With big PS5 games like God of War, and now Spider-Man Remastered & Miles Morales coming to PC, it was inevitable that Sony would introduce a gaming monitor. The Sony Inzone M9 is a 27-inch gaming monitor with everything you’d want from a 4K screen, including a 120Hz refresh rate with HDMI 2.1 to drive it, IPS colors, HDR 600, VRR, and G-Sync compatibility. But what really gives this gaming monitor its edge is its HDR capabilities (including one that’s PlayStation-specific) and competitive $899 price tag.

Sony Inzone M9 – Design

The Sony Inzone M9 has a black and white color scheme that makes it absolutely look like a gaming monitor made for the PS5. Meanwhile, the front of the display’s base looks almost identical to Sony’s console, except it’s leaning back.

Thankfully, the Sony Inzone M9’s styling isn’t as eye-catching as the PS5’s popped collar. In fact, the design here actually helps hide the monitor’s feet and most of the entire stand behind the screen. There’s also a cable passthrough in the center of the supporting arm to keep things even tidier.

All of this makes for a very clean gaming desk setup and thanks to the monitor’s rear-positioned feet, you can rotate your gaming keyboard or whip your gaming mouse far forward without bumping into anything. That said, the way the support arm is slanted means the monitor shifts slightly forward and back as you adjust its height.

The business side of the display is nice and clean too. There’s no outrageous RGB lighting or big tribal logo, and the bottom lip is only a hair over 10mm in size. The bezels are pretty small too, measuring in at 7mm on top and then 9mm on the sides.

Sony Inzone M9 – Features

To quickly review, the Sony Inzone M9 is a 27-inch monitor with a 3,440 x 1,440 resolution IPS panel featuring a 120Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and support for VRR and G-Sync compatibility.

Its most stand-out feature is its full-array backlighting system, a display technology that is primarily seen in 4K TVs. Although this isn’t the first monitor to feature local dimming, it packs 96 lighting zones to drive localized contrast that blows most gaming monitors out of the water. Other competing 4K gaming monitors like the $799 LG UltraGear 27GN950-B only feature 16 local dimming zones.

More often, gaming monitors like the LG UltraGear 27GP950 and Samsung Odyssey G70A only feature edge-lit backlighting, so they have a noticeable glow around the edges of the display. Meanwhile, the Sony Inzone M9 can display bright pixels right next to sheer darkness without any halo-ing issues (or backlight bleeding into darker parts of the screen).

Of course, this isn’t the most backlighting zones we’ve seen on a gaming monitor. The $1,999 Acer Predator x27 and Asus ROG Swift PG27UQ both featured 384 zones as the first two G-Sync Ultimate gaming monitors in 2018. More recently, Mini-LED technology has introduced even more intricate backlighting control to displays, but at a considerable cost. For a few examples, the $2,895 Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX features 1,152 lighting zones and the $2,299 Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 has 2,048 lighting zones.

The Sony Inzone M9’s 96 lighting zones might seem minuscule by comparison, but it still delivers a fantastic picture and at $899 it comes at a fantastic value.

As for connectivity, it has two HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort, and USB-C (with DP support), so you can connect all your devices including two consoles, a gaming PC, and even a gaming laptop if you wanted. Better yet, it automatically changes inputs once it detects a video signal. The monitor also has two KVM switches built into it so you can share any USB peripherals plugged into the monitor with two computing devices.

When connecting to a PS5, the Sony Inzone M9 also offers Auto HDR Tonemapping. Basically, this means your console talks to the screen and recognizes its full capabilities to automatically set the HDR settings. This saves you the hassle of eyeballing the HDR brightness and darkness settings for every game. Unfortunately, Auto HDR Tonemapping only works when this monitor is connected to Sony consoles and not a gaming PC playing PlayStation games.

Sony Inzone M9 – OSD and Software

Sony’s on-screen display menu system is clear, fast, and easy to navigate. On the back of the monitor, you’ll find a joystick to open and get through all the menus.

All the typical stuff for a gaming monitor is here including adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation, color temperature, and black equalizer. There are a few prebaked presets you can mess with and the Inzone M9 will actually auto-switch picture modes too.

It also features some more gamer-oriented features including turning on an on-screen clock, crosshairs, and the frame rate. Unfortunately, that last one doesn’t work as well as intended as it just shows what hertz the monitor is operating at rather than a live counter of how many frames your game is running at. I had Ghost of Tsushima running in fidelity mode and while the game was clearly running at 30fps, the counter on the screen read 60Hz.

If you find messing with the settings on the monitor itself to be finicky, you can also adjust everything from Sony’s Inzone PC application. It offers all the same adjustments and while I found it a bit strange using PC software for a monitor, after fine-tuning things without having to reach behind the monitor I kind of wished more displays came with an application.

Sony Inzone M9 – Performance

The Sony Inzone M9 offers astounding picture quality. Thanks to those 96 local dimming zones I’ve mentioned previously, this monitor has almost OLED levels of contrast. Highlights shown on the screen are blindingly bright and darkness is represented by almost pitch black. What’s even more impressive is you can have these two extremes right next to each other without seeing a speck of dull gray pixels anywhere. This was especially evident whenever looking at a starry sky in Returnal’s intro every time I died.

On top of the great contrast, colors really pop from the Inzone M9’s IPS panel, so you can enjoy all the rich colors in vibrant games like Horizon: Forbidden West. According to my colorimeter tests, this monitor maxes out for sRGB and 98% of DCI-P3 colors, so color accuracy is excellent here.

As for motion, the Inzone M9 does a fantastic job of making gameplay look fluid. Thanks to support for VRR, FreeSync, and G-Sync compatibility, you won’t see tearing on this display while playing on either console or any gaming PC. Outside of gameplay, I tested the monitor against the Blur Busters UFO Test and it impressively showed no ghosting at all even on the top row at 120Hz.

Sony has announced a new line of gaming headsets and monitors today.

As part of its Inzone lineup, Sony's latest lineup of gaming products are not specifically PlayStation-branded. In total, five products are featured in the Inzone lineup: three gaming headsets along with two gaming monitors.

The headsets are part of the Inzone H-series, the design is similar to Sony's Pulse 3D headset with three different models: H3, H7, and H9. The H3 is the most affordable and is the only wired gaming headset in the Inzone H-series. While the H7 and H9 are wireless headsets that also support Bluetooth, the biggest distinction between the two is the H9 offers digital noise canceling. All three headsets support 360-degree spatial audio and work on PC and PS5.

The Sony Inzone H3 will retail for $99, while the H7 and H9 will retail for $229 and $299, respectively.

We reviewed the high-end Sony Inzone H9 headset, noting that, while it was a decent first attempt from Sony to make a non-PlayStation branded headset, the sore spots and $299 price tag make it a tough sell for most of its target audience.

The other two products in the Inzone lineup include the M-series, with two monitors: the Inzone M3 and M9. The Inzone M3 is a 1080p gaming monitor with a refresh rate of 240Hz. The flagship M9 is a 4K gaming monitor with a refresh rate of 144Hz.

Both M-series monitors are 27-inches and feature HDMI 2.1, making these good monitors to consider if you are looking to take advantage of devices that support variable refresh rate, such as the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs. Sony notes that the Inzone M-series will have some exclusive features for PS5 owners, such as Auto HDR Tone Mapping, allowing you to optimize your console's high dynamic range (HDR).

In our review of the Sony Inzone M9, we praised the display for offering 4K 120Hz gaming at a competitive price, compared to other monitors of similar specs available on the market.

The Inzone M3 will cost $529 and will be available sometime this winter, while the high-end Inzone M9 is coming this summer and will retail for $899.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Sony is no stranger to headphones, but the gaming headsets it makes tend to be specifically PlayStation-branded — most notably the Sony Pulse 3D headset that came out in 2020. The tech giant’s latest outing in the gaming headset market is a trio of products: the Inzone H3, H7, and H9. Today I’m looking at the high-end H9, which features digital noise canceling in addition to wireless and Bluetooth connectivity. It’s expensive and simplistic in design, but when compared to the Pulse 3D headset, this is a tough sell for most of its target audience.

Sony Inzone H9 – Design and Features

The Sony Inzone H9 looks very similar to the Pulse 3D headset, with a white plastic outer shell and matte black headband. The design is simple and clean and fits right in with other accessories in the PS5 lineup.

The earcups vary greatly from the Pulse 3D – instead of a round circular shape, the Inzone H9 is more of an oval, reminding me a bit more of the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones. Like the WH-1000XM5, the side of the H9 uses forks to attach the earcups instead of the more rigid design of the Pulse 3D. This gives the earcups a bit more flexibility and makes the H9 a lot more comfortable to wear than the Pulse 3D headset, which felt like it was tightly cuffing on my head. The fork design offers more leverage to accommodate more head shapes – I was able to wear this for a full 8-hour workday and then turn around and listen to music without any discomfort.

Underneath the earcups are several buttons to be found: The right side houses the power button, the Bluetooth pairing button, and a Game/Chat button which allows you to adjust the levels of either. The bottom left houses the USB-C port, a dedicated button to turn on or off ambient noise, and a wheel for volume control.

The Inzone H9 is the only headset in the trio that offers the same soft-fit leather included in the Sony WH-1000XM5s, which gives the earcups a soft foam-like feel that helps maintain comfort over extended wear. That said, it’s also more susceptible to scratching and tears after long-term use, and is more prone to picking up oils and smudges.

The headphones use a USB dongle to connect wirelessly to a PC or PS5. I also tried connecting the H9 to my Xbox Series X and Series S consoles using the dongle, but sadly couldn’t get it to work on either. I had the dongle set to Windows, which kept the dongle/headset connection stable, but the Xbox refused to recognize the headset. I also tried connecting it to Xbox via Bluetooth, to no avail.

The Inzone H9 also has a built-in microphone, though I found it a bit underwhelming (more on that later). Instead of the mic being something you detach or pull out of a little cubby, you move it around using a little rotary to pull it up or slide it down. It also uses a flip-to-mute system, meaning the only way to mute the microphone is to flip it up away from your mouth. It works fine, but personally, I would prefer a dedicated mute button.

Sony Inzone H9 – Active Noise-Canceling

The Sony Inzone H9 features active noise-canceling, a welcome feature that was missing on the Pulse 3D headset. Of the three new H-series Inzone headsets, only the H9 features ANC.

The Inzone H9 does a good job of blocking out sound. In testing, I found the noise-cancellation feature was way better than the Razer Opus and more closely up to par with my AirPods Pro. Before playing any audio, the noise cancellation didn’t fully block outside noise. I could still slightly hear a fan blowing, or a bit of noise from a TV set to a normal volume. Once I started playing music or a podcast through the H9, though, it did a good job blocking outside sound.

The Inzone H9 also has an Ambient Sound feature that amplifies outside sound so that you can hear things like people talking without having to take the headphones off. There’s a setting in the Inzone Hub software that lets you set your desired ambient sound level, as well as a “Focus on Voice” toggle that reduces background noise and prioritizes person-to-person conversations.

Sony Inzone H9 – Setup and Connectivity

The Inzone H9 has decent connectivity options, notably the ability to connect via both 2.4GHz (via USB dongle) and Bluetooth simultaneously. This is a nice feature that’s recently made its way to some high-end headsets, allowing you to play audio from both your console/PC and phone or another Bluetooth device at the same time.

Bluetooth pairing is simple and only takes a few seconds after holding the pairing button on the right ear cup. I found this to be super convenient as it allowed me to be on a Discord call with my friends while also having the sound of a game from my PS5 or PC playing as well. Beyond pairing, the Bluetooth button does triple duty – pressing the button once plays or pauses a song, two skips the song, and pressing the button three times restarts it.

On the left side of the ear cup, you’ll find a USB-C port for charging. Sony includes a USB Type-A cable with the headset or you can use a USB-C to USB-C cable to charge as well. Unfortunately, I could not get the headset to work over a wired connection when testing it on either Windows or Mac. If you need to charge the headset while using it, you have to still use the USB dongle for connectivity. There also isn’t a 3.5mm jack, unlike the Pulse 3D.

Sony Inzone H9 – Battery Life

Sony promises the Inzone H9 can deliver up to 32 hours of battery life. In my testing, I managed to get about 30 hours of usage before I opted to plug in for a charge.

The Inzone H9 doesn’t provide a clear indication of your battery life on the headset itself. There’s no display indicator, nor even a blinking LED to let you know it’s getting low. You have to connect to PC or PS5 in order to check battery life, and even then it doesn’t give you an exact percentage or estimated time remaining – just an icon with three bars on PS5 (or four bars on PC) to indicate how much juice you have left.

Sony Inzone H9 – Performance

While the H9 is more of a gaming headset, I was curious to see how it performed playing music. In Seven Nation Army, which has an incredible bass riff, the H9 offered clear and full sound. The bass was not overpowering and I could hear the other instruments without having to crank up my volume. That said, the H9 isn’t quite up there with some of Sony’s more dedicated headphones, like the WH-1000 line, but it’s not a terrible option if you’re trying to get more mileage out of your headset.

For gaming performance, I booted Resident Evil 2 Remake, which takes full advantage of the PS5’s Tempest 3D audio. Atmosphere aside, the 3D audio through the H9 immersed me even more in the game. The sense of dread of wandering a dark, gloomy zombie-infested police station puts me more at the edge of my seat with 3D audio when I can hear which direction zombies are moaning and shambling towards me.

Games like Astro’s Playroom and Horizon: Forbidden West are no different. Roaming the world in both felt like a significant improvement compared to playing on TV with no headset. The immersion that the PS5 as a console can do is impressive, and the H9 performed its job on that front admirably.

The microphone built into the Sony Inzone H9 is not very impressive – it feels cheaply made, and quite frankly out of place compared to other parts on the headset. It’s very sensitive – picking up all sounds around you, not just your voice – yet also extremely quiet. When performing audio tests, I set the microphone levels to the highest they could be, yet the output from the mic was still very quiet – I had to crank up the volume to hear it. It was clear, sure, but quiet. Even on my Discord and Slack calls and the few phone calls I took through my phone with the headset, I was told the audio I output was extremely quiet while speaking in my normal voice. I had to overcompensate by raising my voice in order to be heard, which is not ideal when trying to have casual conversations with friends and family.

Sony Inzone H9 – Software

The Sony Inzone H9 has a companion app, Inzone Hub, which supports Windows and Mac devices. Inzone Hub focuses on three types of settings: Sound, Device, and App Sync. The Sound settings allow you to adjust the Noise Canceling and Ambient Sound, or turn both off.

Spatial Sound can also be enabled in the app, though you will need to scan a QR code and use your smartphone to take pictures of your left and right ear in order to set up the personalization features. Dynamic Range also has a few options: High, Low, or disabled. The microphone levels can also be adjusted. An interesting feature to note is that when the mic is propped up and not positioned where your mouth is, you will be locked from customizing the mic's volume and other features, like enabling auto gain.

On the Sound Settings page, you can adjust the equalizer of the headphones. The EQ options aren’t as robust as the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro, where things such as the mixer, game, and chat levels can be tuned, but there’s still plenty here to tinker with. The Inzone Hub includes a few presets, such as one designed for listening to music or videos, another that is a standard sound, and one that emphasizes boosting the bass. That said, the equalizer customizations you make won’t be enabled if your headset is set to “Inzone H9 – Chat” in your Sound Settings, so you will need to make sure each time you pair the device on Mac or Windows that it is recognized as “Inzone H9 – Game.” The EQ presets already prepped in the Inzone Hub all sound distinct. There’s some tinkering and experimentation to be had, though if you are not familiar with how to adjust the frequency for an audio device the chart layout will likely be intimidating and confusing.

Sony says you can import EQ profiles, however, the process is manual and can be a bit of a headache. The App Sync feature sounds like a great idea, but it is again a manual process. Instead of suggesting a list of apps on your computer installed for you, you will need to dig through your computer to find the correct file of the specific app. The App Sync feature allows you to enable the Inzone H9 as your default audio device, but the lack of streamlining makes it not worth the trouble and I found it easier to just go into whatever app I was using, like Zoom or Spotify, and adjust the settings from there.

It’s also worth noting that EQ adjustments you make in the Inzone Hub only work with PC, and won’t carry over to PS5 or devices you are connected to over Bluetooth. That said, this isn’t necessarily a fault of the headset and software itself, but rather an ongoing issue among headsets that work with both PC and consoles. EQ support coming to consoles would surely circumvent that, but for now, you can’t take full advantage of fine-tuning adjustments or even the few presets the Inzone Hub has unless you are on a computer.

Overall, Inzone Hub is pretty underwhelming. It doesn’t offer a ton of features, especially considering the price of the Inzone H7 and H9. Compared to the software used for Logitech gaming products, for example, the Inzone Hub just looks so dull and direct.

The Fallout TV series continues to grow its cast adding Twin Peaks' Kyle MacLachlan as well as Xelia Mendes-Jones and Aaron Moten to the cast.

Variety reports that MacLachlan, Mendes-Jones, and Moten will join the previously announced Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, who is reportedly playing the lead role as a character "based on the ghouls."

No word yet on any of the roles for the new cast members joining the production.

MacLachlan is best known for his role as special agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks. He has starred in several other David Lynch films, but has also been a mainstay on TV appearing in shows like How I Met Your Mother and playing the Mayor of Portland in Portlandia.

The Fallout TV series is set to begin production later this year with Westworld's Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy set to serve as executive producers. Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner are also executive producers and co-showrunners. Bethesda director Todd Howard is also an executive producer.

In addition to producing, Jonathan Nolan will direct the series premiere for Amazon having previously directed several episodes of Westworld and Person of Interest.

Fallout is just one of several video game adaptations for TV currently in the works. While Fallout is set for Amazon, HBO is developing a Last of Us TV series, and a Horizon series is heading to Netflix.

Meanwhile, Bethesda is busy working on its next game Starfield while also in the early stages of the next Elder Scrolls game. This means a new Fallout game might be further out and will likely not be done before the TV series hits Amazon.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

It’s hard not to see the similarities between DNF Duel and 2020’s Granblue Fantasy Versus: they’re both 2D fighters developed by Arc System Works; they’re both based on a franchise that’s wildly popular abroad but not as well-known in North America (in this case, Dungeon Fighter Online); and most notably, they’re both deceptively complex. Simplified controls and a guard button can easily be the death knell for a true competitive fighting game, but ArcSys and 8ing (the team behind Marvel vs. Capcom 3) haven’t added them at the cost of skill. Instead DNF Duel is a game of resource management, patience, and creative problem solving wrapped up in a beautiful package, although it may not be as friendly to newcomers as intended.

DNF Duel joins the growing number of fighting games using simplified inputs to help ease you into its control scheme. Special moves can be performed with only a button press, or a button combined with a direction, but those who go the extra length of using the more traditional quarter-circle motions are rewarded with better resource recharge. It’s nice to have the quick option while still being given a boost for putting in the extra effort, and the simplified inputs mean fights are about understanding what each character’s moveset can really do.

For instance, the Striker can chain special attacks together in a way that other characters can’t, making her especially adept at continuing pressure and often tricking opponents into thinking they’re safe to counterattack when they’re actually not. Many characters also have invincible reversals on wake up, quick pokes that can be converted into big damage, and gigantic screen filling objects like Inquisitor’s giant wheel or Kunoichi’s fire tornado. These are some truly wild characters with some truly nonsense moves, and much of the difficulty curve consists of learning how to deal with these attacks. Getting beatdown by one gave me concrete goals to lab against in training mode, and a major sense of satisfaction when I didn’t let someone get away with it later. But until you know what to do in a given situation, tying so much of each fight up in learning these tricks can be rough to deal with.

Rather than assigning inputs to a cooldown like Granblue Fantasy Versus, DNF Duel ties your MP Skills and Guard Cancels to an MP meter, with the most powerful screen-clearing moves often consuming the most MP. The twist in this comes from the ability to Convert white damage (the temporary damage you gain from blocking and being hit by less powerful moves) into MP. When you perform a Conversion, it also returns your character to a neutral state, allowing you to chain moves together that normally wouldn’t be possible, or making certain risky moves safe by letting you block when you would normally be punished. Finding creative ways to use my MP and knowing when to Convert my white damage often meant the difference between victory and defeat, and I really liked the flexibility the system offered.

Movement also took me a while to wrap my head around. At first, DNF Duel felt heavy and unwieldy. Although it’s an anime fighter, there’s no air guarding, no double jumps, and no air dashes other than some character-specific moves, so the action stays relatively grounded. There’s also Exhaustion to consider, the state you enter when you run out of MP and your MP specific skills no longer function. Combine that with characters that can harass you from a full screen away and completely lock you down if you’ve used all your MP, and you have a pretty frustrating on-ramp as you learn the systems and roster. But once DNF Duel starts to click and you learn what moves to look out for, when to press a counterattack, and when to bet it all on Conversion, its quick decision making leads to some really fun and satisfying moments where you can take a big risk for a bigger payoff.

Dungeon Fighter Offline

Thankfully, there are a few offline options to help you learn these myriad systems as DNF Duel has several offerings for those who prefer their battles to be solo affairs. The Arcade and Survival Modes are standard fighting game fare, with Survival allowing you to use your accumulated score to make purchases of greater attack power, health recharges, or even things like increased guard crush to break through your opponent’s defenses. The arcade mode is simply a series of eight one-on-one battles, and they can get pretty tough on the hardest difficulty. It was a good way to get familiar with characters and help build my understanding of how to keep myself out of bad situations.

Unfortunately, the DNF Duel Story Mode is fairly dull even by fighting game standards. All of the 15 starting characters have a series of visual novel-like vignettes during which almost nothing interesting happens before they are forced into fighting someone else for the thinnest possible reasons. Each character story can be completed in about half an hour, and other than giving some bare insight into the personalities and relationships among the cast, there’s little reason for completing more than the one needed to unlock a secret character. There is some cool custom art accompanying each story, but you can also unlock those in the gallery for a small amount of the in-game currency you earn by playing various modes.

The training mode options are at least pretty extensive to make up for this, even if the menus required some fiddling around to set the conditions to what I wanted each time. There are gameplay mechanics breakdowns, character-specific tutorials, and combo challenges, all of which were valuable as I learned the ins and outs of each system. I especially loved reading the info panes for every character, as they provide useful insight into how certain moves were intended to be used by the developers.

Dungeon Fighter Online

After the fantastic rollback netcode of Guilty Gear Strive, I went in expecting DNF Duel to play really well online, and thankfully that appears to be the case so far. Most of the matches I’ve played felt smooth, even ones I’ve played against people in Asia despite some rollback frames. Arc System Works once again gets a little too cute with physical lobbies for my taste, working as they do in Dragon Ball FighterZ or Granblue with in-game arcade machines you walk up to in order to join a match, but getting into Player Match rooms is a breeze. You can also set your lobby character, Player Card, slogans, and the information you want displayed for a bit of neat customization after purchasing different options with in-game currency or unlocking them through specific challenges.

While queuing for a ranked match, you can standby in the Training, Tutorial, Arcade, and Survival modes, which is always a nice way to alleviate long queue times since there’s unfortunately no crossplay between the Steam and PlayStation versions. I haven’t had issues queuing yet, but DNF Duel only just released and is a bit of a niche title already, so hopefully the player pool remains active enough that the lack of crossplay doesn’t become a problem.

A Thing of Beauty

DNF Duel continues ArcSys’ trend of having fantastic 2.5D art. If the developer hadn’t cemented itself as the leader in this space after Granblue Fantasy Versus and Guilty Gear Strive, that reputation should be rock solid now as both the characters and the stages are simply gorgeous. Each member of the cast has a distinct look and are easy to differentiate between in the heat of the action – that’s impressive given how incredible they are in motion too, with clothes rustling, colorful effects flying about, and supers that are as unique to their skillset as they are bombastic.

The music doesn’t quite hit the same bar sadly, as it’s mostly unremarkable rock with a few fun highlights here and there. But all of the art, music, and character voice lines can be perused in the gallery mode after you purchase them with in-game currency. There are tons of pieces to go through, and fans of the original DFO should find plenty to love here as well since the art options aren’t limited to just DNF Duel.