Hisense HiClips reviewed: a total surprise

Hisense isn’t known for earbuds. It makes TVs and fridges and air conditioning and the like. But the Hisense HiClips are more interesting than just another earphone cash in. They may even be good.

Earbuds aren’t always for everyone, but there’s a recent style that seems to be easier to adjust to than the others: jewellery-inspired.

Chances are you’ve seen someone wear these things, and you might have been a little confused. Is it an earring or is it an earbud? That’s the question for what is easily one of the fastest growing earbud styles in the personal audio space.

Ever since Bose seemingly launched the category in the Ultra Open, and then Shokz came along and made its own flavour, we’ve seen more of these open-ear earring styles than we know what to do with. Much like how every manufacturer seems to have a speaker or ten, every audio manufacturers also seems to have an earring-inspired pair of earbuds.

Even Hisense.

If there was one company we’d have never expected to see a pair of earbuds from this year, it’s a company known for TVs, fridges, and air conditioners. We’ve seen phones from Hisense at CES, a product type clearly not yet released in Australia as of yet, but earbuds we didn’t expect.

And yet here we are, as Hisense launches its first earbuds for Australia: the HiClips.

Design and features

As the name suggests, the HiClips are clip-on earbuds where the inspiration is clearly pulled from jewellery. In short, the HiClips look a lot like something you might wear out, and Hisense saw fit to send the metallic orange variant, which is definitely a style.

We’ve seen a lot of these open ear offerings, the Hisense’s might be the most divisive yet. They’re both shiny and matte, with each end offering a coloured chrome finish that makes it clear you’re wearing something that isn’t made by Apple. Forget about the stock standard glossy white finish, because Hisense is going colourful or flat out dark.

Our HiClips review pair was the former, adorned with almost the same orange as Apple uses on the iPhone 17 Pro Max we were using. It’s pretty clear that’s exactly what Hisense is targeting, because the style is dead ringer (though Honor also has an orange phone, as well).

Inside is a small speaker with an 11mm driver for each side, offering two microphones per ear, and a design that largely make the buds ambidextrous, much like other earbuds like it.

There’s a battery life of roughly 8 hours per ear and up to 36 hours with the case, essentially giving you a little over four full charges. If you wore the HiClips every day for a good 6 to 7 hours, you could probably not need to charge them until the weekend. You will need to plug them in, though, because the USB-C port on the case is the only way to charge them, with no wireless charging found here.

In-use

When you’re ready, take the HiClips out and insert them in your ears. The speaker section clearly nestles outside the ear canal, while the larger almost barbell-like section goes behind the ear.

It’s fairly easy, though definitely looks interesting, a situation likely made more unusual because the HiClips review model Hisense sent our way happed to be shiny metallic orange, almost as if the orange iPhone 17 Pro Max suddenly become a piece of jewellery.

Yes, it is definitely interesting. It’s not altogether uncomfortable, either. The HiClips simply cling, hold in place, and you listen to them. The look is weird, but only really if you think about it.

To Hisense’s credit, the barbell shape means the metallic section is hidden until someone is behind you, with the shiny orange block behind the ear and the speaker in front, connected by a bit of plastic which acts almost like a bendy bar.

There’s a touch controller built into the speaker, but it only handles double taps and triple taps, and Hisense does offer an app, though it won’t trigger when you connect it to your phone the first time. Have a look for “Connect Life” on your App Store, and you’ll find what we’re talking about, which offers earbud finding, EQ settings, a way to customise the minimalist controls.

It seems to be the same app Hisense uses across its other devices, so if you have some of those, you may already have the app ready to go.

Regardless of what the controls are configured to do, tapping doesn’t always trigger the right thing. You can find yourself tapping the piece in your ear only to find nothing happens, bumping the bit when you could simply pull your phone out.

Performance

With no noise cancellation or spatial audio on these buds, all you really need to think about is wearing them and playing music through them. They’re actually fairly simple and direct, truth be told.

You can use the app if you want to, but it doesn’t add much at all. This reviewer ended up using the HiClips rather simply. No app, no dramas; just tunes.

Tested with the Pickr Sound Test (which you can hear for yourself), we found largely what we expected and have heard from similar styles of earbuds, but a better result than we anticipated on the whole.

Earbuds of this style tend to lack bass, offering a poppy and bright sound. Indeed, with tunes from Carly Rae Jepsen and Ariana Grande, that sound profile definitely shone through. However, it wasn’t as bad as the bass-less variety we normally see and managed to stand out.

Electronic from Tycho and Daft Punk delivered mostly mids and highs — that bright sound we noted previously — but still provided a hint of bass and a surprisingly wide soundstage. The bass was consistently lacking, but the stage was also equally consistent in its width, with Mark Ronson, Marvin Gaye, and Muse showing similar results.

It’s a sound that comes off almost balanced, but sans-bass. Some people won’t care, and the sound is better than we would have expected a first-gen product to be.

A comfortable sound in a distinct design.

Could you definitely find something better? Sure, though to Hisense’s credit, there are modes available in the app to tweak the sound, jumping between equaliser settings for music, movies, news, and even one for seniors. That’s a surprise.

Battery

The battery is also surprising, thanks in part to just how much life there is.

Achieving the suggestion of eight hours seems easy enough before needing a charge, though truth be told you probably won’t be wearing the earbuds all day. You definitely can, and as a pair of open audio buds, they can really be worn as you work and simply listen.

Value

Even the $199 price actually works, with a value that manages to put up decent competition against competitors. Lower priced than the Shokz Dots and Sony LinkBuds Clip, the Hisense HiClips are priced more like Anker’s AeroClip competitor from its Soundcore brand, somehow making $200 that battleground.

It’s not a bad place to make a stand, even for a first-gen product that could have a little more bass.

What needs work?

Even if the price is friendly, the design is very hit and miss. Not everyone will like the design of the Hisense HiClips, this reviewer included. The moment he put them on, his thoughts were “eww” followed by “how quickly can they be taken off”.

The reality is he’s wearing them for a review, and they are really polarising.

It’s not just the fact that the HiClips review unit was a vibrant orange, but it’s also a vibrant orange with a metallic barbel back, and it just looks more like ornate jewellery than a earphone. If you thought the jewellery-inspired earbuds were interesting, the Hisense HiClips feel like they’re on a whole other level. That may not be a good thing.

They’re polarising, but not everyone will find that a positive.

There are also the controls which aren’t amazing. You’re basically double tapping the back of the earbuds to pause, and that’s it. Hisense says there’s an app — it’s there on the spec sheet — but the buds don’t call it up, and a glance on either App Store reveals nothing specific.

You can find it easily if you look, and it offers features, but it’s not the automatic suggestion you get with every other pair we review. And we review a lot of pairs.

It’s a very odd, almost unfinished experience. They are more or less as you see them. Like the unusual design and colour scheme, the Hisense HiClips are very what-you-see-is-what-you-get.

What we love

While the design is very hit and miss (and is very divisive), the sound is better than it has any right to be. It is surprisingly good if not a little thin.

The HiClips are really surprising, delivering better sound and comfort than you’d expect. It’s almost baffling. It might make you rethink about the brand.

And that’s partly because this pair feels like it’s out of left field, even if it’s not entirely like that. Hisense has long been about the democratisation of technology, a concept that essentially aims to bring high-end tech to more price points, normalising things somewhat. Its TVs have followed that approach, and so it makes sense that a pair of earbuds would too.

HiClips vs the competition

The surprising thing about this, however, is that outside of a few soundbars, Hisense isn’t strictly speaking an audio company. We’ve seen Hisense laser TV models with Harman/Kardon’s sound expertise involved, while another audio specialist Devialet arrived in at least one other model.

Hisense isn’t exactly known for audio, not in the way of other brands the company competes with.

Brands like Bose, which has the Ultra Open, or brands like Shokz which has the OpenDots in both the first-gen and the more recent second-generation model.

While the Hisense HiClips may not compete quite as strongly as these models, they’re also almost half the price giving them a bit of an edge.

Rather, they seem more perfectly place to take on the likes of JBL, JLab, and Skullcandy, all of which seemingly undercut both Hisense and the more expensive brands. Not having tested these offerings, they could end up being just as compelling, but right now, the HiClips provide something different: an option from a brand you might already be familiar with in your home life.

That’s not a bad thing.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

It’s nice to be surprised, and sometimes you can’t pick them. Even after nearly 20 years in reviewing technology, whether from reading the specs or glancing at the design, some devices can’t be picked.

It can go either way, but some gadgets are better than anything you expected them to be.

The Hisense HiClips are exactly that, with a pair of earbuds that manages to surprise. These are a total surprise.

They are by no means perfect and could easily be better. The controls need work, the bass needs more oomph, and that design is really divisive. But for a first effort, the Hisense HiClips are a shot of something different. That might just be what the category needs, and we can’t wait for the second generation.