You don’t need to do much more to sell me on a pro-level gaming headset than Sony did with its latest Inzone H9 II. Take the Sony WH-1000XM6 ANC headphones—currently the crème de la crème in both sound quality and active noise cancellation—and stick a mic on them, wash your hands, and call it a day. It was never going to be that simple. The Sony Inzone H9 II is simply the best-sounding gaming headset you can get right now. But for $350, you expect perfection, and you won’t find that with the H9 II. You’ll get an amazing audio experience packed in between some odd software choices and a battery life that doesn’t sound nearly as enticing.
Sony Inzone H9 II This is the gaming headset you get when you care about the sound most of all, even if you need to plug it in more often than most. See at Amazon Pros Top-tier sound quality
Top-tier sound quality Mostly clear mic audio quality
Mostly clear mic audio quality Comfortable fit
Comfortable fit Great for PC or PS5 Cons Battery life could be better
Battery life could be better Limited EQ options
Limited EQ options No full 'transparency' mode
Sony launched a slew of new PC gamer products under its Inzone brand, including a new $300 Inzone KBD-H75 keyboard with magnetic Hall effect switches and a $150 Inzone gamer mouse. And yet, the second-gen headset is what catches the eye first. The first thing to know about the Inzone H9 II is it contains the same 30mm drivers as the Sony WH-1000XM6. Already, I can see you drooling. These are “soft-edge” carbon fiber dome drivers that create a balanced audio profile with crisp sounds across movies and other passive content. So what does it do for game audio when you’re not jamming out to the soundtrack? To put it mildly, the audio quality is impeccable. The low bass hits of rockets and crackle of automatic gunfire are immediately distinct from game to game. Using it for a title like Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 is the perfect match with its boisterous bass of every boltgun fired. The headset includes 360 spatial sound to get the sense of being surrounded by sound.
The Inzone H9 II is also a very light headset. At 260g, or 0.57 pounds, it didn’t weigh me down as much as other full-spec headsets of its kind. The removable earcups felt extra plush surrounding my ears, though the headband sports a strange design that makes it odd to wear. Each side requires users to pinch a hinge to adjust its height. It requires a little more fiddling than other devices, but once it’s on, the gaming headphones disappear into the background while the audio takes over. Here’s another handy bonus of the Inzone H9 II: the pads swivel in both directions, meaning it’s very easy to fold up into the included felt-lined soft pouch that comes in the box.
The original $300 H9 from 2022 was lacking in several ways compared to other peripherals. Though Sony laid out the H9 II’s specs as if they were somehow the cream of the crop, the headset still seems out of step for a $350 device. It gets a total of 30 hours of promised battery life. That sounds like more than enough for two or three marathon gaming sessions, but I just got done reviewing the $250 Razer BlackShark V3 Pro with a promised 70 hours of total battery life with fast charging. HP’s $300 HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 claims to get 250 hours of battery life before needing a recharge. Always-on active noise cancelling would necessarily require more power from the headset, but the Inzone H9 II is still on the lower end of headset battery life, especially for its price.
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