Sony’s InZone E9’s are not everyday headphones: as with many in-ear monitors (IEMs) you get no mic, no wireless connection, and no noise cancelling. Instead they’re specifically designed for clearly hearing your opponents’ footsteps and gunshots in competitive shooters, and Sony says it has worked with Fnatic – which has pro teams for CounterStrike, Valorant, Apex Legends, and more – to tune the sound. So can they really give you a competitive edge, and is the sound good enough for you to ditch your regular gaming headset or gaming earbuds in first-person shooters?
Sony InZone E9 In-Ear Gaming Monitor – Design
The InZone E9 buds aren’t particularly pretty. The base of the bud is chunky and the ridged, plastic cone that connects them to the cable looks, and feels, cheap. It spins independently of the earbuds, which makes it feel like an extra piece stuck on.
But, having said that, I quite like the simple aesthetic: it’s all black except white logos, left and right is labelled clearly, and there are no obnoxious shiny surfaces. The ear loops are similarly plain and functional. More importantly, the InZone E9s are comfortable. Surprisingly so, considering they’re designed to be jammed into your ear, fully sealing off outside noise. I never felt any irritation or discomfort even when I played five-hour sessions – that’s seriously impressive.
The flexible plastic loop that goes around your ear never tugged on me and most of the time I couldn’t feel it at all. It’s essentially a guardrail to make sure the lightweight buds don’t shimmy sideways, rather than an integral part of the fit.
This comfort is one of its big pluses over larger headsets. Some people’s ears get sweaty with big ear cups, and head straps can rub against the top of your head. You avoid all of that here, and for that reason I can see myself reaching for the InZone E9s in future at least some of the time.
You get a wide selection of earbuds colour-coded by size, four standard, and four chunkier ones that blot out more noise. Without noise cancelling tech the InZone E9’s rely purely on a physical barrier and while I didn’t notice a huge difference between the buds, they each kept me focused on my game – I failed to hear somebody shouting my name several times from a different room at one point.
I applaud Sony for including a long 1.8-meter / 5.9-foot cable, which will snake from your desktop to your ears even if you’re not sitting directly next to it. That makes the InZone E9s viable for people who have unconventional gaming setups.
The downside is a dangling cable when you’re away from your PC. When I connected the InZone E9s to my Dualshock controller it piled up on the floor, and when I plugged them into my phone via the USB-C dongle, the cable dangled around my knees. You can gather and clamp it with an included tie but that’s a lot of faff, especially if you’re often switching devices. It underlines the fact that the InZone E9s are very much PC-first headphones, designed for competitive mouse-and-keyboard play.
You can plug them in directly to your headphone jack or, if you want to use Sony’s software, via the compact USB-C dongle. Everything fits together in a tidy included travel case, which is bigger than an earbud carrier but so much easier to transport than a giant headset. It’s one of the big advantages of IEMs.
Just remember that the InZone E9’s have no built-in mic. That’ll be annoying for some people who are used to a headset-mic combo: either you’ll need to buy a separate mic or, if you have one already, use an extra slot to plug it in. It didn’t bother me because I already use a standalone mic, but it’s worth keeping in mind.
Sony InZone E9 In-Ear Gaming Monitor – Software
Sony’s InZone Hub is Windows-only, so you won’t be able to tune the audio if you’re on consoles. It is pleasingly simple and easy to use, with every setting on a single screen. You can cycle through six EQ presets or customize your own. The music preset still sounded bad, but the three designed for FPSs were more useful: one that emphasises footsteps and gunshots, one for footsteps and sound effects, and one that suppresses loud sound effects like explosions. I’m slightly skeptical that they do exactly what they say – footsteps sound different in every game, after all – but I did feel like I could hear important sounds better.
The same goes for the dynamic range control, which basically reduces the volume of the loudest noises and raises the volume of the quietest. I felt like it made a genuine difference when listening for footsteps in Arc Raiders. And spatial sound, as I mentioned in the previous section, helps you tell where each noise is coming from. I never turned it off because I preferred the overall sound of it, even when I wasn’t gaming. As well as being easy to use the software was reliable, instantly recognising when I connected my headphones every time, and it didn’t crash once.
Sony Inzone E9 In-Ear Gaming Monitor – Sound Quality
The InZone E9s sound pretty lifeless. Bass doesn’t punch, instruments sound flat, and vocals lack warmth. It’s not terrible, but it’s all a little tinny. For listening to music or watching films, I much prefer the richer sound of the OnePlus Buds 4, which I recently reviewed, and the more immersive audio of my older, reliable HyperX headset.
I therefore wouldn’t choose the InZone E9 as my everyday headphones, and I couldn’t recommend them as your only PC device, which limits their value. If you’re playing an atmospheric game with music – say, Silent Hill f – you’ll want a headset that conveys the emotion better.
They are, however, designed for one job: competitive gaming, which is where their clarity and precision shines. You can easily distinguish individual sounds from one another, even when there’s lots happening. In Arc Raiders, I could pick out several different sets of footsteps rattling against a metal floor, even with a background of gunshots, explosions, and voice comms.
Everything sounds detailed and loud: to stay with Arc Raiders, the buzz of a damaged shield was clearly different to the whirr of a shield powering down when it was broken, which helped me decide when to push my enemy, and I could tell what type of container a nearby opponent was opening just from the noise it made.
Again, none of it sounds amazing, but it does the job of telling you exactly what’s happening in your game, and because the sound is being pumped directly into your ear, it feels closer, more immediate. You can also easily tell which direction sounds are coming from. In Battlefield 6, I knew the direction of enemy footsteps approaching when I was defending a control point, allowing me to pre-aim certain angles and rack up kills.
Toggling on “spatial sound” in the software (which we’ll come onto in the next section), made that directionality even better. Each noise became even more distinct, and if I closed my eyes I had a clear picture of what was around me: a booming tank to my right, a smoke grenade landing and popping to my left, my teammates’ boots running up behind me.
Just don’t expect a big leap from your favorite headset: most good ones have clear sound and sense of direction. There were a couple of times where I heard things with the InZone E9 that I wouldn’t have otherwise heard, and I was slightly more aware of the direction of noises compared to my regular headset, but the difference was marginal.
Purchasing Guide
The Sony InZone E9 in-ear gaming headphones cost $149.99/£129.00 and they’re available directly from Sony (US | UK) as well as from Amazon (US | UK), Walmart, and Best Buy.
