Manufacturer: RedMere
Written by: Ethan Nixon

RedMere sent me two HDMI cables to review, and I was a little taken aback with the request, since I have never reviewed an HDMI cable before. The company RedMere makes the individual chips that lay inside most company’s thin HDMI cables, like Monster and Vizio. Naturally, they sent me an ultra-thin HDMI cable, one HDMI-to-HDMI and another Mini HDMI-to-HDMI.

I don’t have a room full of sophisticated home theater equipment, but I know two places that do: Best Buy and my friend’s house. First stop was Best Buy, since I used to work there. I walked right in to the Magnolia department, plugged the HDMI-to-HDMI ultra-thin cable from a Samsung BD6700 to a 55D8000. The picture quality was just as good as the sub-$300 cable they were using, but three times as thin, and twice as long. Next, I popped in Resident Evil: Afterlife, to test the 3D capabilities. I was actually surprised to see no trouble at all, and watched about 5-10 minutes of it.

Next stop was my buddy’s house. He owns a Panasonic 58VT25, in my opinion one of the best TVs you could buy last year. He also has a Denon AVR4810 receiver with some fantastic Definitive Technology speakers; overall about a $10k room. Regardless, I marched in with my two ultra-thin cables to test the quality on his TV and receiver. Once again, the HDMI-to-HDMI was just as good as the expensive cables he was using, but allowed me to route the cable through his furniture much easier than their stiff cables. He was a bit upset to see how much cleaner his setup could be with these cables.

I didn’t have anything that directly took a Mini HDMI cable, so I borrowed my friend’s Asus Transformer tablet. Fortunately he had a full 1080p movie loaded up to test, which was Sucker Punch. It was encoded in an MKV container, and played with Dice (paid app). Just like the full-sized HDMI cable, the Mini HDMI proved to be just as good. Unfortunately I didn’t have any 3D devices to test the cable with, but the specifications are the same as the full HDMI cable, and that one had no issues supporting 3D.

Honestly, I had low expectations for these cables, since they were so thin. Most HDMI cables are bulky, stiff, and quite awkward to work with. These ultra-thin cables make cable management a dream. Routing them through furniture, around equipment, and taping them to walls proved to be an easy task with the flexibility of the cables.

Overall, the cables were fantastic. I will never look at a full-sized HDMI cable again, because there is no gain. Sure, you may pay a little more for the ultra-thin ones, but it’s money well worth it, especially since the HDMI standard will be around for a while. The cables, being 1.4a, will support 3D and 4K playback for future scalability. I just wish there were ultra-thin cables like these for DVI, VGA, and Ethernet, so my computer setup can share the awesomeness of cable management!

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