YUNZII Cake Meow C98 wireless keyboard came up for review. Having done a few keyboards of late, I put my hand up to test out this full-size keyboard. Having not heard of the manufacturer before, I did some research, learning YUNZII started mechanical keyboard manufacturing in 2018, a good solid six years under their belt, so let’s see how these years of experience have fared them well.
The hardest part of this review was keeping it away from my daughters. Having seen the Cake Meow theme and cupcake mousepad, they wanted me to open it straight away. Opening the box, you are greeted with a solid keyboard, weighing in at 1.3kg. Being a full-size 99-key keyboard, the dimensions are 40.5cm x 16.7cm x 4.4cm. You have a choice of four colours: Pink, Beige, Purple and Blue.
The keys on the board are your standard Dye-Sublimation PBT plastic and are MOA curved like they are made for the point of your finger, almost rounded and feel very nice. They look clean and smooth, but are tactile and ensure your fingers won’t slip off them as you are gaming or typing alike. The onboard battery is a massive 10000 mAh, giving you 62 hours with LEDs on and 34 days with backlighting off, with the auto turn-off function after 5 minutes.
The cat eyes and mouth on top of the keyboard are a handy visual indicator as well, showing your charge level: green showing fully charged, down to 20%; red for charging and also red when the battery is less than 20% charge.
The Cake Meow C98 supports tri-mode connections using USB, Bluetooth or the 2.4 GHz wireless connection. This ensures it supports all the major platforms: PC, Mac Tablet, Switch, Xbox, PlayStation and even your phone. The USB for the wireless connection is nicely tucked away on the paw of the feet under the keyboard. The USB-A to C cable that comes with the keyboard is nicely colour coded and around 2m in length; love the extra attention to detail, not just boring old white. Switching between the different connection modes is performed by moving the switch on top of the keyboard.
Hardware manufacturer, take note! The LED’s on the Cake Meow C98 are the best I have seen on a keyboard to date. The textured mould going 360 degrees around the whole keyboard is a masterpiece. I actually find myself resting my thumbs on it as I am typing and rubbing it. The south-facing LEDs are also underneath the keys and are some of the deepest, most vibrant colours I have seen to date.
There is a series of shortcuts you can use to change the patterns, colours and blinking speeds. If you are using MAC or PC, you can use the custom software to set it up exactly as you want it, noting you have to be hardwired for this to work. You can also set up macros with this software and even remap the existing keys.
The keyboard sits nicely inclined with the paw feet on the bottom of the keyboard. You can remove these feet, but due to the tail on the back of the keyboard, it cannot sit flat; hence, you have to leave them in. That is my only criticism of this keyboard: no adjustable feet. Personally, the default position is exactly how I would have it if there were adjustable feet, so it is no issue for me.
Something I have avoided, thankfully, much of my life is ASMR, but my girls tell me the keyboard has great ASMR when typing. Our computers sit next to each other and both girls walk past, type a few words to hear it then walk off, its quite amusing, they tell me its sounds like the ASMR game they play on Roblox The keyboard has a nice thock using the gasket mount, milk v2 switches and the five layers built into the keyboard, the bottom silicone layer, switch foam, sound enhancement pad, switch sound pad and finally the sandwich foam.
While the keyboard isn’t quiet when typing, it isn’t annoyingly loud either; it just has that nice sound to it, dull yet satisfying. You are provided with some alternate keys you can swap out, as the keyboard supports both 3 and 5-pin mechanical switches using the tool provided in the box. The travel distance is pre-travel 2.0 mm with a total travel of 3.6mm.
Overall, the YUNZII Cake Meow C98 wireless keyboard is a masterpiece of a keyboard from YUNZII. The massive battery, tri-band support, and the industry-leading LED setup make this keyboard near-perfect. The weight, five layers of damping and MOA curved keys really make this a joy to use. While I don’t believe I will have much luck stealing it back from my daughter’s computer, I am going to try, as it was one of the most feature-complete keyboards I have reviewed of late. I am a sucker for a solid mechanical keyboard, and this one has me hook, line and sinker. I can’t wait to see what YUNZII comes out with next!
