Hisense HiClips Review – A comfortable option for great sound

Hisense is not the first company to release these clip-style open-ear headphones, but it is a remarkable step outside of the comfort zone for a company renowned for its TVs and known for their appliances. We’ve grabbed the Hisense HiClips for our review.

These are not the first I’ve tried, and they certainly won’t be the last, because it feels like there’s a real trend around this open-ear style. It is awesome because it offers you something very different to the traditional headphone. I think what you need to know going into this is that there’s something very good about listening to something through headphones when you have the environment also coming in, I don’t know whether that’s just having airflow or whether that is the ambience.

In simple terms, there’s a real benefit to not blocking out the world and hearing sound as a part of the world. Of course, these are not made for planes. This would be a horrible choice to wear on an airplane because you’ll hear more of the plane than you will of the sound. Sitting in your office or walking along the street, there are a couple of really big advantages to open-ear clip-style headphones:

1. They don’t really feel uncomfortable because they’re not sticking in your ear. That’s critical.
2. You can hear what’s happening around you. If someone shouts across the office, you can turn and speak to them and have a conversation without even touching your phone to pause the music. Likewise, when you’re out on the street, walking around or going for a run, you’re not going to miss the beeping of a horn if you’re in the way or there’s something you need to be alerted to. There’s a real safety factor to wearing these kinds of headphones. I wore these for several hours, and that’s not something I do regularly with headphones. I didn’t feel them to be uncomfortable at all. I did, for a moment, kind of get the sense that they were pinching me, but that’s, I think, more an unusual sensation than any real pain. It’s just a different feeling to have these clipped into your ear.

The general composition of these headphones is a very small bulb sitting inside your ear that is probably 5 mm or 1 cm away from your eardrum. It’s pointing at your eardrum so that you can get the sound directly, but at the same time, there’s that openness that lets the world in as well. There’s a small arc around to the back of your ear where a larger bean-style part of the clip exists, which obviously features a little bit more of the tech: the battery, perhaps the Bluetooth, and things like that.

They’re very lightweight. You could probably wear these without even noticing them most of the day. I don’t think that bean on the back of your ear is at all noticeable in day-to-day wearing for people around you. Do I look like I’m wearing earrings or something? Perhaps.

There are other brands that actually have little bedazzling that you can do, little clips that you can hang off them that essentially turn them into jewellery. In this sense, the Hisense HiClips I’ve been wearing are black, very simple, and I think they look pretty good.

When it comes to the quality of the sound, I genuinely really love the sound that I get out of these. Of course, I’m not getting the volume that I might get from an in-ear set of headphones, and certainly not noise cancelling, but I’m getting the clarity that I want. I’m hearing everything I would normally hear, and I think that’s really all that matters.

Let’s be clear, these are $199 headphones. I’ve seen them as low as $179. Hisense are only selling them on their website, which is probably a strategy to gain a bit of an feel for how this product will go in the Australian market. It’s very good value for a set of headphones. I guess my biggest gripe with these headphones would be the touch controls.

There are two areas of sensitivity on this: one on the bottom of the bean that’s on the back of your ear, and one on the actual side clip that goes around your ear. Obviously, there are some challenges when the earphone itself needs to be pinched and grabbed to put it on and off, and you don’t actually want to activate any controls doing that. One tap is disabled.

There is no function for tapping once on these headphones to pause a track, play a track, or answer the phone. It’s actually a double tap on that outer ring or the back bean. A triple tap pushes you forward to the next track. That’s a vast difference to your average headphones, which are one tap for pause and play, two taps for track forward, and three taps for track back. It is something to get used to, and I would say there’s a lag between tapping and the action happening. You’re often wondering, “Did it work? Am I going to skip forward or pause here?” That’s probably something I’d work on for a second generation if I was Hisense, but all that said, it’s a great sound.

Battery life is pretty much all-day. There’s one other thing missing, which I think we can accept at this price: the case doesn’t charge wirelessly, so stay near a cable.

I think it’s a good look, and I think it’s excellent value at $199, let alone the sale price of $179 you might find right now. Well worth a listen, I would say. The Hisense HiClips – available now

Web: Hisense