From home entertainment to kitchen appliances, Hisense’s 2023 range of devices expands on the company’s ConnectLife smart home platform, with a big focus on affordability and sustainability.
As the brand’s 2023 technology arrives in Australia, Hisense recently hosted media at its ‘Hisense Home’ in Malabar to demonstrate how a modern home benefits from an interconnected ecosystem. Competing with the likes of LG’s ThinQ and Samsung’s SmartThings platforms, Hisense showed its new ConnectLife app that lets you control and monitor appliance usage remotely.
Many of the company’s newly launched appliances tap into the smart home platform, signalling a clear intent to be a major player in the local market. Aside from convenience, reducing waste and saving money are the biggest goals of the ConnectLife platform.
Tracking sustainable consumption with ConnectLife
Several of Hisense’s new appliances carry big claims in terms of sustainability. In the laundry, the Series 7 9kg Heat Pump Dryer (RRP $1,299) wields a nine-star energy efficiency rating, making it incredibly cheap to run while minimising its environmental impact. Combined with its accompanying Series 7 Front Load Washer (RRP $899), you can use the ConnectLife app to control various settings, including the ability to use complementary wash and dry cycles. Essentially, this means using the minimum required water and energy required to do your laundry.
Like other laundry appliances we’ve tested, such as LG’s smart washing machines, ConnectLife also alerts you when cycles finish, a helpful reminder for us forgetful types. It also takes the guesswork out of what settings and how much detergent to use. Based on the size and type of the laundry load, the machines automatically optimise the settings for efficiency and fabric care. Helpfully, you can also adjust detergent settings based on the concentrate level you use.
Not just confined to the laundry, Hisense’s new V Series air conditioner (RRP $1,199), PureFlat Infinite 632L fridge (RRP $2,499), and Black Steel dishwasher (RRP $1,499) also benefit from the ConnectLife platform. As revealed at CES 2023, you can set the fridge to ‘super-freeze’ food from the app to quickly cool down drinks and cold treats you bought and want to use on the same day.
In addition to controlling the air conditioner’s operation remotely, you can set the temperature based on the physical remote’s location in the house. Older wall-mounted AC units tend to base the temperature on where it is in the house, which can result in some areas of the room missing out on cooling and heating, so the remote-based setting is a welcome feature.
Above all else, the ConnectLife platform gives you data to work from. Giving information like which appliances use the most energy is something brands like Samsung and LG are collaborating on, with Hisense hot on their heels. It’s an important part of the brand’s approach to sustainability, according to Gideon Lui, Hisense ANZ’s Head of Marketing.
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure, so this is a great first step to empower every household to take control of their environmental footprint,” Lui said. “As we continue to evolve towards a fully smart home-enabled range, we welcome the potential that ConnectLife represents.”
TVs and projectors for all Australian homes
Hisense is particularly fond of Mini LED technology in TVs, largely due to its high brightness. This was on full display at the coastal display home, pushing out bright, easily visible pictures despite the copious amount of natural light filtering in.
At the moment, your main two choices of TV display technology revolve around either Mini LED or OLED. OLED is a self-emissive technology that lights up images on a per-pixel basis. This leads to great HDR performance because of the high level of precision between light and dark pictures, and it’s also highly regarded for its vibrant colour production.
Mini LED, on the other hand, employs small backlights roughly the size of a half-grain of rice, with various dimming zones based on the model produce light and dark images. It’s generally capable of pushing brightness much further than OLED, suited to well-lit rooms. This comes at the cost of precision, although the gap is drastically narrowing between technologies. A great example of this is Hisense’s ULED Mini LED X TV (RRP $9,999 for the 85-inch model), wielding more than 20,000 backlights and 5,000 dimming zones. The more backlights and dimming zones a TV has, the more picture control it has, generating less blooming of bright pictures against dark backgrounds.
Mini LED features across the entire ULED range this year, including the U7K and U8K models (starting at $1,499 and $2,499 respectively). Both variants house 10,000 backlights, with the U7K using over 100 dimming zones compared to the U8K’s roughly 500 zones for greater image control. Each TV is suited to gaming, too, with 144Hz variable refresh rates supported in addition to a native game mode for optimised performance. Forza Horizon 5 looked a treat on the screens, showing off the in-game Mexican locales beautifully.
If you have more control over your home’s light and want a big screen experience, Hisense also updated its short throw projector range, including the TriChroma Laser TV. Available in 100-inch (RRP $6,499) and 120-inch (RRP $7,499) variants, it comes with an ambient light rejection screen rolled up in the box that you can DIY install to a wall to replicate the cinema experience.
Between the ability to cast content to TVs and projectors, and controlling home appliances via ConnectLife, your phone is arguably the centrepiece of the modern smart home. Notably, Hisense’s competitive pricing compared to the existing major home technology players means even greater choice for Australians.
Read more appliance news on GadgetGuy
Chris Button travelled to Sydney as a guest of Hisense Australia to cover the 2023 product launch.
The post Hisense wants ConnectLife to be your gateway to a smart home appeared first on GadgetGuy.
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