Kinera - Pandamon (Gen 1 / V1)

I'm not sure about planars being better suited to headphones. I have the Edition XS which is very good, and I've tried a few Audezes as well. There's a lot of similarities in terms of the "planar sound" between those and the full-size planar IEMs (of which I have 5). It's hard to match a full-size planar IEM for resolution. The same is not true of the Shell. However, I can say that the Shell has some similarities with the Simgot EW300, which is another hybrid that includes a planar (different driver architecture though). They do have a fairly distinctive sound. I would describe it as exaggerated texturing throughout the midrange, without especially elevated treble (although the Shell is definitely quite v-shaped). Whereas a full planar is quite different, especially in how it presents bass. Planar bass gives you a lot more detail, instrument separation and quite linear extension, but it doesn't have the same mid-bass slam that you get from a DD. Planars can have a slightly metallic timbre generally (that I've tried, only the S08 doesn't, but I'd put it in a different category of planars, with afaik the only other one like it being the T10 Pro). This is something I notice on the full-size headphones like the Edition XS and Audeze LCD-X as well. It's important to realise that an SPD/micro-planar is more like a DD than a true planar and it sounds more like a DD. So if you want to hear a planar, you need to get a full-size planar. If you want to see them taken apart, there's a [teardown video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e75AUDGfGhE&t=2345s) you can watch (timestamped to the relevant bit). In fact I also have the Kinera Pandamon, which is one of the earlier SPD implementations that uses it as a full-range driver. It does sound like a DD, not like a planar. And in that case, not a particularly good DD either. Agree about the T10 being a bit ugly. It's unfortunate and I don't know why they didn't just make them in different colours like an Apple product, instead of beige. They'd be printing money if they did that. But aside from being one of the cheapest planars, it's also one of the best tuned ones and doesn't have fatiguing treble, but still has that planar resolving ability. I actually think they made it ugly on purpose to avoid cannibalising sales of the S12. BTW, my initial impressions of the Shell are that it's better than the EW300. Partly because the PZT on the EW300 adds a huge annoying treble spike. I got rid of that with tip-rolling, but ultimately returned it because of other tuning issues (that so far I haven't run into with the Shell and I did try some of the same test tracks to see if it handled them better). The Shell is definitely one of the best looking IEMs around as well.