Sony InZone H5 review

When Sony, the creator of the PlayStation, made a gaming headset based on a pretty gamer-centric name like the Inzone, I expected it to be console first, PC second. I am glad to report that my assumption was wrong. Though console players can, of course, use it for whatever nefarious purposes they might have, the Sony Inzone H5 is predominantly a PC gaming headset and is all the better for it. 

The Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 2 Max has been my gaming headset of choice until now, thanks to its great feel, excellent battery life, and intuitive connectivity. The Inzone H5 feels very different in what it aims to achieve. Yet, it succeeds in its own right. 

The first thing I noticed when picking the headphones up was how much plastic is used and how flimsy everything felt. This initial reaction didn't prove to be wrong with time but I didn't quite understand the purpose until I had put them on. The Sony InZone H5 is one of the lightest of the mid-range gaming headphones I've used and this is thanks to that perceived 'flimsiness'. 

The portions of plastic holding the cups to the bridge at the top of my head are light and give to some pressure applied on the frame. The whole thing can bend and contort, both to distribute weight better and to stretch over my—particularly large—skull. The stretch you can apply to the headset makes it surprisingly sturdy with a bit of use. Though I would never advise doing this, giving them a little chuck up in the air or putting a bit of weight on them proves to be nothing it can't handle.

As the glistening white of my set of cans shows, the Inzone H5 is very PlayStation. Using nothing but black and white, there's a certain sleek minimalism that looks really nice on top of Sony's latest console. It can be connected straight to the PlayStation 5 with just the included dongle and its bristling dynamic sound hits immediately upon startup. 

In their price range of $150/£140, the Inzone H5 headset performs admirably in the sound department, offering a mighty mix of highs, mids, and lows. With them, I can place the unmistakable sound of enemies' feet coming towards me or the high ping of a Kar 98K round being expensed quickly and clearly. Playing Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth didn't exactly give me a competitive advantage, other than the distinct joy of listening to karaoke, but the Inzone H5 did give me a tangible edge in online shooters, placing me firmly in the marginally above-average category. 

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However, plugging them into the PS5 only gets you a fraction of the experience thanks to Sony's Windows software. It seems like a strange move to lock the best part of a Sony headset behind PC play but the shift from console to PC requires no more than moving a dongle across and hitting a switch to signify the little connector is working on a different device. 

On PC, you get access to the Inzone hub, which gives you control of the EQ for customizing the sound profile, as well as access to Spatial Audio, and some rudimentary controls of sound, game chat/game volume mix, and more. This is a great bit of software that gets so much more life out of the headset. Spatial Audio essentially makes the sound much more full and real, deepening that soundstage. It can be a little hollow when using it with less fine-tuned songs and games but is absolutely magical in the right environment. 

That EQ adjustment does give a lot of depth to the cans and it can get reasonably bassy when it wants but the further that bass gets cranked, the more hollow it starts to feel. Tonally, it can get a tad muddy in the depths if you really want to push it. The 40mm drivers manage to throw out a clean sound that rarely veers too harshly into the highs or bass. At its sweet spot, this headset offers an easy-to-understand tone that functions perfectly for online gaming and the cushioning on the cups themselves is very welcoming to my ears. The Sony Inzone H5 is one of those headsets that I almost forgot sat on my head when I was in the final storm of a battle royale, only ever complimenting the exhilarating experience of—almost—winning a game.

The 2.4GHz connection is also stable enough to allow me to wander around my apartment with little connection problems. I do lament the lack of Bluetooth compatibility as connecting this headset to my phone requires dangling an ugly USB-C to USB-A port out the bottom of the phone to connect the pretty chunky dongle. I can technically use the Inzone 5 with my phone but I would never really want to. Especially when it doesn't have any of the nice software options present on PC. I can use the headset in its basest form but not my headset.

Peculiarly, I noticed that, when I scooped all the bass and mid out of the headset in the EQ to make it a tinny mess and plugged it back into the PS5, none of my effects remained. You get one preset on PlayStation (and you'll like it.) As well as this, despite coming with a 3.5mm jack to plug the headset straight into your devices, you can't control it from the PC with the Inzone Hub. Not only are PS5 players locked away from this set of extras but so too are those who want to stay wired. 

When in-game, the Inzone's sound and game/chat mix can be toggled with physical buttons on the side which take a little while to find but are pronounced enough to get used to in a day or two. With just under 30 hours of battery life out of each full charge and an extra 3 hours of life out of a ten-minute charge, I never found myself actively stopped by the headset going dead. I plugged it in for a few minutes to half an hour every now and then and I was off and ready to get playing again. 

Though the Inzone H5 is loaded with great software, one particular area where it feels it is masking the hardware is with the mic. AI is used to soften your background and pronounce what you are saying, essentially allowing it to filter through that song you just have to play for your friends over the headset. There isn't much of a toggle for this and it can occasionally cut words short and feel overly processed. The bidirectional boom mic can be flicked up to turn off but can't be detached. It is a mediocre mic that is heavily altered to appear much better than it is, and feels a little hollow as a result. 

Though muddled in execution for PS5 or mobile play, the Sony Inzone H5 is a super solid PC wireless headset that has more than enough excellent features to make up for its identity crisis.