$1,000 HDMI Cable!? - Useless Tech Over $100 Ep. 1

I made a joke on my most recent episode of handy tech under a hundred where I said all the items will be priced at over a hundred dollars and none of them are going to be useful so we're going to kick things off then with the Apple watch which I'm just kidding it's the usual thing and then literally hundreds of you were clearly full of disappoint I mean I can't think of another reason to dislike that video so I decided to follow up with a new segment devoted to legitimately crappy stuff that costs more than $100 welcome to useless tech over a hundred episode one featuring the wire world star late platinum 7 a one thousand dollar HDMI cable cooller masters new master keys Pro L and Pro s keyboards provide sixteen point seven million color RGB backlighting genuine Cherry MX switches and an industry-leading ARM Cortex processor learn more on the link in the video description so why did I spend this kind of money on a cable because while it's all fine and good to know that premium cables are pure nonsense for digital connections because the internet said so I felt like before taking shots at wire world specifically or the premium cable industry in general I owed it to my viewers and to myself given that I'm the proud owner of this cable to at least try it with an open mind and give them a chance to WoW me let's start then with wire world side of the story at the entry level you're already getting double the number of signal conductors they call this their symmetric on design versus a round HDMI cable that has a mere 12 signal conductors you're getting there HD grip plug including silver with gold-plated contacts which is very nice feeling by the way and the conductor used is 28 gauge ofc or oxygen-free copper it's of debatable importance for audio-visual applications given its identical conductivity to regular copper but hey it costs more so at least they're taking your money and spending it on more expensive materials to build the cable you're buying rather than just lighting their cigars with it that's somewhat noble as you step up to the chroma series you get thicker gauge wires and what amazing visual clarity is this if the cable I mean does it come with a pair of reading glasses so I can see it better maybe this one is just about the colors because it does say write on the island seven cable description that you can enjoy all their words not mine of the performance benefits with the entry level one but that doesn't prevent the higher end ones from existing - moving on the ultraviolet series now you're getting silver-plated ofc conductors which will provide you with an immediate improvement to your listening and viewing experience apparently but probably not as much as the Starlight 7 which increases wire gauge to 23 aw gee and adds another eight silver-plated ofc conductors in wire world's patented DNA helix design that twists the conductors around each other I mean hey if it's good enough for DNA it's good enough to 4x the number of efficient paths for electromagnetic energy right the silver star light 7 adds a thicker layer of silver over the copper cables and promises vibrant color and exquisite sound quality but I mean come on if you're going to get the silver star light 7 you might as well spring for the Big Kahuna the Platinum star light 7 includes all the benefits of the previously mentioned designs but ops use carbon-fiber plugins and solid silver conductors in place of copper which sounds like you're getting a killer value I mean effectively 24 meters of silver wire in this one that is until you actually look up the cost of 23 gauge silver wire and realize that the bond cost of this entire package that you receive including the admittedly attractive carrying case and printed signed certificate of authenticity is around a hundred US dollars and change but if everything in life was as simple as covering the Bill of Materials cost then we'd all be paying 4 to 6 bucks for dinner at a fancy restaurant so labor and patented technologies assuming they deliver a tangible value do justify spending more sometimes which leads me finally to my test I sat down in front of my curved 4k OLED TV from LG tried first the random cable that I stole from the office then a wire world 1 and it did not observe any difference in image or sound quality but then it hit me I only have one wire world cable that means that between my computer and the receiver I'm still using a standard quality cable effectively bottlenecking the data flow so I needed a new test there are a couple of situations where higher quality cables have made a difference for me in the past long runs where read mirror hdmi cables have saved my buns and high refresh rate DisplayPort monitors wear flaky cables have caused intermittent flanking issues since I wasn't about to spend another $9,000 to test long-distance I settled on the ladder for my first test I used the cheapest steno bundled in the monitor box one meter cable I could find truly horrendous and I managed to successfully overclocked the 50 Hertz 3440 by 1440 ultra wide display 261 Hertz a fair result but nothing amazing so I followed that up then with a $10 or so retail cable that I purchased a while back and no improvement 61 Hertz looks like if it works it works at least four basic cables so finally then and with a lot more anticipation than I actually expected I plugged in the Platinum starlight seven silver cable and was disappointed 61 Hertz I was actually rooting for it after reading so much about how they're designing materials improved signal integrity which I guess leads us to the conclusion while I'm sure that someone will be happy to point out some kind of a flaw in my testing methodology like that the HDMI ports on my video card or the processor in my monitor might be bottlenecking this magnificent cable but here's a newsflash for you HDMI ports are not like cars where everyone has to have a steering wheel and an engine but can pretty much find their own way to roll it down the road they are built according to a rigid standard to ensure interoperability and support for all the cool features like stereo 3d deep color multi-channel audio ethernet 4k etc etc etc and if the processor in a 1440p 100 Hertz monitor and an nvidia video card in this case a gtx titan X remember Nvidia is one of the only devices that I'm aware of that offers manufacturer supported display link overclocking can't take advantage of this cable the only conclusion that I can draw is that nothing can I didn't break out an oscilloscope or anything like that that would've been super cool and may have actually revealed the 6% conductivity improvement between solid copper and solid silver but what I wanted to know was whether it may say real difference even a small 162 Hertz would have been good enough to a person rather than a machine and the answer is No speaking of whatever I was talking about on that day I recorded this video when I was supposed to be in the office master opcom if you're not familiar with math drop guys it's the site that takes it but deals that their community requests and goes to the manufacturers or the authorized distributors and sources them not just sources them but at a better price and the more people buy the better it gets but math drop does more than just that these days in fact they've started doing some exclusive deals including the fostex th - x00 headphones that i refute a little while ago back there but this is different this time this is the th - x00 with a different type of wood gun is the mahogany and in is the Purple Heart or Pelle - gene wood which basically gives it a darker aesthetic and also slightly changes the sound signature giving it a little bit less kick in the lows but a little bit more clarity in the highs according to mascot I haven't actually listened to these personally they are available for 449 on mass drop they have already reached the lowest drop and they've sold over 1,100 pairs so far but that doesn't mean that you can just wait around because there's only 2000 available and just a couple of days left in the drop so check out the deal over at draw it ups slash Linus we've got that linked in the video description thanks for watching guys if you hated this video hit the dislike button but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon don't buy these cables by the way please buy a cool shirt like this one or with a direct monthly contribution through our community forum which is linked in the video description now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering whom what should I watch next well maybe check out channel super fun where we've got this video over there and I guarantee you is worth watching that's assuming that you haven't already

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 7,403,071

Rating: 4.8106518 out of 5

Keywords: $1000, hdmi, cable, media, interface, review, unboxing, overview, useless, tech, overpriced, tv, gaming, ps4, xbox one

Id: Zgy5fX-VPCs

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 30 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/marpro15]

Console peasants be like: "This cable is gonna upscale my 792p30^ish fps gameplay to 4k60fps flawlessly on my 99" tv"

[u/[deleted]]

do you need an expensive cable?
the short answer : no
long answer : no, but some can have better build quality if you need to move them around a lot like at lan parties.

[u/barracuda415]

https://i.imgur.com/Xw22ahs.gifv

The target audience is rich people that are impressed by technobabble and have zero understanding of digital signal processing. Those who seriously buy it will probably still be happy, thanks to the placebo effect.

[u/ReptileDoMath]

Did it come with virus protection? My house always has a lot of virus :P

[u/[deleted]]

That's basically robbery.

[u/toddybody]

damn you Linus, getting me to watch such a stupid video...with interest.

[u/Sonicator]

Why am I not the least bit surprised by the result...

[u/ThisIsDK]

Doesn't even come with an antivirus. I bought one of these, and now my TV is infected.

[u/Whats_logout]

Kinda related question here, if i get a higher quality dvi cable would i be able to oc my qnix monitor higher?