Rocketfish™ - 4-Input 8K Ultra High Speed HDMI 2.1 Switch - Black

The Rocketfish HDMI switch is great! It is compact, it is light, and works perfectly. I like that it comes with 4 Inputs, greatly increasing my TVs input capacity. It comes with a small remote that includes a battery. The remote is simple, containing four numbered buttons corresponding with the input number. The switch is also wall mountable, and it comes with thick double sided tape to anchor it to the surface and prevent it from sliding. The HDMI ports are nicely and evenly spaced so as to not feel like the back is too crowded. A red light indicator in front of the switch shows you what input is currently active. The switch is able to output an 8K resolution, although I only tested out to 4K and it works perfect. It comes with a USC charging cable with a block. The switching happens almost instantly, so no big delay like old, outdated switches. There is also a button on the device to switch it there in case you misplace your remote. Overall, I highly recommend this switch. It makes it so easy to use multiple devices in an input limited TV.

I was happy to find this switch. We were getting tired of cable swapping. So this was just what we needed. Casual gaming with our game console running through the switch doesn’t seem to suffer any lag. And switching between inputs on the switch is easy with the included remote control. I was hoping it would auto switch if only one of the attached devices is powered on, but it doesn’t seem too. This is not a showstopper though. Since the remote works fine and the box has an input select button on the front panel just in case we misplace the remote. The switch is small and easily fits next to my TV. The remote is simple with a power button and four numbered buttons to select the desired input. It uses (and comes with one installed) a small button type battery that is readily available. Besides the remote, the switch comes with a small power block and USB A to USB C cable to power the switch. It also comes with instructions and a couple of pads as additional feet. While I don’t have an 8K TV to test this with, it works great with my 4K TV. Plus, when I eventually upgrade to 8K, I’m ready.

I got this switch because my short-throw home theater projector only has 1 input HDMI, as the second one is used by my soundbar for audio output. This switch allows me to have multiple source devices connected to it without me having to constantly unplug and plug in cables. It is plug-and-play, sets up quickly, and intuitive to use. The device comes with a USB-C cable and wall adapter for power and two double-sided stickers, if you want to fix it in place. There are also rubber feet on the bottom to prevent sliding and keyhole ports for wall mounting. The switch has a ‘select’ button on the front as well as LED indicators for power and the four inputs. When switching inputs, the display will go blank and its takes 4-8 seconds for the new source video to show up. In addition to changing the input, long pressing the ‘select’ button twice allows you to toggle on or off auto-switch mode. While off by default, when enabled, auto-switch will change to any new HDMI source when it is connected and powered on and swap to the next available connected input if the current input is unplugged or turned off, and I found that this feature works exactly as expected. The unit also comes with a remote that has the numbers 1 through 4 on it for selecting the corresponding input source; just note that the remote cannot toggle auto-switch mode and runs on a CR2025 coin cell battery. The switch supports up to 8K video input/output (7680x4320 @ 60Hz, or 4K @ 120Hz), Dolby Vision, HLG, HDR10, and HDR10+, and HDMI versions 2.3, 2.2, and 1.4 with up to 40 Gbps bandwidth (10 Gbps per lane). For 8K resolution, the HDMI cable must be HDMI 2.1 and no longer than 10ft to prevent signal degradation. It also passes through audio just fine but doesn’t perform audio extraction or support mixing multiple inputs for split-screen viewing. While my highest resolution device is currently only 4K, the video and audio quality was just as clear and crisp as directly connecting to the projector without any noticeable transmission lag. Now I can have my FireTV for streaming, gaming consoles, and laptop all connected to the projector simultaneously and switch between them at the press of a button. I'll also be ready for higher resolution devices in the future when upgrading to 8K.

With so many things in life now requiring a screen, it's tough to set it all up without having your house or office overrun with tv's and monitors. It's even tougher when you have limited space to do it all. That's the situation I have. 3 people in a small house where one works from home half the time, one has school homework assignments, one has multiple jobs working from all, and all who game and stream. Luckily, we're not all doing those things at the same time, that means we can share workspaces, somewhat at least. Myself, I'm in software development as well as being a content creator, gamer, streamer and more. I develop on a linux machine, create content with a macbook, and game with a pc. I have hubs to connect most things, but switching between tasks often means still having to move plugs and cables around. This can be a hassle to where I try to do things in blocks of time to avoid that hassle. That is where this switch comes in. It's not the first switch i've tried, but I haven't had the best experiences with some of them previously. Especially when working with a macbook, which can be finicky about how it's connected to displays. This Rocketfish one though is a different story. Setting it up was pretty much just plug and play. I unboxed it, chose the monitor I wanted to use for switching, plugged its hdmi cable in to the output, plugged the various hdmi cables from my devices to the inputs, and plugged the ac adapter in and voila, it was all working. Within minutes I was switching what was being displayed on my monitor with a click of a button. Even better is the remote which has a button for each input. The remote is a bigger feature than you'd think to have. Since each input has its own button, there's no cycling through the inputs a button press at a time. Just click the one you want and go right to it. And because I didn't have to reach over to the switch itself, I could set it up in a spot where it doesn't make a cluttered mess, regardless of whether it made reaching it physically tougher or not. The biggest concern with switches like this though is how well it transfers the signal to fully make use of higher resolution monitors. I'm happy to report this one does what it says and handles high resolution with ease. In my case, I set it up to work with my 32" 4K monitor, and achieved full resolution from all my devices, macbook and pc gaming included. Auto-switch mode is a nice feature also. This automatically switches to a new input, or switches back to the next connected input when the active one is turned off or disconnected. You can disable this mode too if you want, and if there's one negative I have with this switch, it's the process for enabling/disabling auto-switch mode. It can only be done on the main switch by pressing and holding a button in a specific way and sequence. It would have been much better if rocketfish added a button to the remote to do this. It's not that big of a deal and I admit is a bit nit-picky, but it really is the only negative I could find. To wrap this up, I highly recommend this switch for anyone needing to share a monitor between 2 to 4 devices. It makes life a lot easier, especially if the monitor is being shared between multiple people too.

This HDMI input switcher is basically future proof. It supports HDMI input at 40 GBPS data transfer rate and compatible with resolution up to 8K at 60 HZ resolution. In other words, should 8K TV becomes significantly cheaper in the near future, this HDMI input switcher will not become obsolete. And that is a good product value proposition. The input switcher supports HDMI cable version 1.4 up to 2.3. It supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR as well as DTS HD, Dolby Truee HD lossless digital audio. There are 4 HDMI input ports so there’s enough open ports for my game console, streaming device, and Bluray player. It comes with a remote control to switch input swiftly and the included AC adapter is connected through a 6 feet USB to USB-C cable, which is long enough for my use. I use the input switcher to manage HDMI connection to my UST projector, which sadly only has 2 HDMI ports that are all used up. It works great and all my devices’ HDMI input needs are all covered. Since it works basically as an HDMI port extender, I find it more convenient to manage HDMI connection through a switcher like this one rather than doing it from the HDMI ports at the back of the projector.