The Pearstone FireWire 800 cable is built nicely and does its job well. The company also offers a variety of additional FireWire cable options, such as FireWire 400 and more. Aside from a warranty and contact information, there are no other help and support options. It lands in seventh place on our list.

Pearstone might not sound like a familiar name, but its goal is to produce quality accessories at affordable prices for video, photography and sound professionals. Although the company is focused on the professional market, many of its accessories, including Pearstone FireWire cables, are ideal for consumers too. The company also produces a variety of cables, cases, camera tripods and more.

The Pearstone FireWire 800 cable features a 9-pin male to 9-pin male connection, which works with the FireWire 800 female ports that are found on many modern Apple and Windows computers, external hard drives, disc burners and more. You may also see a FireWire port on a computer or camera that is called iLink or iLynx, which is the same as FireWire but with Sony and Texas Instruments' names for the technology, respectively.

The FireWire 800 cables from Pearstone have consistent speeds that reach 800Mbps (Megabits per second), which makes them ideal for use with external hard drives for fast data transfer and backup. These cables also work well for video editing, thanks to their fast speed, because non-linear editing (NLE) software works between the computer and external hard drive and requires rapid data transfer.

The Pearstone FireWire 800 cable is built solidly, with the proper amount of protection to shield it from physical wear and tear, and any electromagnetic (EM) or radio frequency (RF) interference, which can impede the signal flow.

Pearstone has a wide variety of FireWire cables and lengths, such as FireWire 800 (9-pin) and 400 (both 6-pin and 4-pin). Specifically, the company sells FireWire 800 (9-pin) to 400 (6-pin) cables, FireWire 800 to 400 (4-pin) cables, FireWire 400 to 400 (6-pin) cables, FireWire 400 (6-pin to 4-pin) cables and FireWire 400 (4-pin to 4-pin) cables.

FireWire 400 was the first commercial use of IEEE-1394, which Apple released in its higher-end Power Mac computers in the late 90s, and then with its other Mac offerings, which then appeared in external hard drives, burners, video-capture cards or boxes, Windows PCs and more.

The 6-pin FireWire cable has the larger connector and port, while the 4-pin cable is smaller and is most often found on video cameras and recorders, and is used to capture video onto a computer for video editing. Lengths start at 1.5 feet and max out at 75 feet. Pearstone carries literally dozens of FireWire cable types and lengths.

Pearstone offers a one-year limited warranty for defective or broken FireWire cables, but it doesn’t offer any other help and support options, aside from contact information for email and telephone.