Review: Yunzii AL80 wireless aluminum mechanical keyboard

Review unit provided by Yunzii

The Yunzii AL80 is a 75% wireless mechanical keyboard with one knob and one LCD. Price is USD 109.

I've reviewed a few Yunzii keyboards in the past and they are quite good. My current keyboard is the Yunzii B75 Pro.

Specifications

• Product: YUNZII AL80
• Type: CNC Aluminum LCD Mechanical Keyboard
• Layout: 75% Layout, 80-Key and 1 Knob, LCD Screen and Back Weight
• RGB: South-facing RGB and LCD Screen
• Color Choices: Silver, Black, Beige
• Switch Choices: YUNZII Cocoa Cream V2 Linear Switch/Gateron Zero Linear Switch
• Structure: Gasket Mounted
• Battery: 6000mAh, 36hr with lighting, 96hr without
• Connection: Wired Type-C/Bluetooth/2.4G Wireless
• Size of Product: 314.45 x 137.7 x 41.1 mm / 12.38 x 5.42 x 1.62 inch
• Weight of Product: 1438.5g / 3.17lb
• Keycaps: Double-shot PBT Cherry Profile Keycaps
• Hot Swappable: YES
• NKRO: YES

Things included

• Keyboard
• USB-A wireless receiver
• Long USB-C to USB-A cable
• User guide
• Card with keyboard shortcuts
• Keycap and switch remover
• Extra keycaps for Mac users

Design

The Yunzii AL80 is a beautiful keyboard with excellent build quality thanks to the aluminium body.

Shown above is the keyboard beside the Yunzii B75 Pro. Both keyboards look beautiful. The differences are:

The main difference is the B75 Pro is made with plastic and AL80 has a metal body.

Build quality of the AL80 feels extremely solid. However the 1.4kg weight of the AL80 means it's not as easy to move around, and unfortunately I do move my keyboard around my table often for the weight to be a hassle.

Another key (pun intended) difference is AL80 does not have a right Alt key which is crucial for MacOS users, and I'll talk more about this later.

Back has this reflective tinted mirror that looks pretty cool. The four rubber feet together with the weight provides excellent grip on table. The screw are hex screws.

My review unit came with the Yunzii Cocoa Cream V2 linear switch and the the thic-thoc typing experience is wonderful. Typing experience is better than my current Yunzii B75 Pro with milk switch which sounds thin by comparison.

This keyboard has beautiful south-facing RGB lighting with many colour options and moving patterns to choose from. The colours would blend together beautiful and make the keys look like they are floating on the colours.

The keyboard supports multiple connections: USB-C to USB-A cable, 2.4Ghz and three Bluetooth.

On the right-side there's an LCD that shows status information such as connection type, battery life, date and time. Customisation of the LCD is possible only with Windows driver.

You can switch between showing the status info, a picture and animated GIF using keyboard shortcuts Fn + 8, 9 and 10.

There's also a large light indicator by the side of the left Arrow key so show connection or pairing process (blinking).

There's a deal breaker for Mac users. There's one Right Ctrl key and no Right Alt. Without the Right Alt, the Mac layout does not have a right Cmd key so this is huge inconvenience to those who use plenty of keyboard shortcuts. E.g. You can't Cmd + O and Cmd + Zoom. For Windows users, this is not a big issue since there's still the right Ctrl.

Customising the keys

This keyboard has QMK/VIA support for customisation through the VIA website with the JSON file provided on Yunzii driver download page.

On the VIA website, under settings, show Design Tab, then upload the JSON file, and you can customise the keys.

I must say that I did not study the customisation in detail so I can't say much about customisation. I wasn't able to find out how to switch the Fn keys to shortcut keys.

Anyway, the keyboard works fine without customisation.

Conclusion

The Yunzii AL80 is a beautiful and well-made keyboard. Typing experience is wonderful and if you want that deep thoc-ing sound when typing, go with the Yunzii Cocoa Cream V2 linear switch.

I don't think this keyboard is suitable for Mac users because there's no right Cmd key. Maybe it's possible to customise a right Cmd key with the VIA website but I've not found out how to do that.

Oh, if you have to move the keyboard often on your table, I probably won't recommend this keyboard as it's inconvenient to lift and move something so heavy around that often.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Excellent build quality
+ Wonderful typing experience
+ Long battery life (36hr with lighting, 96hr without)
+ LCD that shows useful info
+ Beautiful lights
+ 2.4Ghz, 3x Bluetooth and cable connection
+ Huge status light beside arrow key to show connection status
+ QMK/VIA support
- No Alt button on the right side
- LCD can only be updated by Windows software
- Allen screws instead of crosshair
- Function keys are default to F1 to F12
- Hitting the Delete key usually hits the dial
- No height adjustment

Availability

The Yunzii AL80 keyboard is available from Yunzii online store, Amazon and AliExpress.