 It's not always possible to run an HDMI cable directly from your source device to your TV. Sometimes it might have to pass through a sound bar or an AV receiver, or even a capture device if you're into game streaming. Now some of those devices are advertised as having zero latency, meaning that in theory, your gaming experience will be exactly as responsive as if you were connected to your TV directly. But others, like this AV receiver, make no mention of latency whatsoever. So are devices like this, or this, or this, silently damaging your gaming experience? In this video, sponsored by Vizio, we'll be finding out once and for all. latency or input lag is the amount of time it takes between when we physically click a button or move the mouse to seeing the action on the screen. And when this latency is really high, it can significantly delay your reaction to, let's say, an enemy or a sharp turn in the road. And as we found in our investigation in 2019, it is not possible to run an HDMI cable directly from your source device to your TV. And as we found in our investigation in 2019, even if you can't feel the delay, your brain can, and modern technology hasn't yet reached the point where it's fast enough that it doesn't make any difference. Bottom line then, we want our latency to be as low as possible for the best gaming experience. So here's our test setup. Vizio, who sponsored this video, provided their 65-inch M7 series Quantum 2020 TV. And we're going to be testing it at 4K 60Hz with game mode enabled and auto low latency disabled since not all of our devices support it. Now, Artings, great site, check them out, found that this was the lowest input lag configuration on this TV at less than 10 milliseconds. Now let's meet some of the other items in our chain. For capture cards, we've got a couple different ones from Elgato, including this HD60S Plus that they claim that if you pass through this with your signal so that you can actually capture it for your game stream or whatever else, there is no difference between being plugged in here and being plugged in here. Very interesting. And we've got this receiver. If you're not familiar, a receiver like this is great for having many devices plugged into a single TV, or you can actually have multiple zones on some of the high-end ones, and it has an amplifier built into it if you have like a dedicated passive speaker setup for surround sound. But what's interesting about it is that the manufacturer in this case, and actually most of them, doesn't mention latency at all. The final piece of the chain is the M-Series 5.1 soundbar from Vizio, and Vizio's main highlights for this are its low-profile charcoal black design, full support for Dolby Atmos and DTSX, and its nine high-performance speakers with a six-inch wireless subwoofer for an outstanding surround sound experience. Of course, if we're going to be adding these devices, sometimes more than one of them, to our HDMI chain, we can't rely on our Tings data, we need to capture our own. And that is where this guy comes in. We explored Nvidia's Latency Display Analysis Tool, or LDAT, in this video here. But to save you some time, what it does is it actually intercepts the signal from a mouse click, then it measures the delay between this device here receiving that signal, and measuring a brightness change on the monitor. That gives us the latency of the entire gaming chain. Any bets, by the way, which common household items are going to add the most lag? The AVR receiver, the analog telephone, the LTT CPU pillow? LTTstore.com. Before we can know that, we need to establish a baseline. So in the interest of reducing bottlenecks, we're using a high-performance gaming system with a 3900XT processor and 2080 SuperGrafx card. And while I'll be trying to feel the difference using an actual game, in this case, CSGO, all of the data that we present to you was captured using Nvidia's LDAT desktop application to eliminate any variability due to game engine lag. Is that bot's name Loser? Wait, was that one's name L- Oh, Lester. Well, yep, that feels like some pretty low input lag. Good job, Physio, I guess. Hey, oh, nice, he's dead. Look at that. Okay, feels pretty good. And good news, the data backs it up. We found that the most consistent method to measure it was to click manually in the LDAT window rather than using the automatic clicking function. And we measured just shy of 40 milliseconds of total click to light photon delay. That sounds like a lot compared to our Ting's number, but it's actually right in line with what we've measured on high-performance desktop gaming monitors. Windows, graphics card drivers, et cetera, just add a lot more delay than a signal generator. So obviously then, our first step was to add Physio's own soundbar to the chain. With a baseline delay of just under 38 milliseconds, the soundbar added 19 milliseconds of delay, which is about one frame at 60 hertz. When casually gaming to most people, this wouldn't be noticeable, but if you're really competitive, what we learned is you better use the eARC feature of your new TV and soundbar and plug your console directly into the TV and have that audio pass through to your soundbar. Okay then, Physio didn't claim that there was zero latency in their soundbar though. What about something that does? The Elgato 4K60 Pro and HD60S Plus are both capture cards that claim super low latency. And from our results, this definitely holds true for them with this setup. The HD60S Plus only added three to four milliseconds of delay on average, and the 4K60 Pro added 19 milliseconds, which is one frame and comparable to the soundbar. So again, it's acceptable for gaming, but it isn't zero latency either. What about the receiver? Well, it's comparable to the HD60S Plus with only an additional three milliseconds of delay, which that's quite impressive when the product page doesn't claim any kind of gaming or latency optimization as a selling point at all. Now it's time for the big test. If we start chaining these devices together, does the total delay become the sum of the individual delays or will they multiply? Will they work at all? Well, it does work sometimes. Introducing extra links between the TV and the input device can have mixed results, not just with latency, but actually with signal reliability. Just getting all four of our test devices between the TV and our PC to handshake with each other was a challenge with some configurations defaulting to unusual resolutions, some of them flickering, and some of them not working at all. In the right order though, we were able to get things up and running without any issues. With just two capture cards in a row, we don't actually see much difference from just the 4K60 Pro on its own. And when everything is chained together, we see latency that is very similar, again, to just the 4K60 Pro or the soundbar on its own, which kind of raises questions like, what is going on here? What it seems like is there's something of a limit to how much additional delay can be added by devices that are chained together. As for why that would be, honestly, it's a little above my pay grade. But if I were to make a guess, I would say that it's probably something to do with digital, oh. Oh. I put DHCP in the script instead of HDCP. So it tripped me up. Yeah, yeah, but it's not a networking video. Okay. But if I were to guess, I'd say it's probably something to do with HDCP or copy protection. We weren't able to prove this in any way, but we also have another theory that it could actually vary depending on some aspect of the handshaking process that takes place when you connect. The bottom line though is that nothing was actually zero latency. With the closest device, our AVR receiver being almost zero latency. The good news though is that pretty much every combo was low enough that most people wouldn't notice the difference. And if you're the kind of person who's sensitive to it, well, there's no reason that you have to hook your current game console up to your Vizio M7 series Quantum 2020 TV through any other device. It's got two HDMI 2.1 inputs for total, more accurate color out of the box thanks to support for Dolby Vision HDR gaming and their new onboard processor. It boasts extremely low latency in game mode, as we've seen, as long as you're hooked up to it directly. And it's got support for auto low latency mode. And there's even more improvements to the gaming experience coming through firmware updates. So guys, you can check this puppy out along with the soundbar at the link below, and they've got a bunch of deals going on down there as well. So don't wait. Thanks again to Vizio for sponsoring this video. It's something that we've actually really wanted to explore for a long time. And I thought the results were fascinating, even if they raise more questions than they deliver answers. And thanks to you guys for watching. If you're looking for another video to dive into, I'd recommend our deeper investigation into the LDAT device, which talks about how we can use it to evaluate which displays are the absolute best for gaming.