Sony Inzone E9 Review

Introduction

Out of all of Sony’s latest gaming peripheral releases, the Sony Inzone E9 feel like the most focused. 

They’re a set of in-ear monitors designed specifically for FPS games, representing a market segment that few brands have chosen to explore. 

Sure, we’ve seen wireless gaming earbuds in the past, appropriately including the Sony Inzone Buds and SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds, but a set of in-ears feels a little different.

With this in mind, the form factor sees Sony lean into the typically competitive use of IEMs for stronger isolation and directional audio, bringing the idea to mainstream players.

For the £130/€150 price tag, they’re up there in price with some of the best gaming headsets out there, and I’ve been testing them to see if they’re worth your hard-earned money.

Design and Features

• Comfortable, secure fit
• Versatile with choice of tips 
• Reliable connection and software options

In-ear monitors typically have a different form factor from the push-in-and-twist method of more standard earbuds, whether or wireless. With the Inzone E9, that’s no different.

They fit as other IEMs do, with an earhook design that sees you slot them into your ears, and then hook the cable over the top. This takes some getting used to, but it results in a very secure and comfortable fit with the benefit of a strong seal for excellent noise isolation.

As for colour choice, you get black or white, as with the new Inzone H9 II headset. White will match the PS5 and a more modern setup, although black might blend in a bit more if you’d prefer. 

Sony provides two sets of earbud tips in the box for the Inzone E9, with a ‘hybrid’ set for general use, and another specifically designed for noise reduction. This is particularly handy if you want to use them for more than just intense FPS gaming and use them as a normal set of earbuds.

In total, you get four pairs of hybrid tips, with one set on the earbuds when you take them out of the box. For good measure, there are a further four pairs of noise isolation ones. Sony says the noise isolation ones are designed especially for blocking out noise at pro tournaments, such as crowd noise, commentary and cheering. 

As much as I used them in the comfort of my own office, the noise reduction tips make a discernible difference to the amount of noise coming through. I was impressed with the out-of-the-box experience with the default hybrid tips, too.

The cable that comes with it has a decent length to it at 1.8m, although it’s a shame that it isn’t detachable. This means if anything goes wrong with the units that could be caused by the cable, you’ll be left forking out a lot for a replacement set.

Other, more audio-focused IEMs come with detachable cables for both this reason and because it’s somewhat common for audiophile folk to use different cables with their respective equipment. 

The Inzone E9, plus its lengthy cable and choice of earbud tips, come in a pleasant tournament case that provides a useful means of stowing and carrying the earbuds when you’re out and about.

Connectivity, especially with that fixed cable, is purely 3.5mm to a device that has an audio jack, be it your PC, a phone with a small DAC attached or a DAP, for instance. I used mine with a FiIO JM21 when they weren’t plugged into my main PC. 

Using them in the 3.5mm means they’re a normally ‘dumb’ device, simply designed for playing audio into your earholes, and as such, there’s no software trickery. There also isn’t a microphone with them. 

If you want to use Sony’s software, that’s where its little ‘audio box’ comes in, as it was described to me. It takes the 3.5mm connection and turns it into a digital USB-C connection, and provides you with a means of using the software to fiddle with the EQ settings, enable spatial audio and such. The software is basic, but it’s fine for the kind of applications the Inzone E9 is designed for.

Audio

• Precise directional audio for FPS games
• Translates well for width and precision in music
• Perceived lack of low-end and treble 

The way that the Inzone E9 has been tuned is specifically with competitive first-person shooters in mind. The 5mm drivers these IEMs feature have been tuned by Fnatic, specifically targeting clarity, accuracy and detail for this purpose. In a way, they’re like the in-ear equivalents to the AceZone A-Spire.

As such, it made sense for me to spend most of my time in the types of games these IEMs are designed for. Most of my testing, therefore, took place in Counter-Strike 2, which happens to be my usual proving grounds for peripherals of all kinds, including headphones.

Here, I found the Inzone E9 to offer marvellous accuracy and width to its audio, with crystal clear positioning of enemies through nearby footsteps and far-off gunfire. The prominent mid-range helps this, which is where most of the frequencies of footsteps, radio chatter, and some gunfire tend to live.

This prominent mid-range is married to a hollower low-end than you might expect. There is some extension to it, although it isn’t as prominent as you might expect from more normally tuned earbuds or IEMs.

In spinning up Not Good Enough, See Me! from Brand X, the punchiness of the song’s complex bassline felt lacking in comparison to the crispness of its drum rolls and cymbal hits. Similarly, Rush’s YYZ lacked a certain grittiness and edge, even if it sounded wide and precise through the Inzone E9.

Likewise, there isn’t much of a sparkly top-end with these, as demonstrated with the cymbal hits on On The Other Side from The Strokes. The Inzone E9’s marvellous directionality shines through, though, with the competing percussion intro on Steely Dan’s Do It Again; the treble may lack in overall prominence, but there was plenty of breathing room for the song’s individual elements.

The lovely width was also present on tracks such as Dance of the Illegal Aliens, again from Brand X, where its percussion work felt far off to the right, the same as the bongos in Earth, Wind & Fire’s September.

A live cut of Affirmation from George Benson revealed the sheer width and detail that these IEMs yield with the song’s ambient noise of crowd chatter and applause. With this in mind, I’d characterise the sound of these IEMs to be more precise than energetic – some may term it as unexciting.

Should you buy it?

FAQs