YUNZII AL98 PRO review: this 96% aluminum keyboard absolutely thocks

There are a lot of mechanical keyboards competing in the $100 to $150 range now, and that has made reviewing them a little weird. A few years ago, an aluminum case, gasket mounting, hot-swappable switches, wireless connectivity and decent stabilizers would have put a keyboard into a much more expensive category. Now I open boxes expecting half of that stuff to be there.

What I do not expect is for a keyboard to show up with nearly everything.

That was my first reaction to the YUNZII AL98 PRO. The box is heavy before you even get to the keyboard, and once you start pulling everything out, it becomes obvious why. YUNZII packed this thing with extra keycaps, extra switches, a braided cable, an 8K receiver, a keycap puller, the usual documentation and, somehow, a legitimately good matching wrist rest.

Then you get to the keyboard itself.

It is heavy. It is aluminum. It has a knob. It has a full numpad. It has a huge battery. It has plenty of internal dampening. It has a gasket-mounted structure with actual movement when you press into the board. It supports wired, Bluetooth and 2.4GHz operation. The switches are hot-swappable. There is software and a web driver. You can customize the lighting, remap keys and change what the knob does.

And then you type on it.

That is where the YUNZII AL98 PRO got me.

It sounds really, really good.

The 96% layout actually makes sense

I have a complicated relationship with 96% keyboards because I like what they are trying to do, but manufacturers sometimes get a little too clever when they start compressing everything.

The whole idea is to give you most of a full-size keyboard without taking up quite as much desk space. You still get your function row and your numpad, but the navigation cluster gets condensed and moved around. Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, Insert and Delete are still represented in some form, but you do not have that traditional block sitting between the arrows and numpad like you would on a full-size keyboard.

For a lot of people, that tradeoff is completely fine.

For me, it depends on what I am doing. I use Home, End, Page Up and Page Down quite a bit when I am coding, so I still prefer a true full-size layout for that kind of work. I can adapt to a 96%, but I notice the missing space and separation.

The numpad, though? YUNZII got that part right.

The YUNZII AL98 PRO has a proper full-size zero key on the numpad.

I know somebody is reading this thinking, “Why does Tristan care this much about the zero key?”

Because the giant zero is the fun part.

If you actually use a number pad all day, you develop muscle memory around it. Your thumb knows exactly where that big zero is. Some compact layouts chop it down to squeeze everything together, and every time I see that I wonder who signed off on it.

YUNZII left it alone.

Thank you.

It feels like a much more expensive keyboard

The next thing that stands out is the weight.

The YUNZII AL98 PRO feels substantial in your hands. This is not one of those boards where the product photos make it look premium and then you pick it up and realize the whole thing is lightweight plastic.

The case is aluminum, and you feel that immediately.

It reminds me more of the heavier Keychron boards in terms of the physical heft. Once it is on the desk, it stays there. The non-slip silicone underneath helps, but honestly the board itself is heavy enough that it is not exactly eager to go anywhere.

I also like the shape of the case. There is a slight inset along the rear, the front edge falls away cleanly, and the built-in typing angle feels comfortable without forcing your wrists upward.

The finish on the white version is nicer in person than it appears on camera too. There is a very subtle sparkle inside the off-white finish. I tried showing it on video and it barely translated, but you can see it when the light catches the case in person.

It gives the board a little personality without making it look ridiculous on a work desk.

That balance is something YUNZII tends to be pretty good at. Their keyboards often look more playful than the average black rectangle, but they usually stop before crossing into something I would not want sitting in an office.

The keycap situation is kind of ridiculous

This was one of my favorite parts of the package.

The stock YUNZII AL98 PRO uses a mix of white, gray and clear accent keycaps. The transparent caps help the lighting show through and give the keyboard a different look without making the whole thing feel like an RGB toy.

But YUNZII also includes replacements.

If you do not like the transparent keycaps, you can pull them off and use the matching opaque caps instead. If you want something more colorful, there are accent colors in the box too. The version I received included teal options, which gives you quite a bit of freedom to change the board without buying another keycap set immediately.

That is a nice bonus by itself, but there is another reason I like having both.

The clear caps sound different.

You can hear it.

Transparent plastic keycaps tend to produce a different acoustic character than thicker opaque PBT caps, so swapping them changes more than the appearance. If you prefer the deeper sound from the standard caps, you can get more of that. If you like the look and slightly different tone of the transparent accents, leave them in place.

I like being given the choice.

And considering how much companies charge for keycap sets on their own, the fact that the YUNZII AL98 PRO includes this much stuff in the box makes the overall price harder to argue with.

This thing thocks

All right. Sound.

This is why I made the thumbnail say “IT THOCKS.”

Because it does.

The YUNZII AL98 PRO has a deep, satisfying stock sound that I was not expecting from a 96% prebuilt at this price. It does not have that hollow resonance you sometimes get from larger layouts, where the empty space inside the case starts acting like its own little echo chamber.

The regular keys sound good. The stabilizers sound good. The spacebar sounds good. The numpad sounds good.

Even the larger keys avoid that cheap clack that can ruin an otherwise decent board.

My sample uses YUNZII’s custom linear switches, which appear to be the Cocoa Cream V2 linears despite some of the packaging referring to them more generically. Whatever naming confusion is going on there, I like the switches in this board.

They are smooth and work well with the gasket mounting and internal foam. The sound is deeper without becoming muddy, and the keyboard has enough movement in the plate that bottoming out does not feel like you are typing directly into a chunk of metal.

I have tested plenty of keyboards where the first thing I want to do after the sound test is open them up.

Tape mod.

More foam.

Different switches.

Better stabilizers.

Something.

I do not have that reaction with this one.

I would happily use the YUNZII AL98 PRO exactly as it comes out of the box.

That says more to me than a long list of materials ever could.

The gasket mount actually has some give

“Gasket mounted” has become one of those mechanical keyboard specifications that does not always tell you much by itself.

Some gasket boards barely move.

You can push down on the plate with enough force to leave a fingerprint in your desk and nothing happens.

The YUNZII AL98 PRO actually flexes.

You can see the movement when you push into the keyboard, and you can feel it when typing. It is not floppy or unstable, but there is enough give to take some of the harshness out of bottoming out.

I prefer that.

The five-layer dampening setup inside the board also seems to be doing its job because there is very little unwanted case resonance. With a large keyboard, that matters. You have more surface area and more internal space than you would on something like a 65%, so poor tuning becomes obvious very quickly.

Nothing here jumped out at me as needing to be fixed.

The wrist rest deserves its own section

This sounds stupid until you see it.

The wrist rest included with the YUNZII AL98 PRO is actually good.

I am used to bundled wrist rests being the kind of thing I take out of the box, look at for five seconds, and then put back in the box forever.

This one matches the keyboard.

It looks like it belongs with it.

The height works. The width works. The color coordination is right. Put the keyboard and wrist rest together and it looks like a single setup rather than two products that happened to be sitting near each other.

That matters more on a taller aluminum mechanical keyboard because wrist angle can become annoying during longer typing sessions. I would probably use this one.

And again, the value starts adding up when you look at the entire package. A decent wrist rest is another purchase. Extra keycaps are another purchase. Extra switches are another purchase. A good cable is another purchase.

Here, you already have all of it.

The knob is good too

Of course there is a knob.

Apparently the mechanical keyboard community has collectively decided that every keyboard needs one now.

I am not complaining.

What I care about is whether I can actually grab the thing without smashing my fingers into the surrounding keys, and YUNZII positioned this one correctly.

The knob on the YUNZII AL98 PRO sits slightly above the keycap height, so it is easy to reach. It feels good when turning it, and you can change its function through the software.

That opens up some interesting uses if you edit video, work with audio or just want something other than volume control.

There is a tiny bit of jiggle if you pick the keyboard up and start smacking it around.

I tested that because I was actively trying to find something wrong with this thing.

Under normal use, I would never notice it.

Unless your workflow involves punching your volume knob, I do not think this is going to be an issue.

The RGB is more tasteful than I expected

The lighting on the YUNZII AL98 PRO is interesting because the keycaps control a lot of the final look.

The clear accent caps catch the RGB much more obviously, while the opaque caps keep the rest of the board more subdued. Instead of turning the entire desk into a light show, you get these concentrated areas of color mixed into the board.

I like it.

There is also a small lightning-bolt-style LED accent near the upper left and a dedicated Caps Lock indicator, both of which are useful little touches.

The lighting is not insanely bright, but it does not need to be.

I actually think the board looks better with the RGB turned down a little.

My only real complaint here is the spacebar. I would have liked to see a little more illumination underneath it. Compared with the rest of the keyboard, that area gets pretty dark.

It is a tiny complaint.

Wireless, Bluetooth and wired all in one

The YUNZII AL98 PRO supports wired USB-C, Bluetooth and 2.4GHz wireless.

There are physical controls along the board for switching between modes, along with Mac and Windows support, which I prefer over having to memorize some obscure function-key combination every time I want to move between devices.

It also comes with the dedicated wireless receiver and supports high polling rates for people who care about gaming performance.

The battery is rated at 8000mAh, which is huge for a keyboard.

That makes sense on something this size because there is plenty of physical room for the battery, but I am still happy to see YUNZII actually using that space rather than putting some tiny cell inside an aluminum case the size of a serving tray.

You also get both Mac and Windows keycaps in the package, which is another small thing that manufacturers sometimes inexplicably skip.

Hot swap gives you room to experiment later

The switches are hot-swappable, so if you decide six months from now that you want something completely different, you are not stuck.

No soldering.

Pull the switch.

Put another one in.

Done.

I genuinely like the stock switches, so I would not rush to replace them, but that is the point. You do not have to do anything immediately, and you still have the option later.

A board like the YUNZII AL98 PRO makes a pretty good platform for experimenting because the case and internal structure are already solid. If you decide to start playing with tactile switches, silent switches or something heavier, you are putting them into a keyboard that already sounds good.

That is a much better starting point than trying to rescue a flimsy plastic board with $80 worth of switches.

The software is better than I expected

YUNZII gives you software for the AL98 PRO, and there is also a web-based configuration option.

You can change your lighting, remap keys, set macros and customize the knob.

I appreciate the web driver more than I thought I would because I am tired of every piece of hardware asking me to install another background application.

If I can plug a keyboard in, open a browser, make my changes and leave, I am happy.

The software is not the reason I would buy the YUNZII AL98 PRO, but it also is not getting in the way, which is more than I can say about quite a few keyboard utilities I have tested.

The price is the part I keep coming back to

At the time I recorded the review, the YUNZII AL98 PRO was around $139, with Amazon showing a coupon that brought it closer to $125.

Obviously, check the current Amazon price here, because pricing and coupons change.

• But somewhere around that range?
• This is extremely competitive.
• I kept going through the box trying to figure out where they cut the corner.
• The aluminum body is there.
• The gasket mounting works.
• The stabilizers are good.
• The stock switches sound good.
• The battery is huge.
• The numpad is intact.
• You get hot swap.
• You get tri-mode connectivity.
• You get the knob.
• You get the RGB.
• You get the extra switches.
• You get multiple sets of keycaps.
• You get the braided cable.
• You get the wireless receiver.
• You get the wrist rest.
• There are 96% keyboards selling for more money with plastic cases and worse sound.

That is what makes this one difficult to criticize.

So what do I actually dislike?

The layout is still the biggest one for me.

If you live on a full navigation cluster, the 96% format can feel cramped. Home, End, Page Up, Page Down and the rest of those keys being compressed into the main layout takes some adjustment.

For general typing and gaming, I would be completely fine.

For coding, I still want a full-size keyboard.

I also wish there were a little more RGB around the spacebar, and the knob has that tiny amount of movement I mentioned if you physically abuse the board.

You also have to unscrew the case if you want to get inside it. There is no fancy quick-release mechanism.

Some of the negative reviews I saw seemed bothered by that.

I am not.

We are talking about a heavy aluminum keyboard that was selling around $125 to $139 when I reviewed it. If your complaint is that you need to remove screws to open the case, I think we are running out of real problems.

The last thing to consider is sound.

I like how the YUNZII AL98 PRO sounds because it has that deeper, louder mechanical character.

That also means I would not call this a silent office keyboard.

If your coworker wants complete silence, this is not going to magically become a membrane keyboard.

For me, that is part of the appeal.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Excellent stock sound
• Heavy aluminum construction
• Gasket mount with noticeable flex
• Very competitive pricing for the build
• Proper numpad with a full-size zero
• Smooth linear switches
• Hot-swappable PCB
• Bluetooth, 2.4GHz and USB-C
• 8000mAh battery
• High polling-rate support
• Programmable knob
• Web driver and desktop software
• Extra opaque keycaps
• Extra colored accent keycaps
• Transparent accent caps included
• Extra switches in the box
• Braided cable
• Matching wrist rest that is actually worth using
• Mac and Windows support
• Good stabilizers
• Attractive RGB
• Very stable on the desk

Cons:

• Compressed navigation cluster is not ideal for everyone
• I still prefer full-size for coding
• Spacebar lighting could be brighter
• Slight knob movement if you physically shake or smack the keyboard
• No tool-free quick-release case
• The stock sound may be louder than you want in a very quiet office

Final thoughts

There are things I would change for my own preferences. I would love a true full-size version because I use the traditional navigation cluster constantly. I would put a little more lighting around the spacebar. If YUNZII tightened up the knob enough that it had absolutely zero movement, sure, that would be nice too.

None of those things change what the keyboard is.

The YUNZII AL98 PRO is a heavy aluminum 96% mechanical keyboard with a good gasket implementation, excellent stock acoustics, a huge battery, wireless connectivity, hot swap, RGB, useful software, a proper numpad and an almost silly amount of stuff in the box.

The wrist rest alone was a surprise.

The sound was the bigger one.

If you want a 96% layout and you care about having a full numpad without giving up half your desk, this is one of the better combinations of price, construction and sound I have tested in this size.

I kept trying to figure out what the catch was.

I never really found one.

And yeah.

It thocks.