Buying a new piece of electronics can be a daunting task for even the geekiest of people, but one thing that is almost always looked over…wires. We have all been there – after carrying that new hdtv or blu-ray player in the house and unpacking the box, we find that there are no cables included (or in the case of my Panasonic Blu-ray player, useless standard definition RCA cables placed in the box). In this situation, many head off to Best Buy or another “big-box” store due to the convenience, but I ask you – how much money is convenience worth?
A friend of mine used to work for Best Buy and after his first day warned me to never ever buy the cables there, explaining they were marked up more than I would even believe. The big box stores use a system called Loss-Leaders, where they lose money on certain products to get people through the door. Once in the door, they bait and switch and up-sell as much as possible. Wires are a perfect example of how they make their money back. Never. Ever. Buy. Cables. From. A. Store.
Let me introduce Monoprice.com. Monoprice is a manufacturer of all the little accessories needed to setup electronics that sell them at a wholesale. Because Monoprice skips the fancy and useless blister packaging and hologram labels promising “X-TREME SPEED” and offer a bulk ordering options for professional installers, they can cut the prices to their lowest without sacrificing any quality.
For an example, I was looking for an ethernet wire to stretch across the apartment. Best Buy offers a 50 foot “Rocketfish” ethernet cable for $36.54, while Monoprice offers a 75 foot cable for $4.57, a difference of $31.97. For that amount of money, I would expect an actual fish, maybe a halibut, with rockets attached to its fins. For the price of the “Rocketfish” 50 foot wire you can get 400 feet of ethernet cable on Monoprice. And want to know a “secret”? It is a wire, no matter what the fancy expensive packaging may promise. It is not going to work any better just because it costs more.
The most egregious product in the wire up-sell market is Monster Brand hdmi cables. I have seen countless people fall for the persuasive clerk who offers them the $99 THX certified Monster hdmi cables with their new HDTV. These cables offer such classy features as gold-plating and an owner’s manual (if you need an owner’s manual for how to use cables, maybe you should read a book instead of watching that new television).
Monster has an infamous reputation with the nerds of the world for their ridiculously overhyped products. Here’s a little Nerd 101, digital cables carry a digital signal, meaning ones and zeros, on and off, black and white – as long as the television is receiving these simple signals, the picture and sound will be clear. For nine out of ten people, any cable will work. Every time I see a person in the line ahead of me with a Monster cable, I want to hit them in the head with the box.
While a four foot Monster HDMI cable will set you back $99.99, a practically identical cable will cost $3.68 on Monoprice. That is a difference of $96.31. Given that Monoprice’s shipping usually has the order at my door in 2-3 days, I ask you… is three days of waiting and a piece of plastic packaging that will be thrown away worth $96.31?
At least with wires, it is obvious that companies like Monster and Best Buy prey upon their customers being ignorant to what they are buying. Save your well earned money with your new knowledge and promise me that you will never buy “full-price” wires again.
I couldn’t agree more – provided you are talking about strictly digital cables. There is no difference between the cheapos and Monster cables, as far as picture or sound quality is concerned, when using HDMI or other digital cables. There is a drastic difference when talking analog, however.
Anyone in the HiFi/audiophile community will tell you that what is true for digital cables is not at all true with analog. The potential to be ripped off with potential ‘snake-oil’ improvements in HiFi is even greater, but that is because there are things that can change sound dramatically.
When the equipment is high enough quality, changing anything can change the sound to a “trained” ear.
One more thing to note:
Buying cables from a big-box store is AWESOME with the employee discount. My brother works at a big-box store, and while I was home for Christmas, I got $100 worth of digital HDMI cables (only two actual cables) for about $8. His discount is cost + 6%. The mark-up on stuff like this is incredible – especially if you get the store-brand cables.
As for Best Buy (Walmart does this with food, too), knowing that Dynex and RocketFish are BOTH store-brand can make a huge difference. RocketFish is Best Buy’s “Premium” brand, while Dynex is the “Low-cost” brand, but they are both Best Buy companies. There is no difference in the manufacturing quality of a RocketFish product versus a Dynex product. Or at least not one significant enough to justify the price difference.
Caveat emptor
Good Lord! The last HDMI cable i got cost me 40 bucks!!! I could have gotten one for under 10 including shipping! Son of a…