Sony’s Inzone Gaming Monitors Get a Stylish Redesign

When you hear “Sony” and “gaming,” your brain probably goes to PlayStation. There’s a good reason for that, but it’s inevitable that a company as big as Sony will have its hands in more than one pie. That’s where little-known PC gaming accessory brand Inzone comes in. Launched in 2022, Sony esports partnershipsBut everyone I talked to about Inzone products confused them with PS5 accessories, which is perhaps why Inzone is getting a sleek new design this year, starting with its gaming monitors.

These have all the features you’d expect from a top-tier gaming display, plus a few extra features to justify those esports partnerships (and their rather hefty price tags). There are two models available, the M9 II and the M10S, and between them you’ll find selling points like 480fps and 4K. But for me, the real standout change here is the new look.

Gone is the PlayStation white, and so is the tripod stand and the heavy angled monitor arm that resembles a mini PS5. Instead, everything is now a much more neutral black, and more importantly, it’s smaller and generally more comfortable to use. This doesn’t lose any of the really great adjustability that the first-generation monitors had, but it gives the brand its own identity, and that’s exactly what an Inzone representative told me was intended.

The M9 II is the model most similar to the old model, with its arm still slightly angled, but its small circular base, measuring 177mm, now makes it much easier to move around or surround with equipment. It can also now swivel with very little effort, tilting and moving up and down its arm with the same handy rail system (the latter isn’t exactly new, but in a test I conducted behind closed doors, I found it required much less force than similar rails from rival brands like MSI or Asus).

The M10S is even smaller, with a circular base measuring just 159mm in diameter. It has similar movement functionality to the M9 II, meaning it is lightweight and easy to manoeuvre. Uniquely, it has a heat sink built into its mount, allowing the panel itself to be thinner and reducing the risk of burn-in.

When I tried both behind closed doors, I was actually surprised at how much I could configure each monitor on almost every axis with a light one-handed push. They don’t feel dangerous, but they’re the closest a PC gaming monitor can get to “thin and light.”

But with that premium feel comes some hefty price tags: the more budget-friendly M9 II still comes in at $799, while the M10S is priced at $1,099.

For those price points, you get 27 inches of screen real estate on both models. The M9 II supports resolutions up to 4K and refresh rates up to 160Hz, but there’s no OLED here. There’s full-array local dimming, which does its best to achieve similar contrast levels without self-illuminating pixels, and backlight scanning, which essentially diffuses an image line by line to reduce motion blur.

The M10S has OLED, and it bumps the refresh rate to 480hz, but it drops your maximum resolution to 1440p. This might seem odd on the more expensive model, but it’s not uncommon on more esports-focused monitors; those gamers prefer higher frame rates, and it can be difficult to make a monitor that can both deliver a higher frame rate and a higher resolution. Likewise, the backlight scanning has been replaced with variable refresh rate support, another esports-friendly feature (there’s also no backlight on the OLED, so that wouldn’t be a moot point here).

Continuing on this vein, a feature lets you shrink your image to reflect what you’d see on a 24.5-inch monitor, the size most gaming tournaments use. This should help you prepare better for game day, and some players prefer the smaller size because they can see more of the field without having to crane their necks. Both monitors have this, but the M10S takes it a step further with an FPS Pro(+) mode developed in collaboration with esports team Fnatic to better highlight where enemies are on screen.

Sony’s Inzone doubles down on PC audiences with features like these, but there are still two nice PlayStation perks: only an Inzone monitor connected to a PS5 gets automatic HDR tone mapping (which should help you set up your console) notoriously cranky technology), plus it automatically changes the picture mode depending on whether you’re playing a game or watching a movie.

Sony is clearly coming out with all these fancy features, but that’s to be expected with a new product line; make a name for yourself with expensive new equipment and then work your way down the market stack once you’re more established. Sony is already the leader in this space Headphones And TVsso it’s clear what their next goal is. I hope people now know that Inzone exists, instead of just writing it off as “PlayStation monitor”.