Kinera Celeste PhoenixCall Iem Review
Hello techies and nerds, it's Electro Techie here and today we have a super big surprise for today's review.
These IEMS were won through a giveaway and HiFiGo were gracious enough to send them out to me for winning the giveaway. However, as with all reviews from me, this doesn't change the outcome of my review and HiFiGo did not sponsor this review or pay me to say anything in particular about this IEM.
Now with all of the disclaimer information out of the way, let's get into the review proper. This review will take a different direction than most reviews from me. This is because while I have my dislike and distaste in some of the objective sides of the IEM such as the driver configuration, sound quality, and tonality, the subjective side of the IEMS are worth a lot to me for these particular pair. The price of these IEMS is a bit high at around $130 USD, which at this price point is not competitive objectively, however subjectively there's a lot to be said about this pair.
Let's start with the things that I love, everything about the IEM is quite honestly very appealing. The unboxing experience is something that drew me to decide to review these IEMS regardless of how I felt, because the experience is just simply amazing. The box that houses the IEMS is purple and has gold iridescent finishes across the outside and inside of the box. Upon opening the box you are a greeted with a gold metal bookmark and a bit of history behind the inspiration of the IEM set. The history is explained as being inspired by the legends of mountains and seas mythology with a flock of a hundred birds appearing before the PhoenixCall. There's also a very unique looking logo and text in Chinese characters with iridescent colors on a piece of parchment paper that looks absolutely stunning and gorgeous. Underneath the page, sits the IEMS beautifully wrapped in housing and with the cable already attached, and in my case the colorway of purple and blue look breath taking. The IEMS have a resin housing with a uniquely designed resin faceplate with the flock of birds on them.
The IEMS come with a nice set of accessories as well, 6 sets of ear tips in two colorways with 3 sizes in each set. The colorways for the tips are white or black, with a small, medium, and large set for each color. The Final box in the case houses the carrying case which is a hard leather or leatherette case that feels pretty nice and solid which is also where these ear tips are placed. The only other accessory included is the beautiful two toned cable which is a very nice and thick braided cable. The ear hooks have slight memory but aren't too stiff or too soft, the cable itself is a little on the short side sitting at only 1.2m but this is nothing that is a deal breaker and is long enough for all the uses I had, while just being slightly shorter than I wanted them to be. The cable sits nice and flush, has a great chin cinch. While I can admit that the list of accessories is a bit bareboned I can at least say that there's nothing that I'm missing from these accessories included and I am sated by the accessories that are included.
Overall the experience of these IEMS from the unboxing to the presentation and the overall story behind the IEMS is quite amazing, if you are a collector these are definitely an exquisite pair of earphones and I recommend you to pick these up and try them in addition. With that said, however, the soundstage and presence of the IEMS can feel a little bit lackluster with missing sounds in the micro details and feeling cramped and bloated as well as a tinny timbre to the sound. If you are a competitive gamer or a gamer who likes a bit of oomph in your atmospheric gaming, I would not recommend these as at this competitive price point there are a lot of other options that just simply outperform these, but for adding a beautiful pair of IEMS to your collection, or just having an amazing display these are definitely worth it. I'll likely be keeping mine as these are just too opulent to let go in my personal opinion, and if given the chance I would probably still purchase these for aesthetic alone.