Hisense has just released the Hisense Touch Lite, which is a dedicated music player and book reader. It is a little bit different from the Hisense Touch HIFi Music Player that came out a couple of months ago. The main differences is the RAM is less and ditto with the internal storage. Still, if you want a solid music player that can play all of the major formats and it has a 3.5mm headphone jack, this is good value for the money. You can order it for $299 from the Good e-Reader Store.
The Hisense Touch features a 5.84 capacitive touchscreen E INK Carta HD display with a resolution of solution of 1440 x 720 with 287 PPI. It has a front-lit display and color temperature system, so you can not only listen to music on it, but also read ebooks. Underneath the hood is a Qualcomm quadcore processor, 2GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. There is a USB-C port for charging the device and WIFI to access the internet and download apps. This device supports Bluetooth 5.1, so you can plugin a pair of headphones, but HIFI audio cannot be outputted through Bluetooth, because it uses different codecs. It is powered by a 3,000 mAh battery and the weight is 155g.
This has a high build quality, made of aluminum and supports 32-bit/384 kHz audio. Audio is played via the AAC dual 1216 stereo speakers or the 3.5mm headphone jack up to 122dB. It also has Dirac Powered Sound. The device runs an operating system called Touch OS that’s based on Google Android 11.
If you have seen any of our reviews for the Hisense line of smartphones, this uses a similar layout. So you can launch various speed modes to boost the performance of the E INK display. This is useful if you decide you want to install some some apps that have animations, such as page turns. One of the most exciting aspects about the music player is that it is running Android 11, which is the first time we have seen a modern OS on an E INK device. Hisense typically supports a myriad of languages, including English.
Hisense is literally the only brand in the world that is taking HIFI music seriously on an E INK screen. Unlike the new Sony Walkman that costs over $3500 or more, you are getting over a month of battery life, while still listening to all of your tunes.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.