Penguin United–a maker of high quality gaming accessories–sent Blast magazine a sample of their premium and standard component cables for the Nintendo Wii. To test them out, we connected them to three different televisions: one that doesn’t support HD, one that was 64” and one that was about 32″.

We flipped back and forth between the cables on the TVs to see the differences between the original cables, the standard component cables from Penguin Computing, and the Premium Component cables.

Both component cables showed a sharper image and better colors. We couldn’t tell much of a difference between the premium and the standard, though. There may be a slight difference between them if you set up two televisions next to each other and compare the two, but it wasn’t enough to catch our attention.

On the older style television without High Definition support, the cables produced better, brighter colors. On the two High Definition televisions, though, and when switched to 480P mode, they made the images sharper. We found that in many Wii games, however, the images were more blocky.

When using the standard cables, the edges of characters were blurred from the transport, but with the High Definition, the characters had rough edges; it looked more like an N64 or a Playstation game. This may not be desirable to some people.

Another benefit to some of the component cables is that many of them are gold-plated. The gold plating will mostly benefit people who keep their systems for a long time. Copper–though a better conductor than Gold–will corrode over time, as will the signal’s clarity. Gold will not rust or corrode though, so you’ll get the same signal quality ten years from now as you have today. Most of the cables from Penguin Computing are gold-plated, so you can shop from there and expect their cables to last.

Overall, it depends on the personal preference of gamers, since the cables will make some games look blockier, but will give other better colors and higher resolutions. On the Blast magazine tech scoreboard, these component cables a seven out of ten.

Blast Magazine staff reporter David Yue contributed to this report.

About The Author

Bradley Ouellette is a Blast staff writer who's been with us since the bitter beginnings when we were an attic and basement operation on Mission Hill.

Leave a Reply