Hannspree Lumo Review

Introduction

The Hannspree Lumo is a different kind of reader. At a glance, it looks like a larger Amazon Kindle Colorsoft, but it uses entirely different screen technology. 

Instead of E Ink, found in most conventional readers, the Hannspree Lumo uses a kind of LCD with some of E Ink’s properties. It uses a front light rather than an intense backlight, so it’s easier on your eyes, and since it doesn’t have a clunky “flash” screen refresh, it handles motion well too. 

Best of all worlds? Not quite, as there are significant compromises too. Sharpness and contrast are actually significantly worse than a Kindle’s — or a rival Boox or Kobo reader — which has a real impact on the good old reading experience. 

As such, it’s best to think of this as an unusual tablet-reader hybrid. It limits the Hannspree Lumo’s appeal, but certainly doesn’t get rid of it entirely. 

Design

• Matte glass screen
• Aluminium body
• Included case

The Hannspree Lumo is larger than most ereaders, and uses somewhat more upmarket materials than plenty of them too. This is a 7.8-inch screen device, making it potentially a better fit for graphic novels than a Kindle Paperwhite or Colorsoft. 

It also has a metal casing and a glass screen. The vast majority of ereaders have plastic bodies and plastic screens — the old Kindle Voyage is an outlier here, as it had a lovely etched-glass display. But presumably that was a bit too costly, as it was certainly more scratch-resistant than plastic. 

As such, the Hannspree Lumo can come across as much like a small tablet as an e-reader. However, I do find its body a little on the sharp side. E-readers tend to have rounded sides and corners for a reason — they are more comfortable to hold for extended periods. Hannspree does offer a case, though, which will solve that problem. It’s even included.

And for all its glass-and-metal glitz, the Hannspree Lumo has no water-resistance rating, so it should be used with caution in the bath or by the poolside. 

Screen

• LCD screen
• 60Hz refresh
• Front light

The display is the most interesting part of the Hannspree Lumo. It’s a 7.8-inch “sunlight readable” LCD, recreating one of the top features of E Ink tech, that direct sunlight makes it clearer. Ambient light is not something a backlight has to fight against, which is a win for battery life and for making the screen less of an eye-strainer. 

This is combined with radically better motion handling than any E Ink ereader. In an E Ink screen, black and white microcapsules are pulled to the front of the screen to create the image, which leaves ghosting residue until the screen is “flashed” to reset it. 

There’s no such ghosting in the  Hannspree Lumo, and its motion appears far smoother and more responsive. It’s a better e-reader for video than one of the Android-based Boox models that can also, for example, run YouTube. 

My issue is that I don’t find the Hannspree Lumo nearly as good as a classic Kindle Paperwhite for actual reading. 1024 x 768 pixels spread over 7.8 inches leads to a pixel density of 164ppi, where a Kindle Paperwhite has a pixel density of 300ppi. 

The small fonts of novels here appear quite soft and pixellated, and I find the lower pixel density look of the Hannspree Lumo’s LCD more distracting than that of an old low-res E Ink reader. 

There’s more too. Even in a bright environment, I still feel I need to use the  Hannspree Lumo front light to boost visibility as contrast is quite low and the “white” of the page is quite grey — even more so than the recent colour E Ink readers that sacrifice contrast for colour. Doing so also lightens up the screen’s blacks, so there’s no way to make contrast appear that satisfying. 

I don’t love reading books on the Hannspree Lumo. And that is clearly a bit of a problem. 

As in the colour E Ink crowd, like the Kindle Colorsoft, colour depth and punch are quite limited too, although the number of colours this can display is an order of magnitude greater. Current colour E Ink tech can reproduce around 4000 colours, whereas the Hannspree Lumo can recreate 16.7 million, which will lead to far better-looking gradients and transitions. 

One of the key things I wanted to try first-hand with the Hannspree Lumo was comics and graphic novels. I think most ereaders are far too small to do the job well. The same is really true here for larger format comics that fit a lot of panels and text onto a page, but there’s one key difference. 

E Ink ereaders make flicking and zooming around pages feel bad, while the Hannspree Lumo does not. The Lumo makes a pretty good comic book reader as a result.

Performance and software

• Plain Android 14 software
• (Almost) no non-Google apps preinstalled
• Low-end MediaTek G99 processor

Hannspree has put almost comically little effort into customising the Lumo’s software. But I don’t actually think that’s necessarily a problem. 

The Hannspree Lumo runs a plain version of Android 14, and fresh out of the box, it only has Google apps preinstalled, plus a basic camera app and sound recorder. There’s no Hannspree ebook reader app or app store. It’s up to you to head into Google Play and find your own e-reader interface. 

I’ve mostly used the Amazon Kindle app during testing, but you could just as easily use Libby, Kobo, or a plain e-reader app geared up to let you use your own digital files. 

I wouldn’t like to see a super-standard Android interface in an E Ink reader as the display tech’s clunky motion calls for something simplified. But here? The Hannspree Lumo basically feels like a tablet so plain Android fits perfectly. 

It doesn’t have a whole heap of power, though. The Hannspree Lumo has a MediaTek G99 processor, which was released back in 2022. It has 64GB storage and a lowly 4GB RAM.

It scores just 2006 points in Geekbench 6, equivalent to flagship Android device performance from 2018. A Lumo is still a bunch more powerful than a Kindle Paperwhite, but it’s also based around software that presumes such greater performance. 

For fun, I tried out Fortnite on the Hannspree Lumo. It managed a frame about every five seconds initially. Toning down the visuals as much as possible didn’t really help much, and not only do matches take an eternity to load, but the game also crashes to the home screen before you get into gameplay more often than not. 

The Lumo feels just fine for the basics, but come with realistic expectations.

Cameras, speakers and battery life

• Modest dual 5/8MP cameras
• Optional stylus
• Single speaker

The Hannspree Lumo has most of the features usually associated with tablets, including plenty generally missing from ereaders. There are front and rear cameras, with 5MP and 8MP sensors. 

Neither one is particularly good, but either can capture serviceable photos with one annoying caveat. The front camera lacks autofocus, and the lens’s focal plane means you have to hold the Hannspree Lumo at full arm’s length, or your face will appear slightly out of focus. 

Do that, though, and the results can be pretty respectable given this is a device that, let’s be honest, doesn’t really require a camera. 

The higher expectations of rear cameras mean it’s this higher-spec 8MP that actually disappoints. Even when shooting in daylight, the detail looks fuzzy up close, there are not masses of it, and image integrity drops off dramatically in the corners of the frame. The Hannspree Lumo doesn’t need any better cameras than it has, though, and you need to transfer the images to another device to see them at their best anyway. 

Similarly, the Hannspree Lumo’s speaker array isn’t great by tablet standards either. There’s a single speaker on the right side when the Lumo is held upright. It can’t produce any bass, and the treble is a bit insistent, but it will do the job for the occasional YouTube video. For longer-term audiobook listening, I’d consider using wireless headphones or a Bluetooth speaker, which the Hannspree Lumo can stream to. 

And battery life? Hannspree claims the relatively small 3000mAh battery lasts up to 6.5 hours of use. 

I tried playing a video with the front night at a very low setting, then at max. At the low setting, the Lumo can last up to around 10 hours. And even at max brightness, 93 minutes of video playback only took 18 per cent off the battery, suggesting stamina of up to 8.5 hours rather than 6.5. A conservative battery estimate is a rarity these days. 

You can also get an active stylus for the Hannspree Lumo, available for a very reasonable £30-ish. It has a rechargeable battery and a replaceable nib, just like the more expensive digital pens from the bigger brands. It’s a fully pressure-sensitive pen with tilt sensing too, making it a solid option for digital artwork. It feels perfectly good in use.

Should you buy it?

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