Investing in the Best HDMI Switch is Important

These days, your TV is more than just your TV. It’s become a vessel through which you can enjoy every morsel that the world of entertainment has to offer. Even the way you consume television itself is vastly different than it used to be. Chances are you’re not sitting in front of the TV, flipping channels, hoping to land on something mildly interesting. You’ve plugged in your Apple TV or Roku and stream your favorite shows instantly. The one thing all of these entertainment options have in common is the HDMI cable, which hooks them into your television. But with all of these entertainment options, you’re liable to run out of HDMI ports. That’s why you need an HDMI switch.

First of all, in case you don’t know, the HDMI cable is the cable required to plug in any high-definition device into your television – other than the power outlet. It fits snuggly into one of your HD television’s HDMI ports. If you remember the days before HD TVs, the HDMI cable was preceded by those red, white and yellow RCA cables that would always get tangled up. A problem that many entertainment connoisseurs come across is the unfortunate fact that most TVs only have two HDMI ports. If you have a Blu-ray player and a Nintendo Switch, you’re already out of room on the average television. This means you’ll be in a perpetual state of plugging and unplugging, depending on what you want to access. An HDMI switch does away with the nuisance of plugging and unplugging by providing extra HDMI ports. It comes with its own HDMI cable, which needs to be plugged in to one of the existing ports on your television. After that, you’ll probably have more HDMI ports than you even need. Having as many HDMI ports as possible is increasingly becoming a necessity, as the projected numbers for 2021 have the average American with 13 internet-connected devices. Not all of those will be connected to your television, such as your phone, but many of them will be.

Even though you might have never heard of an HDMI switch before, they’re not terribly hard to find. They can be found at your local electronic store, probably in the section that stores the HDMI cables. Best Buy or Fry’s will probably be your best bet, but you might be able to find them at Walmart or Target. Of course, in the digital age, shopping online might be the easiest way to find HDMI switches. Next time you’re buying a new dog toy or a book on Amazon, it’s incredibly easy to toss an HDMI switch in your cart. They have plenty of switches available, as do the sites of Best Buy and Fry’s. Shopping online will also allow you to easily compare and contrast models, without your ear being commandeered by a salesperson. It should be noted that Amazon’s selection of switches is much cheaper than Best Buy’s selection. This isn’t due to Amazon offering the same model for less, but, rather, offering cheaper models altogether. Best Buy’s online selection is for very high-end models that run for hundreds of dollars, as opposed to Amazon’s 10 to 50-dollar models. As with most cheaper electronics, they might work as well as the more expensive models, but their lifespan is likely to be much shorter.

Like any modern-day electronics, there’s a wealth of choices when it comes to buying an HDMI switch. There’s expensive models, cheap models, new models and old models. A layman – or even an expert – could easily end up confused and purchase a shoddy product. To make sure that doesn’t happen, here’s some of the best HDMI switches on the market.

The GANA 3, in keeping with its name, offers three additional HDMI ports – two, actually, because it needs to be plugged in to one of your existing ports. This switch also has the ability to funnel 4K devices, such as PS4 Pro or a 4K Blu-ray player, as well as 3D. In terms of HD audio, this device works with LPCM, Dolby AC3, DTS 7.1 and Direct Stream Digital. The GANA 3 also happens to be one of the cheapest options for HDMI switches, coming in at a cool $9.99. The cheap price might allude to a less effective product, but it’s good enough to garner the “Amazon’s Choice” label, which indicates a highly-rated, well-priced product.