebiscuit]

Author was making a point that HDMI cables for $40+ were a rip off. This was not a plug for any vendor in particular. No one cares where you buy your stuff, as long as it isn't $40+ from retail stores.

[Holris]

I found them cheaper from a well known company. FireFold.com has them for 99 Cents and $1.87 shipping for total of $2.86. These are version 1.3b and just as good as the brand names.

http://www.firefold.com/HDMI-Cable-13b-30AWG-6-Foot-With-Gold-Plated-Connectors-w-FireFold-Logo-P4469C35.aspx

I won't ever buy a brand name again.

[rickbroida]

Nice find!

[Sausagebiscuit]

firefold.com is really good too. I vote for them.

[Jon34511]

http://www.itrimming.com/pothhdmh10f1.html

10 foot 1.3b M/M HDMI cable for $1.69 and free shipping, can't beat this.

[Jon34511]

Oh don't forget the coupon code HDMI10FT for ^

[Nova_Prospeck]

www.monoprice.com has been taking care of my cable needs for years.

[drewbyh]

monoprice.com is the way to go. Super high quality cables and crazy cheap.

[ducttape36]

congrats, this made it on digg!