Guspaz's pearls of wisdom

Just documenting them here before I lose them forever. More added as they come!

On Sabrent, Anker, and power adapters:

I've been quite happy with my Sabrent SSD, a field in which they've rapidly built themselves a good reputation, but when it comes to power adapters, I normally first look for Anker. If you need a 10-port charger, Anker has a 10-port charger that does 2.4A per port, shared for 12A total: https://us.anker.com/collections/chargers/products/a2133

It has PowerIQ so it should support full speed charging/power on anything you plug into it.

On high-speed HDMI cables and certification:

(NOTE: I'm going to use "HDMI 2.1" in this post, treat it as me saying "Ultra High Speed", meaning specifically 48 Gbps rated cables)

You can't use cat5e anything with HDMI 2.1, and there are no cheap yet effective solutions. The only way to do longer HDMI 2.1 runs is fiber optic, and those cables all cost a fortune.

I've been quite happy with Cable Matters' 15 meter (49.2 feet) HDMI 2.1 cable, which currently sells for $150 CAD.

HDMI 2.1 devices are very picky about cables, there are so many stories out there about people buying HDMI 2.1 cables and then not being able to do 4K120 over them because the cables aren't good enough. It's a major problem, especially for these fiber optic cables, and with HDMI 2.1, pretty much any cable longer than maybe 10-15 feet must be fiber optic to deliver the full 48 Gbps.

There are three things you should do when buying an HDMI 2.1 cable:

1) Only buy a cable that uses the specific wording "Ultra High Speed HDMI". Don't buy a cable that is labeled only as 4K or 8K or HDMI 2.1 or anything like that. If it doesn't specifically advertise "Ultra High Speed HDMI", ignore it.

2) Only buy certified Ultra High Speed cables. Make sure the cable is advertised as being certified. In the case of the Cable Matters ones, they both list "Certified" in the product entry, and advertise their certified status in the the marketing artwork on Amazon, and in the product description.

3) Once you get the cable, there will be an "Ultra High Speed" certification hologram and QR code on the box. Download the official "HDMI Cable Certification" app for your iPhone or Android phone and use it to validate the hologram. If the hologram is absent or does not pass verification, return the cable for a refund due to false advertising.

I think that if you follow these three steps, you can avoid the vast majority of issues with bad cables that fail to deliver actual 48 Gbps performance.