UPDATE (7PM, 13 October): Sony says that the Inzone H5 headset is priced at RM679.
ORIGINAL STORY (11AM, 11 October 2023):
The PlayStation Pulse Explore is pretty exciting as an audio product, simply because it would be the first TWS buds by the Sony video games subsidiary. But it looks like the parent company has beaten its own gaming brand to the punch, with the announcement of the Sony Inzone Buds. Best of all, it already has a price for the local market.
As far as its design goes, the Sony Inzone Buds themselves lean more towards the conventional. The charging case does swing the other way, with a blocky look softened by rounded edges. Driving sound into your ears is the Dynamic Driver X found in the WF-1000XM5. There’s ANC as well, the absence of which would have been a strange and major omission these days. Voice chat also gets augmented with AI-based noise reduction tech.
For battery life, the company claims that the Sony Inzone Buds can last for up to 12 hours on a single charge, with the case doubling it. The company also claims that this is “the industry’s longest battery life”, which is a bold claim to say the least. This will likely be impacted a tad when used with the USB-C dongle, which you’ll likely be using while gaming as it cuts latency down to under 30ms.
Tagging along for a debut is the Sony Inzone H5 headset, which finally plugs an empty slot in the range. As the name suggests, the H5 leans towards the affordable, so while it comes with 3.5mm audio jack connectivity, the wireless option is limited to a 2.4GHz dongle. While the Inzone headsets have a very homogeneous design, the similarities lean closer towards the H3, since it sports nylon fabric over the earpads.
Sony says that both the Inzone Buds and H5 will be available this month, but did not provide an exact date. The Buds are likely available earlier, as its official product page already has a price of RM899, but the H5 doesn’t. We’ve reached out to the company for the price of the headset, and will update this article once we have it. As for the Inzone H5, it is priced at RM679 instead.
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