CES 2025: Do You Really Need a New HDMI 2.2 Cable?
The HDMI forum is back in business. At CES 2025, the organization announced a completely new HDMI standard: HDMI 2.2. This new specification is a huge step up from HDMI 2.1 and has some impressive features. But do you really need to plan to upgrade your HDMI configuration? Spoiler: definitely not.
What’s new in HDMI 2.2
HDMI 2.1, released by the HDMI Forum seven years ago, has a bandwidth of 48 Gbps and supports 4K at 120 Hz and 10K at 60 Hz outputs. This latest HDMI standard doubles that bandwidth to 96 Gbps and supports 4K at 480 Hz, 8K at 240 Hz and 10K at 120 Hz (as shown in the official photo below). These higher resolutions and refresh rates are especially useful for the latest augmented reality, mixed reality, spatial reality, and light-field displays, but likely won’t be needed for most consumer products just yet.
HDMI 2.2 also supports Latency Indication Protocol (LIP), which can help improve audio and video synchronization in configurations that include multiple connected devices.
New HDMI 2.2 cables will have the Ultra96 badge (since HDMI cables weren’t confusing enough yet). With this update, the physical connector still remains the same shape and size: users will be able to confirm that they are indeed using a high-bandwidth cable using a QR code on Ultra96-branded cables.
Do you need HDMI 2.2?
With all this in mind, you really don’t need to rush into purchasing an HDMI 2.2 cable. This specification won’t be available to manufacturers until mid-2025, and even then we might not see devices supporting HDMI 2.2 connections until next year. Of course, HDMI 2.2 is backwards compatible with HDMI 2.1, so you can use these cables with existing devices, but if you don’t have a 10K TV (you probably don’t), you can use cables you already use.
So no, you don’t need to rush out and buy an HDMI 2.2 cable when it starts shipping later this year. Knowing how things stand, we’ll have to wait a couple of years before all that extra bandwidth turns into anything useful.