Sony INZONE M9 Monitor Review

The Sony M9 has a unique design and a definite gamer aesthetic. The front of the monitor has a simple design, with very thin bezels on three sides and just a bit of dead space between the sides of the screen and the first pixels. The back of the monitor shares many similar design elements with the PS5 and the other Sony INZONE products, like the Sony INZONE H7 Wireless. The stand has a unique design, with three legs that support the monitor like a tripod.

The Sony M9 has just decent build quality. It's mostly plastic, and some of it feels pretty cheap and not very premium. The stand doesn't work as well as it should for a monitor at this price point; it wobbles quite a bit and takes a while to recover from wobble.

Unfortunately, the stand's unique design also limits its range of ergonomic adjustments. The height adjustment range is disappointing, and it can't swivel or rotate to portrait orientation. Thankfully, it can be VESA mounted, so if you're having a hard time placing it in an ideal viewing position, you can mount it to a third-party stand or wall mount instead.

The back of the monitor is pretty plain, with an RGB light strip near the top of the display and a hook on the back of the stand for basic cable management.

The stand has a very unique design that looks a bit like a tripod. The height adjustment is at an angle, so the total thickness varies depending on the height of the display. At the lowest point, the total thickness is about 9.7" (24.7 cm), and at the highest setting, it's about 8.3" (21.1 cm), so the distance between the user and the screen varies as you adjust the height.

The joystick control is located at the back of the monitor. It's easy to use but a bit sensitive, so it can take some getting used to if you're coming from an LG or Samsung monitor with a joystick.

• Power cord
• Power supply
• User guide
• Stickers

Unfortunately, the Sony M9 doesn't come with any cables to connect it with your source.

The Sony M9 has a mediocre contrast ratio, so blacks look gray if you're in a dark room. Unfortunately, despite the relatively high zone count, the local dimming feature can't boost the native contrast ratio, even with relatively large areas of black space like this checkerboard pattern.

The local dimming feature is just okay. It has 96 zones in an 8x12 array, which is better than most local dimming features on monitors. The zones are still a bit too large to allow for precise dimming in dark scenes, and the algorithms tend to leave more zones on than needed. There's some noticeable blooming around bright objects, but very little black crush because of this. It isn't very good for subtitles, though, as it tends to light up large areas of the screen.

The local dimming feature can keep up with fast-moving content well, so you don't see a trailing bright edge behind fast-moving, bright objects. It's an okay implementation, but it's limited by the relatively small number of zones, and because it tends to turn on more zones than necessary, the impact is limited. You can see two real scene videos of the local dimming feature in action here, and the same video filmed from an angle here.

If you want a 4k monitor with similar features and a better local dimming feature, then look into the Cooler Master Tempest GP27U.

The Sony M9 has great peak brightness in SDR. It's bright enough to overcome glare in a bright room, and there's no variation in brightness between scenes. If you want to use your monitor in a well-lit room and prefer something even brighter, the INNOCN 27M2V is a good alternative.

These measurements are from after calibration in the 'Game 1' Picture Mode with Brightness set to max, and Local Dimming set to 'High'.

The Sony M9 has impressive peak brightness in HDR. It's bright enough to deliver an impactful HDR experience in both games and movies. The PQ EOTF follows the target curve well for the most part, ensuring most scenes are displayed at the brightness level intended by the content creator, but dark scenes are boosted a bit. There's a gradual roll-off near the monitor's peak brightness, ensuring bright highlights aren't crushed. Unfortunately, very small highlights are crushed a bit by the monitor's local dimming feature.

These measurements are in the 'Game 1' Picture Mode with HDR enabled, Local Dimming set to 'High', and Brightness set to max. The monitor automatically detects what type of source it's connected to and switches between the 'Cinema' and the 'Game 1' picture modes in HDR. The 'Cinema' picture mode delivers the same peak brightness.

The horizontal viewing angle is just alright, so it's best enjoyed from directly in front at a comfortable viewing distance. The image degrades and fades when viewed at an angle, so the Sony M9 isn't a good choice for co-op gaming on one screen, and the sides degrade if you're sitting too close.

The vertical viewing angle is just decent, and the image degrades if you're looking at it from above or below. It's mainly noticeable if you're sharing the screen with someone standing next to you, as they'll see a different image from you.

The Sony M9 has very good gray uniformity. There's very little dirty screen effect in the center, but the sides of the screen are a bit darker.

The Sony M9 has passable black uniformity. With local dimming disabled, the entire screen is cloudy, and there are a few bright spots throughout the screen where the backlight isn't quite even. With local dimming enabled on 'High', there's noticeable blooming around the test cross due to the size of each dimming zone. It's mainly noticeable in real content when you have bright objects in otherwise dark scenes, as the dimming zones are too large to dim precisely around the bright object.

The Sony M9 has okay accuracy out of the box. The white balance is excellent, with no noticeable issues in shades of gray, and gamma follows the sRGB target curve well for the most part, but darker scenes are slightly overdarkened. The biggest issue is with colors, as they appear terribly oversaturated, and there's no sRGB clamp to artificially limit them to the sRGB color space. Despite these issues, the color temperature is close to the calibration target, and there's no red or blue tint to the image out of the box.

The Sony M9 has superb accuracy after calibration. The biggest difference is with colors, which are no longer oversaturated. The white balance is slightly better, but there were no noticeable issues before calibration anyway, and gamma follows the sRGB curve better than before, especially in darker scenes. The color temperature is very close to the target.

The SDR color gamut is fantastic. The Sony M9 can display all of the sRGB color space used by most desktop and web content. It has good coverage of the wider Adobe RGB color space, but it can't display the full range of greens in that color space, so it's not ideal for print processing.

The color volume is incredible in SDR. It's mainly limited by its low contrast ratio, which prevents the monitor from displaying dark, saturated colors. It fills out the sRGB color gamut entirely, and colors are bright and vibrant.

The Sony M9 has a great color gamut in HDR. It has fantastic coverage of the DCI-P3 color space used by the vast majority of current HDR content. Its coverage of the wider Rec. 2020 color space is limited, so it's not future-proof.

The Sony M9 has great color volume in HDR. Like with SDR content, it's mainly limited by its low contrast ratio, as it can't display dark, saturated colors. It also can't fill out the entire color gamut in either HDR color space, but the colors it can display are bright and vibrant.

The Sony M9 has good reflection handling. The matte anti-reflective coating significantly reduces the intensity of bright lights. Thanks to its high peak brightness, you can easily overcome any glare just by increasing the brightness.

Thanks to its high pixel density, the Sony M9 has fantastic text clarity. Even in apps that don't support ClearType settings (bottom photo), text is clear and well-defined. The matte anti-reflective coating adds a slight haze to the screen, but it's not really noticeable with regular content.

The Sony M9 has fantastic gradient handling. There's some noticeable banding in darker shades, but bright areas of similar color are displayed properly.

Strangely, the maximum refresh rate on the Sony M9 is only available over DisplayPort. Over HDMI, you're limited to 120Hz, regardless of source, even though it has enough bandwidth on the HDMI ports to support 144Hz at the native resolution. Even forcing a 144Hz resolution doesn't work, and the monitor just displays a black screen before reverting Windows display settings back to 120Hz.

The Sony M9 supports variable refresh rate technology. It's officially certified to work with NVIDIA's G-SYNC Compatible mode, and it also works with FreeSync sources, but only over DisplayPort. It supports HDMI Forum VRR, which allows it to support VRR with some HDMI sources, including the PS5 and Xbox Series S|X.

After updating the monitor's firmware to M009, there aren't any issues with its VRR support. On its old firmware, M006, there were some issues with it, particularly with the PS5. After playing certain games with VRR enabled for a few minutes, the monitor sometimes started flickering severely, even if you closed the game and changed sources. This issue occurred frequently with Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales on the PS5. The PS5 also received a firmware update, and after the monitor's update, this issue is no longer there, and there isn't any flickering with PCs either. If you experience any of those issues, try updating the monitor and/or the console's firmware.

The Sony M9 has an excellent response time at the max refresh rate, delivering clear motion with very little blur behind fast-moving objects. The 'Fast' mode delivers the best experience overall, with just a bit of overshoot in some transitions. The 'Faster' mode has a slightly faster rise/fall time, but there's significantly more overshoot and a very distracting trail of inverse ghosting, so it's not recommended. The 'Standard' mode is a good alternative to 'Fast', as it has no overshoot, but it's slower overall, and there's more blur around fast-moving objects.

The response time at 120Hz is great, delivering clear motion for console gamers. Like at the maximum refresh rate, the 'Fast' mode delivers the best experience overall. The 'Faster' setting delivers slightly faster rise/fall times, but it's not enough to make a noticeable difference, and instead, there's significantly more overshoot, so it's not recommended. There's still a bit of overshoot with the 'Fast' mode, and if this bothers you, the 'Standard' mode is a good alternative, but it's slightly slower overall.

The Sony M9 has a very good response time when gaming at 60Hz. Most transitions approach their final shade quickly thanks to the fast rise/fall time, but the total response time is significantly slower, resulting in more noticeable blur behind fast-moving objects. Unlike at higher refresh rates, the 'Standard' mode delivers the best experience overall, as higher settings have significantly more overshoot, resulting in a long trail of inverse ghosting behind fast-moving objects. Unfortunately, this means that there's no single setting that works well across all refresh rates, so for the best gaming experience, you'll need to change settings if you change between devices.

Unfortunately, the Sony M9 doesn't have an optional backlight strobing feature, which is commonly known as black frame insertion.

The backlight is completely flicker-free at all backlight levels.

The Sony M9 has amazing low input lag, ensuring a responsive gaming or desktop experience at any refresh rate.

The Sony M9 is fully compatible with everything the PS5 supports. It also supports a few features specific to the PS5, including Auto HDR Tone Mapping, which optimizes your HDR experience to match the capabilities of your display.

As explained in the Variable Refresh Rate section, the monitor had some flickering issues with VRR enabled on the console, particularly with Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. However, after the PS5 received a firmware update and the monitor was updated to firmware M009, these flicker issues are no longer present.

This monitor is nearly fully compatible with the Xbox Series S|X. It doesn't support Dolby Vision for movies or gaming.

It supports USB-C and power delivery, but it doesn't deliver enough power to charge a laptop or Ultrabook while you're using it.

The Sony M9 works well with recent MacBooks. There are no issues with the variable refresh rate feature, and windows return to their original position when you wake the computer from sleep or if you close and reopen the lid.

The Sony M9 has a few extra features, including:

• Crosshair: Adds a virtual crosshair to any game that can't be detected by the game.
• FPS Counter: Shows the current frame rate received from the source.
• Black Equalizer: Adjusts gamma to make it easier to spot objects/players in dark scenes without adjust bright scenes.
• KVM: Sony advertises a KVM feature for this monitor, but it's not currently working at all.

The on-screen display is organized in a logical way and is easy to navigate.