An HDMI cable is an HDMI cable, right? Wrong! HDMI has been around forever at this point and there have been so many revisions and updates. Which is great for the advancement of video and audio technology, but not so great for ensuring you have the right cables to get the picture quality you need.

Why it’s easy to end up with the wrong HDMI cable

Don’t worry, it’s not your fault

The simple fact is that most HDMI cables just look the same. Manufacturers change the colors, or sheathing, but if you have two random cables in front of you, there’s usually no way to just tell at a glance. The connector itself has remained completely unchanged, so a cable from 2010 will plug into a TV from 2025, and vice versa.

This is how older cables get recycled into newer setups. This happened to me when I upgraded from a 60Hz 4K TV to a 120Hz 4K OLED. It was too much trouble to open up the trunking and replace the cables, but little did I know that my cables that were fine before couldn’t handle my new OLED TV’s demands!

It also doesn’t help that cable retailers have a nasty tendency to use vague terms like “4K ready” and “high performance”. Is that 4K at 30Hz? High performance compared to what? If you’re lucky the cable has its actual specification printed somewhere on the connector or cable sleeve, if not then you better hope you didn’t throw away the box, or you’re going to have to do some sleuthing.

How HDMI versions translate into cable types

Lots of numbers, lots of confusion

With each major revision of HDMI–1.4,2.0,2.1—the main improvement was a leap in bandwidth. With HDMI 1.4 we got enough bandwidth for 4K, but only at 30Hz. Plenty for a movie or TV show, which don’t exceed that number, but not useful for modern console gaming or PC use. With HDMI 2.0 we got 4K60Hz and mainstream HDR support. HDMI 2.1 made the biggest jump yet, enabling 4K120, 8K, VRR, ALLM, and enhanced audio features like eARC.

The problem is that the folks behind HDMI have decided to use some very unhelpful names:

• High Speed HDMI: Good for 1080p and basic 4K30
• Premium High Speed HDMI: 4K60 with HDR
• Ultra High Speed HDMI: 4K120, 8K, VRR, and eARC
• Ultra96 HDMI: Offers 96Gbps of bandwidth and allows for all the features of HDMI 2.2 such as uncompressed full chroma formats.

There are older HDMI standards such as “Standard”, but this is only good for 720p or lower-grade 1080 standards, and you’d be lucky to even encounter such a cable. You can visit the official HDMI website to see the various official badges that these cables need to have on their packaging.

Symptoms that your HDMI cable is holding your setup back

Have you noticed any of these problems?

Credit: Sydney Louw Butler/How-To Geek / Hagerty Media

HDMI is backward compatible, so there’s never an issue with using a newer cable with an older system, but the reverse isn’t true. If the cable you’re using can’t provide the bandwidth needed, there are a few obvious and no-so-obvious symptoms.

• You can’t reach the resolution or refresh rate your display supports. This is true for both monitors and TVs. For example, your TV shows “4K 30Hz” when you plug in your gaming console.
• When you want to activate features like VRR or ALLM they are unavailable on consoles like PS5, Xbox Series X, or a gaming PC.
• Audio quality isn’t as high as expected, or features like eARC don’t work.
• Flickering, random black screens, or HDMI handshake failures.

If your HDMI cables work fine at lower settings, but not at higher settings you know your display and source device support, it’s probably a cable with specs too low to do the job.

How to identify what HDMI cable you actually have

It can be a bit of a guessing game

How can you know what cable you’re looking at before you actually plug it in somewhere annoying to take out again if it’s wrong? the first place to check is the cable sleeve or connector housing. There’s often an imprint that will say “Ultra High Speed” or one of the other official designations. If it doesn’t say anything anywhere, there’s a good chance the cable is older than modern HDMI certification.

There may also be a tiny QR code imprinted on the connector itself, which you can use to check the certification on newer cables. If you still have the packaging, that’s the most obvious way to suss them out.

You may need a new cable

If you simply can’t tell, just test the cable, but don’t install it permanently until you’re sure it works as required. Don’t forget that if you have any intermediate devices that pass HDMI through them, they also need to comply with the higher standards or your HDMI signal will be downgraded to whatever’s the lowest denominator in the chain. Once you’ve identified your cables, consider labeling them.

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