Sony Electronics lines up new InZone monitors for gamers

Sony Electronics unveiled today two new Inzone monitors aimed at gamers, with a focus on everyone from casual players to esports pros.

The Sony Inzone M9 II is a cheaper 4K display that flashes 160 images on the screen in a second while the Sony Inzone M10S is a 4K display that can display 480 frames in a second. It is a WOLED monitor.

The high-end M10S screen was developed with input from esports athletes including Fnatic esports organization.

Sony Inzone M9 II 4K 27-inch display

The displays include the 27-inch Inzone M9 II, with a focus on brightness and contrast. It’s a 4K FALD monitor running at 160Hz and a resolution of 2160pm, said Valerie Chi, product manager at Sony, in an interview with GamesBeat.

The 160Hz number means it can display 160 frames a second, compared to about 60 frames a second for many ordinary monitors. The IPS monitor has a response time of 1 millisecond to minimize artifacts like blur and ghosting. It’s a gray to gray screen.

It also has full array local dimming, which is borrowed from Sony Bravia TV technology and algorithms. It enables brighter highlights and deeper blacks for better depth perception. It also has backlight scanning to reduce motion blur across the entire screen.

“We’re adapting that cinematic, full array technology from our Sony Bravia TVs into this monitor, which would be great for immersive gameplay and storytelling games. So be like Elden ring or Monster Hunter, Balder’s Gate III or Black Myth Wukong,” Chi said.

With backlight scanning, the display flashes the backlight in a sequence from the top to the bottom of the screen in every frame to make the hold time shorter, and reduces motion blur across the entire screen.

The display has a variable refresh rate. You can adjust the display refresh rate dynamically to match the variable frame rates of gaming device output and eliminate stuttering delay and screen tearing for smoother, more fluid gameplay. It’s compatible with wide variety of graphic cards and gaming consoles, including Nvidia GeForce, AMD Radeon, Intel Arc, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

The display has a wide color gamut that can show 1.07 billion colors compared to 16.7 million colors for many high-end screens. That makes for better sunsets. It has a peak brightness of more than 600 nits.

Chi said the monitor is targeted at core gamers and streamers, mainstream gamers and casual gamers. That’s a pretty good slice of the pyramid of gamers. But it doesn’t quite cover esports.

The monitor has finely grained modes for gamers. It has a mode for first-person shooters, emphasizing HDR and speed. It can also support a mode for multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA games like League of Legends) and real-time strategy (RTS games like Homeworld 3). It can also support movies and some other modes like role-playing games and a more generic game mode.

For the MOBA/RTS mode, it adjusts the color saturation and the sharpness to make objects easier to distinguish while you’re in game, Chi said.

For the PS5, it supports auto HDR tone mapping. That means Your PS5 consoles automatically recognize InZone gaming monitors during initial setup and optimize HDR settings. Even in high contrast scenes, you’ll see crucial details and colors in the brightest and darkest parts of the screen, Chi said.

And with auto genre picture mode, InZone gaming monitors switch automatically into Game Mode when gaming, which minimizes input lag to make the action more responsive, or Cinema Mode when watching movies via a streaming service or from a Blu-ray disc on the PS5, which shifts focus to picture processing for a more expressive picture.

If you’re serious about first-person shooter games, the monitor can also move into a 24.5-inch display mode that will improve your aim and sharpen the image and yield higher motion clarity. At a 27-inch frame, it may be easier to pick out targets with a 2160p resolution, but with the 24.5-inch frame, it may be easier to see all the action happening at once.

“You might not want to use it because you want to utilize the full 27-inch screen, but this option is there depending on how you like to play your games,” Chi said.

It has gaming assist in the form of Black Equalizer, which exposes the shadow to let you spot enemies in the dark. And it has a frame rate counter to show how smoothly the game is running, a crosshair to improve aiming and a timer to track elapsed time.

The on-screen display has a small joystick on the back of the monitor that will let you maneuver to the right mode for the monitor. And it has PC software for on-screen display menu control so you can use the PC to easily adjust your monitor settings.

It comes with a small-footprint ergonomic display stand with a 177-millimeter diameter and 8mm to 13mm then base to free up more desktop space.

You can easily position an angled keyboard and large gaming mouse pad around or under the display, while the stand is solid and stable enough.

The display can swivel easily. By rotating the display 180 degrees, you can connect and disconnect the cables easily, while sitting in front of your desk. It has I/O ports that include DisplayPor 2.1 (up to 4K 160Hz), two ports for HDMI 2.1 (up to 4K 144Hz), USB Type-B (upstream to PC, USB 5Gbps), two ports for USB Type-A (downstream from PC, USB 5Gbps), a 3.5mm jack for audio and a USB Type-A for software updates).

It is G-Sync compatible, can handle DisplayPort 2.1, and has 2W x 2 built-in speakers.

The Sony InZone M10S 4K 27-inch display

This display has a 27-inch OLED QHD screen with a refresh rate of 480Hz. It is focused on immersive images and responsive speed. And yes, this one is targeted at esports players and everyone else on down the pyramid.

It has Quad HD 1440p/480Hz refresh rate and an OLED screen with 0.03 milliseconds response time gray to gray. Recent console games have a refresh rate of 120Hz.

Sony said that with a sub-2.0ms input lag in 480Hz, the display creates a distinct competitive advantage as it leads to more responsive on-screen interactivity using your mouse or other controller.

It has the variable refresh rate like the other monitor, meaning you can adjust the display refresh rate dynamically to match the variable frame rates of gaming device output and eliminate stuttering delay and screen tearing for smoother, more fluid gameplay. It also works with graphics cards and game consoles. It has the same color gamut of 1.07 billion colors.

Fnatic advice

This one was developed with the esports athletes at Fnatic, with a focus on tournament use highlighting speed and performance. The pro features include a 24.5-inch display tournament mode, with FPSPro+ and FPS Pro modes. Those modes are tuned based on advice from esports players.

The M10S in the 24.5-inch mode can display games at a 1:1 resolution of 1332p, with up to 480Hz refresh rate.

“We are using their professional esports knowledge and experience in the competitive space to make what we like to call a tournament-ready monitor, which highlights both like speed and performance,” Chi said.

It’s got the same ergonomic footprint and it targets pro players, core competitive gamers, core gamers and streamers, mainstream gamers and casual players. It also has the same 24.5-inch display mode on a 27-inch screen. And it can handle the same gaming modes as the other monitor.

Inzone M10S features a 24.5-inch mode, displaying games at a 1:1 resolution of 1332p, with up to 480Hz refresh rate. Players can also select lower resolutions, including 1080p, ideal for esports users.

“Being able to work on the product with Sony from the start is a major deal. I’m looking forward to
playing on it,” said Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett from the Fnatic Valorant team, in a statement. “I’m a huge fan of FPS Pro+ as it allows me to see the agents clearer than I could do on my own manually.”

Timofey ‘Chronicle’ Khromov, also from the Fnatic Valorant team, commented in a statement, “I have been working on the development of the Inzone M10S, and I’m happy to have made some impact to help improve the products. An OLED monitor is the best solution for me, with zero response time and a range of very good colors, it gives me no excuses for poor performance! This is the end game for gaming monitors.”

Sony also said that this screen has OLED self-lit pixels, which provides an immersive gaming experience with its brightness, contrast ratio, accurate color expression and viewing angle.

It has a 1,300-nit peak brightness, perfect black, and infinite contrast of 1.5 million to 1 contrast ratio. At its thinnest point, it is only 5.9 millimeters thick. The WOLED screen has advantages over the QD-OLED, Sony said.

The device is so fast that Sony has to cool it. It has an inner aluminum panel to diffuse the panel’s heat in a uniform way to prevent burn-in.

It also has a multilayer thermal structure (passive cooling system) for efficient and effective thermal radiation of the chipsets. It has a sandwich thermal structure for T-con chipset so it can radiate the heat to the top and bottom with a dual set of aluminum plate and thermal pad. And it has fanless airflow with a custom heatsink for the scaler chipset. It can radiate the heat with the custom heatsink and metallic cover plate.

“There’s a high performing cooling structure built into this monitor to help prevent burn, which is a big thing when it comes to OLED,” Chi said. “And the passive cooling system is fanless and it’s very quiet. The passive cooling system helps to bring heat from bottom up. It’s a vertical ventilation.”

It shares other common user-interface features with the other monitor, and it has an esports-friendly ergonomics design stand. With a small footprint, it makes it easy to position a keyboard and mouse around the monitor. And it has a stand with an adjustment scale guide for easy setup. It’s got the same ports as the other device.

The M9 II costs $800, while the M10S is $1,100. The M10S is available now at Sony.com, Amazon, Best Buy, and other authorized dealers. The M9 II gaming monitor is available now at Sony.com, Amazon, Best Buy, and other authorized dealers.