We know how you like your visuals. Whether it’s 8K and dripping in HDR, or slimmed down to HD for high refresh rate esports, modern game consoles can push out some serious eye candy. However, all too often the job traversing the space between TV and console is left to whatever snarled up bit of copper plated nickel is in the bottom of your drawer. PowerA is looking to fix that with the PowerA Ultra High Speed HDMI cable.
HDMI Cables
For anybody that might not have checked behind their monitor in the last decade, HDMI cables are a means to an end, transmitting digital audio and video data. These are probably the most common type of connector for modern TVs, Blu-ray players, DVD players, media streamers, and video game consoles, with many PC gamers utilizing Display Ports instead. The current commercial top end of this market is the HDMI 2.1 specification. It was released in December 2017 and includes significant changes compared to previous versions of the standard. One of the main features is support for faster refresh rates, which means that you can get better picture quality when gaming or watching movies on your TV. With support for 4K resolution at 120 frames per second, you’d be surprised how much difference a properly put together piece of wire can make.
Of Course, display cables suffer the perpetual power supply problem. The last picked and least well-regarded part of many setups both cabling and power supplies can be instrumental in keeping a build running smoothly, an unsung hero of your front room. So, with a drawer full of unidentified twisty bits, PowerA pack all sorts of specs into this new Ultra High Speed offering
Specifications
Cable: Ultra high Speed HDMI
HDMI Format: 2.1
Resolution: 8K @ 60HZ / 4k @ 120 Hz
Bandwidth: 48Gbps
Backward compatible with earlier HDMI technology
Length: 3m
Ratings: Cl3 In Wall
Audio: eARC 37Mbps
Officially licensed for PlayStation 5
Two-year limited warranty
10-foot (3 meter) length and included cable tie for ultimate setup flexibility
Build
What might seem like a rather unusual offshoot for the accessory manufacturer is, in essence, an effort to get gamers who have invested in the latest and greatest PlayStation platform and top of the line displays to push the boat out. PowerA has quite decidedly also gone the extra mile when piecing together this officially licensed product. It’s a rugged design with a solid set of what appears to be rugged molded PVC housing on either end, each clearly branded with the official PlayStation logo. Hidden in the housings, the connection pins seem to be gold plated too. We don’t have any breakdown of the product components either on the website or in the box, which is disappointing. However, given the specifications, markings on the cable, length, and certification it’s a fair bet that this is cable is built around a solid copper core twisted pair and probably comes with shielding, at least we really hope so based on the final size of this cable. Again, we don’t have any details on whether this is an active unit or not, but at 3m we’re going to assume that it is a passive unit based on the fact that an active unit might be overkill here.
Performance
The product website blurb notes that “Licensed products are built to the specs of each licensor to ensure the quality meets their requirements.” Therefore, we’d expect this to at least be able to support a PlayStation 5 at full throttle and the HDMI certification seems to support this. For those of you wondering, you can check the authenticity of a cable’s claims by scanning the barcode on the front of the packaging, via HDMI.ORG
In our case, that means 48Gbps and HDMI 2.1 compliant standards. To test this we took three typical scenarios and cranked things up all the way. We plugged our own PS5 to a Gigabyte M32Q, an AOC AG324UX, and a Samsung U8000 TV. While only one of these test devices could clock up a full 4K at 120Hz, with the others making concessions, this range of devices allowed us to try out the PowerA Ultra High Speed HDMI cable at 4K, QHD, and FHD at both 120Hz and 60Hz using a PS5 and our own test PC. On the PlayStation 5, We ran this through DIRT 5, Warframe, and Fortnite with both 4K and 120Hz modes turned on where available and the results were pretty much as expected. That utterly understated bombshell says everything you need to know. On both our PC picks and PlayStation games, and even when observed using slow motion footage, the output was crisp, tear free, and there was no interference. Additionally, the on board OSDs in both the Gigabyte M32Q and AOC AG324UX confirmed that the cable was carrying the advertised speeds and resolution. Our TV test also gave us an opportunity to test the eARC connection for on board audio. While we haven’t got a fully kitted Dolby home theatre system, this cable works without issue when pumping more limited stereo soundscapes and is fully rated to carry uncompressed Dolby 7.1 signals. Whether you’ll have that in place for a console, is a different matter. While we don’t have thousands of dolalrs of cable test equipment, i can say that we simply observed this working the way it is expected to.
Conclusions
There have already been scenarios where reviewers hasten to add imperceptible picture quality difference or deeper gamut with a high cost cable, but this seems somewhat misleading. A working as intended HDMI 2.1 Ultra High Speed cable is not going to give a better image quality over another. A passive piece of copper will not make your picture any clearer, but it will allow you to carry every ounce of a PlayStation 5’s processing power and 3D audio over to your display of choice. Are you still stuck with an old spare HDMI cable or simply want to experience everything that the PlayStation 5 has to offer? The PowerA Ultra High Speed HDMI cable is an easy buy that you can be certain will bring the best of the PlayStation 5 to your eyeballs. You can find out more and grab your own over at the official PowerA website now.
