Known to everyone from TVs to cameras to smartphones, Sony is in the business of gaming peripherals, it was announced on Tuesday. Sony’s new InZone brand will include a pair of monitors as well as wireless and wired headsets aimed at PCs and, of course, PlayStation gamers.
Sony’s first consumer monitors in years
Sony is hardly the name you think of when you go shopping for a PC monitor. The company has not made consumer monitors since the early 2000s, although it continued to sell expensive, massive professional monitors for broadcast and production. That changed with the introduction of Sony’s flagship inZone M9 and its sibling InZone M3.
Never to be confused with the Samsung M8 4K Smart Monitor announced in March, the M9 is a 27-inch 4K HDR monitor with a 144Hz refresh rate. However, its most interesting feature is its full local dimming (FALD) LED backlighting, which, along with VESA DisplayHDR 600 certification and a claimed 95 percent DCI-P3 coverage, is particularly attractive to HDR users.
In its video announcement, Sony said it decided to use FALD backlighting to make the contrast of an IPS panel more comparable to a VA monitor without sacrificing the slower response times that IPS can achieve. The M9 claims a Gray to Gray (GtG) response time of 1ms.
Sony didn’t specify how many dimming zones the monitor has, which is an important factor in the effectiveness of this feature. However, early reviews by CNET and Forbes point to 96 dimming zones. Given that you can find monitors with over 1,000 FALD zones, it’s clear that more advanced local dimming monitors than the InZone M9 are available.
Sony claims the display has a dynamic contrast ratio of 80,000:1. He didn’t share static contrast ratio values, so we’d like to see dynamic contrast in action to see if it’s effective.
For console gamers, the Sony M9 supports Auto HDR Tone Mapping, which Sony says in a press release works with the PlayStation 5 “to automatically recognize the monitor during initial setup and [optimize] HDR settings.”
“In addition, the monitor will automatically switch to cinema mode when watching movies on the PlayStation 5 and to game mode when playing games,”Sony said in a statement.
Samsung recently started selling a 4K 240Hz monitor, but the M9’s performance should be enough for most gamers. There’s also G-Sync compatibility to combat screen tearing when your GPU’s frame rate doesn’t match the monitor’s refresh rate, and variable refresh rates for PS5 via HDMI 2.1.
The M9 was announced along with the M3. It’s a 27-inch 1920×1080 display with a 240Hz refresh rate for those who value speed over crisp image quality, but don’t need the highest refresh rate natively found in today’s gaming monitors, 360Hz.
The M3 has a smaller VESA DisplayHDR certification that promises a minimum brightness of 400 nits with HDR and a smaller 99 percent sRGB color requirement.
While both screens are designed for gamers, they can also be home office hacks. Since these are KVM monitors, Sony says you can use them to control two PCs with the same keyboard, mouse and headset.
Sony said the M9 will be available this summer for $900, while the M3 will cost $530 “throughout 2022.”
Trio of headphones
Sony’s newfound gaming efforts also include three headsets already available in the US. These are the Sony InZone H9, H7 and H3 and certainly not to be confused with Asus’ TUF Gaming series of gaming headsets such as the H1 Wireless or H3.
The Sony InZone H9 Wireless Gaming Headset (40mm neodymium drivers, 5-20,000Hz frequency range) is claimed to have two hours of battery life, while the InZone H7 (40mm neodymium drivers, 5-20,000Hz frequency range)) claims 40 hours of use on a single charge. accusation.
The more affordable Sony InZone H3 (40mm neodymium drivers, 10-20,000Hz frequency range) is wired, meanwhile.
All three headsets support 360-degree spatial audio, which you customize using the app to take a picture of your ear. Please note that you need a PC with a USB-A port and Windows 10 or later to use this feature.
For PS5 gamers, you’ll have to try out the surround sound experience with the Tempest 3D AudioTech console.