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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2024
Okay so i'll be completely honest here, buying cat 8 cables has not made any noticeable difference whatsoever in terms of my connection speeds. Do note that my internet connection is relatively higher than the average, but I'm about to tell you why that's irrelevant.
There's been discussion among some folks in the networking community that will generally suggest to the average home user that you do not need cat-8 cables, and they are absolutely right! We as consumers have only recently been able to purchase Wi-Fi 7 networking equipment. If you don't know what that really means, it's just that those are the top of the line, best of the best, types of networking equipment that are on the commercial market right now, and I doubt many people reading this have even upgraded their router to a Wi-Fi 7 one. I myself am only still using Wi-Fi 6. Even that is slightly overkill for the average user.
Before I explain to you why you should still buy cat-8 cables going forward, I will first state the one and only exception to this rule: If you're running ancient hardware on an ancient operating system that might produce some compatibility issues, as those machines may not know how to handle faster speeds. But this is still just picking at straws, as we all know that the biggest bottleneck in our setups are the ISP's themselves.
Now, why should you still be being cat-8 cables, even though you don't explicitly require them, yet? The biggest reason is that if you look at the prices of cat-7, cat-6, and cat-6e cables on this site, you will find they cost the exact same price as the cat-8 ones. This will probably not be the case if you're buying cables through a big-box electronics store (don't EVER buy cables or adapters offline, just don't).
Going even further than the price point, opting for these cables now even though it may be "overkill," is still a good idea. This is because you are future proofing your network, so when that time inevitably comes when you need to upgrade any or all of your computer hardware, you will have one less thing that needs to be implemented.
To go even farther out of left-field, there's the real possibility that inflation might even make these cables more expensive than they are currently. This does mean you need to throw all your ethernet cables out now, especially if they are still working. BUT, when the situation comes up where you need another one for any reason going forward, just buy the cat-8's. They cost the same and it's likely you may have already observed this, but for anyone questioning if there's a specific one they need right now, there answer is it really doesn't matter. Therefore, as the market currently stands, paying the same price for the newer version just makes sense. They're just slightly different implementations of wiring.
There's been discussion among some folks in the networking community that will generally suggest to the average home user that you do not need cat-8 cables, and they are absolutely right! We as consumers have only recently been able to purchase Wi-Fi 7 networking equipment. If you don't know what that really means, it's just that those are the top of the line, best of the best, types of networking equipment that are on the commercial market right now, and I doubt many people reading this have even upgraded their router to a Wi-Fi 7 one. I myself am only still using Wi-Fi 6. Even that is slightly overkill for the average user.
Before I explain to you why you should still buy cat-8 cables going forward, I will first state the one and only exception to this rule: If you're running ancient hardware on an ancient operating system that might produce some compatibility issues, as those machines may not know how to handle faster speeds. But this is still just picking at straws, as we all know that the biggest bottleneck in our setups are the ISP's themselves.
Now, why should you still be being cat-8 cables, even though you don't explicitly require them, yet? The biggest reason is that if you look at the prices of cat-7, cat-6, and cat-6e cables on this site, you will find they cost the exact same price as the cat-8 ones. This will probably not be the case if you're buying cables through a big-box electronics store (don't EVER buy cables or adapters offline, just don't).
Going even further than the price point, opting for these cables now even though it may be "overkill," is still a good idea. This is because you are future proofing your network, so when that time inevitably comes when you need to upgrade any or all of your computer hardware, you will have one less thing that needs to be implemented.
To go even farther out of left-field, there's the real possibility that inflation might even make these cables more expensive than they are currently. This does mean you need to throw all your ethernet cables out now, especially if they are still working. BUT, when the situation comes up where you need another one for any reason going forward, just buy the cat-8's. They cost the same and it's likely you may have already observed this, but for anyone questioning if there's a specific one they need right now, there answer is it really doesn't matter. Therefore, as the market currently stands, paying the same price for the newer version just makes sense. They're just slightly different implementations of wiring.
