Sony INZONE M3 Monitor Review

The Sony INZONE M3 has the same design as the Sony INZONE M9. It tries to copy the look of a PS5 with a mainly white body and black accents throughout, and it has a unique tripod stand.

Unfortunately, the Sony M3 has mediocre build quality. While it has the same plastic materials as the Sony INZONE M9, there are issues with how it's put together, as the bezels aren't evenly attached to the screen throughout. The center of the screen even bulges out a bit, giving it a convex and uneven shape. There are also two dead pixels that you can see in the Black Uniformity photo, although this isn't a big issue with most content. Additionally, there's a strange static noise coming from the back of the monitor that you can hear when you have it in a quiet room. The metal stand feels alright, but it doesn't prevent wobble as the screen still shakes quite easily.

The ergonomics are poor, as you can only adjust the height and tilt the screen. Also, if you push down on either side of the top edge to adjust the screen, the monitor can fall down in that direction, meaning the stand isn't very stable. There's a hook in the stand for cable management, although it's very basic. It doesn't have RGB lighting either, like the Sony INZONE M9.

The tripod stand takes up a lot of space and isn't stable either, as the screen wobbles easily. The distance between the user and the screen changes depending on the height it's set at because the stand is on an angle. The thickness measurement above is with the stand at its lowest setting, but at the highest setting the thickness between the front of the screen and the back of the stand is 8.4" (21.4 cm).

There's a joystick located on the back right side to control the on-screen display, and there's a power button below it.

• DisplayPort cable
• Power cable and supply
• Calibration report
• User documentation and manuals
• Stickers

The Sony INZONE M3 has a low native contrast ratio, and it doesn't have a local dimming feature to further improve it. It means that blacks look gray next to bright highlights in dark rooms.

This monitor doesn't have a local dimming feature. We still film these videos on the monitor so you can compare the backlight performance with a monitor that has local dimming, like the Sony INZONE M9.

The SDR peak brightness is great, and you won't have issues using it in a well-lit room. It also maintains its brightness well across different scenes. However, its minimum brightness is a bit high if you want to use it in a dark room and you're sensitive to light. These results are in the 'Game 2' Picture Mode after calibration.

The HDR brightness is decent, but without a local dimming feature, small highlights don't stand out against dark backgrounds due to frame dimming that causes small highlights to be dimmer. While the EOTF follows the target well with darker shades, it rolls off before reaching bright highlights, but because it's a smooth roll-off, it doesn't lose details in bright scenes.

The results from the test windows are in the 'Game 2' Picture Mode. However, the Real Scene brightness is from the 'Cinema' Picture Mode because that test is done using a Blu-ray player, and the monitor automatically locks the Picture Mode to 'Cinema' with a Blu-ray player. Similarly, it's locked to 'Game 2' when connected to a PC.

The horizontal viewing angle is excellent. The image remains consistent when viewing from the sides, which is great if you want to share your screen with someone else.

The vertical viewing angle isn't bad, and the image remains consistent if you're standing up and looking down on it or if you have it mounted above eye-level. It performs differently from above than from below, but this can be due to the bulge in the center of the screen, as explained in the Build Quality section.

The gray uniformity is great. Although the edges are darker than the rest of the screen, it isn't too distracting, and there isn't noticeable dirty screen effect in the center.

The black uniformity is decent. Blacks look blue because of the low contrast, and there's some clouding throughout, but it isn't the worst either. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a local dimming feature to further improve the uniformity. Also, you can see two dead pixels near the center cross, but they aren't noticeable with most content.

The Sony INZONE M3 has good accuracy before calibration. Most colors and the white balance are only slightly off, and the color temperature and gamma are both close to their targets. While it comes factory-calibrated, it doesn't feature an sRGB mode to lock the colors to the sRGB color space, so some colors are oversaturated.

The accuracy after a full calibration is outstanding, and you won't notice any issues with the image.

The SDR color gamut is incredible. It has perfect coverage of the commonly-used sRGB color space used in most web content, but while its Adobe RGB coverage is alright, it isn't good enough if you need the color space for professional use.

The SDR color volume is incredible. It displays bright colors well but struggles with darker colors.

The HDR color gamut is decent. It only has decent coverage of the commonly-used DCI-P3 color space, and it struggles with the wider Rec. 2020 color space. This means it can't display the necessary colors for content that uses that color space.

The HDR color volume is decent, but it's limited by its incomplete color gamut and inability to display dark and bright colors well in HDR.

The Sony M3 has good reflection handling and, combined with its great peak brightness, you won't have issues using it in most well-lit rooms.

The text clarity is just decent, but enabling Windows ClearType helps make diagonal lines easier to read, as you can see in the top photo. These photos are with Windows 10, and you can also see the same photos in Windows 11 below.

The gradient handling is fantastic, and you won't notice banding with most shades of similar colors.

You can reach the monitor's max refresh rate with both DisplayPort and HDMI connections when sending an 8-bit signal. However, due to HDMI's bandwidth limitations, the max refresh rate is limited to 120Hz with 10-bit signals.

The VRR support works with AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards, and it works over its entire range with both sources using DisplayPort and HDMI connections. It also supports Low Framerate Compensation (LFC) for the VRR to continue working at low frame rates.

There's flicker that starts about 5-10 minutes after you launch Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales with VRR enabled, but it isn't the most distracting flicker either. You can reduce the flicker by changing the brightness, but if it bothers you, it's best to disable VRR altogether. You can see a high-speed video of the flicker here. We experienced the same issue with the Sony INZONE M9 and the LG 32GQ950-B, and it's more of an issue with the VRR implementation of the game than with the monitor.

The response time at the max refresh rate of 240Hz is remarkable. Motion looks smooth, and you won't notice any blur with fast-moving objects. The recommended overdrive setting is 'Fast' because it has a quicker total response time than 'Standard' and less overshoot than 'Faster'.

The Sony INZONE M3 has an impressive response time at 120Hz. Unlike at its max refresh rate, the recommended overdrive setting is 'Standard' because 'Fast' has too much overshoot. This means that you might need to change the setting if the framerate of your game drops or if you change sources, but if you want a set-and-forget mode, 'Standard' also performs well at its max refresh rate.

The response time at 60Hz is great, and while it has more motion blur than with higher refresh rates, motion still looks smooth. Once again, the recommended overdrive setting is 'Standard' as 'Fast' and 'Faster' have too much overshoot.

The Sony M3 doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature to reduce persistence blur.

This monitor has a flicker-free backlight, which helps reduce eye strain.

The Sony INZONE M3 has low input lag for a responsive feel while gaming.

This monitor works well with the PS5 but only supports 1080p signals and can't downscale a 4k image. As this is a Sony monitor, it has a few features only made for the PS5, including Auto HDR Tone Mapping, to improve the HDR performance.

The Sony M3 has limited compatibility with the Xbox Series X. It doesn't support HDR because the Xbox only supports HDR with 4k signals. Also, you can enable 1440p @ 60Hz using the HDMI Override settings, but that also disables VRR.

Although Sony advertises the HDMI ports as HDMI 2.1, they don't support HDMI 2.1 bandwidth and instead are limited to HDMI 2.0 bandwidth.

The Sony M3 has a USB-C port that supports DisplayPort Alt Mode, so you can display an image from a compatible device and charge it at the same time. However, with only 15 W of power delivery, it isn't enough to charge power-hungry laptops.

The Sony INZONE M3 works well with recent M1 MacBooks, but there are some picture quality issues. HDR looks washed out and even has a distracting flicker on the desktop at times, so it's better to stay in SDR while on the desktop. Luckily, there aren't any issues when waking the laptop up from sleep, and the monitor stays on even if you close the lid of the laptop.

This monitor has a few additional features, which you can see below. Although Sony advertises that it has a KVM, it doesn't work properly, as once you try to switch devices, your external device stops working.

• Auto Genre Picture Mode: Automatically switches the picture mode according to the source. For example, watching a Blu-ray locks it to the 'Cinema' mode.
• Black Equalizer: Adjusts the game so that you can see opponents better in dark games.
• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair that your system won't detect, giving you a competitive advantage.
• FPS Counter: Shows the current frame rate from your source.
• Timer: Displays a timer on the screen.