Celest Plutus Beast Review: Bone Conduction on a Budget

At only $89, the Celest Plutus Beast offers a lot for the money. It uses a unique tribrid design consisting of an unlikely trio: one balanced armature, one bone conduction driver, and full-range square planar driver.  We would expect these drivers at a higher price point, but the Plutus Beast seems designed to act as a gateway drug to the IEM hobby and Celeste/Kinera’s wider line-up. It’s a good value and a better listen for music and gaming alike. 

Specifications

• Current Price: $89 (HiFiGo, Amazon)
• Key Features
  • Three-Driver Tribrid Configuration
  • 1BC+1BA+1SPD(Patented Planar Driver) Acoustic Structure
  • Custom-developed 10mm Bone Conduction Driver
  • Second-Gen Self-Developed Square Planar Driver
  • Balanced Three-Frequency Tuning
  • Exclusive Design With Hand-Painted Face Covers
  • 3D Printed Integrated Molded Ear Shells
  • High-Purity 5N Copper Silver-Plated Cable
  • Rich Accessories
• Drivers: 1 Bone Conduction Driver + 1BA + 1 SPD™ (Square Planar Driver)
• Impedance: 8 ohm
• Sensitivity: 108 dB
• Frequency Response: 20Hz-20kHz
• Cable: 5N Copper Silver Plated
• Plug: 3.5mm / 4.4mm Balanced
• Eartips: Celest 221 Vocal Eartips, Celest 608 Balanced Eartips

Celest Plutus Beast — First Impressions and Key Features 

The Celest Plutus Beast is designed to court you.  As the affordable sub brand of Kinera, Celest's mission is to be a high value product and impress you with its sound quality. From there, one can only assume you'll be hooked and come back for more, maybe even more expensive sets. It does a good job of this. At $90, it feels like a Kinera-mini in build quality and it's hard to argue that the sound is anything less than great for the price.

With the market getting more crowded every day, new IEMs need a special feature or trick to make them stand out. The Plutus Beast's trick is its unique combination of drivers. It uses three in each earpiece consisting of a balanced armature, a bone conduction driver, and a square planar magnetic driver (SPD). Bone conduction is hard to find at this