What you get, what you have to give up, behind the ultimate cost performance is the art of trade-offs——VGN V98 Pro

Helium Hazard, here we come.

Today, I will take a look at a very popular volume king keyboard: VGN V98 Pro.

I suggest that friends who want to rush now can wait for a while, don't be afraid of being late for a good meal, don't be so anxious.

Because all the goods prepared by his family on Double Eleven have been sold out, it will take a few weeks to receive the payment now.

As the title says, products that focus on cost performance often have some functional or technical trade-offs. In order to maintain the functions and selling points of the product, it is necessary to subtract various parts of the keyboard in a limited cost.

Today let’s take a look at what the V98 Pro keyboard gave up, and what did it gain?

Opening the package, the first thing that catches the eye is the "main body": the stickers and posters of the power girl.

The mentality of the dead house of the two thorns has been manipulated.

Not too many accessories:

stickers, posters (instructions)

dust cover

keyboard

Simple shaft puller

3 replacement shafts

Type-C rubber cable with card slot (extra thick)

The keyboard is a slightly modified 98 configuration, three-mode wireless.

The version I got is sea salt color, the keycap is a combination of purple and white, and there is a silver-white metal patch embellishment in the upper right corner.

I like the appearance of this keyboard very much. The shell is pure white and plain, and the color of the keycaps is also a cool color that I like.

The 2.4G storage compartment is located in the upper right corner of the keyboard. It is a bit tight to insert, and it can be snapped off with a fingernail.

The upper left corner of the keyboard is the mode switch. Corresponding to 2.4G, wired, bluetooth respectively.

The indicator lights are on the left side of the keypad, and the four indicators correspond to number lock, caps lock, 2.4G mode indicator, and Bluetooth mode indicator respectively. There will be a little light leak around when the light is on.

The keycaps are designed with MDA height ball caps, which are shorter than the original factory and OEM heights used on general keyboards.

The large keys have a very large arc design, which can fit the fingers better when tapping, and the sound pitch will be lower when tapping.

The workmanship of the keycaps is slightly flawed, and a small part of the bottom of the keycaps will have a little burr.

For example, the keycap of the Caps Lock key in the picture above is not so coordinated with the height of the surrounding two-layer keycaps, and there are some small burrs on the bottom of the keycap, which need to be scraped with a fingernail.

When disassembling, it was found that the keycaps of the entire keyboard were slightly offset to the lower right corner. The ESC key is particularly obvious, you can look at the gap contrast between the lower right corner and the upper left corner.

However, this does not affect the use, nor does it affect your subsequent replacement of keycaps of other heights.

Because the keyboard light beads are also at this position, the slightly larger gap above also increases the brightness of the keyboard light to a certain extent, making the backlight effect of this keyboard better than that of products that also use opaque PBT keycaps.

Of course, the lighting effect of the V98 Pro is definitely not as good as those products with ABS light-transmitting keycaps, but it is also better than those keyboards that support RGB functions and there is no difference between turning on and off the lights.

What I got is the ice cream Pro shaft body, the Kaihua solution, and the full POM shell.

It is said that this axis costs three or four yuan per piece. Many customized players bought V98 this time because of this axis.

In terms of feel, there is nothing to say, the first echelon of Kaihua's plan. In actual use, it feels very moist and smooth. There is no obvious difference in the feel of the front and rear sections, and it is very smooth straight up and down. The pressing feel is slightly heavier than the avocado I used before, and the rebound does not have the avocado bounce.

Finally, let’s look at the disassembly. This time, I don’t know why most of the keyboards at Station B were not disassembled. Some say they are afraid of being disassembled, and some say that the buckle is too tight and cannot be dismantled.

The clasp was really tight when I removed it, but it can still be opened without damage as long as you pay attention.

Maybe I have too much experience in dismantling things.

The keyboard has a total of 9 layers, from top to bottom are:

cover

keycap

Shaft

PC positioning board

IXPE shaft under pad

Poron sandwich pad

PCB

Silicone bottom pad

Bottom case

After taking it apart, I found that the metal decoration on the upper right corner of the keyboard is a sticker. The middle of the sticker on my keyboard is still up, and it hasn't been pasted properly.

The keyboard adopts a silicone gas structure, and the main structure of the keyboard is all connected by buckles.

Some people said that the V98 did not use a metal positioning plate this time, and used a PC positioning plate to save costs.

I have a different opinion on this. The characteristic of the gas structure is soft elasticity. The soft PC positioning board can amplify the soft elasticity of the gas structure more than the hard metal.

However, the cost of PC is indeed lower than that of metal. The two views have their own opinions, depending on what angle you judge from.

The sandwich on the official schematic diagram uses two materials, IXPE and Poron.

I disassembled and found that there are actually three types, because there is a layer of unknown material stuck to the Poron sandwich.

The sound performance of the keyboard is the strongest level at the same price, there is no one. A "cost-effective" keyboard can achieve this sound performance, just two words: awesome.

From the keyboards I have used, at least 700-800 products can achieve similar sound effects.

Below the PCB is a custom-made silicone bottom pad, which is too tightly attached to the bottom case. When I first took it apart, I even suspected that it was glued to the bottom, and I took it off by pulling it hard.

The keyboard consists of two 4000Mah batteries connected in parallel for a total capacity of 8000Mah. The supplier is from Zhuhai Hechuang Energy.

If the battery is low, the keyboard space will flash red light, but because there is no specific battery display, I can't tell you how much capacity the keyboard has left after using it for a few days.

It has been 5 days since I got the keyboard, and I have used it with full light and medium to high intensity. Now the space has not flashed red. I hope this can give you a reference.

The keyboard master uses two VS12L17A, and the internal parameters have not been found. The supplier is from Shenzhen Weisheng Semiconductor.

No wireless chip was found on the PCB, but I found another IC from Shenzhen Weisheng Semiconductor, model number VS11K34A. The parameters of this IC were also not found. From the screen printing EP5889 below, it is guessed that the low-power Bluetooth module of Shanghai Telink Microelectronics is integrated and supports Bluetooth 5.0. I guess this is the wireless IC of the keyboard.

From my experience, the wireless experience of this keyboard is relatively poor. On the day I first started using it, I lost keys several times, and recently, keys got stuck again.

What I don't like the most is the way the keyboard wakes up, it doesn't wake up like other keyboards. You need to press any key on the keyboard to wake it from sleep before you can start typing.

This kind of wireless experience is quite fragmented. If you buy this keyboard, I suggest you use it as a wired keyboard.

The shaft seat is from Kaihua, and the power management IC and storage IC are not found on the motherboard.

I have tested it, and this keyboard can support onboard storage, and the settings changed in the driver can also be used in a wireless state.

Although the keyboard driver looks relatively simple, it has functions such as changing keys, macro commands, and lighting settings.

It's a pity that you can't check the battery level of the keyboard in the driver, you can only judge from whether the space bar on the keyboard flashes red.

As the title says: What you get, what you give up.

While getting a leapfrog feel and sound, there is also a price to endure leapfrog.

The price of V98 Pro is the unstable wireless experience and some minor problems in workmanship and quality control.

If you can live with it, then this keyboard is for you. Because it is really cost-effective, the ice cream shaft version in my hand sells for 400 yuan, and some shaft versions even cost 300 yuan.

For 300 yuan, you can get a feel and sound performance that far exceed this price, and the price/performance ratio is over the top.

But at this time, I don't recommend buying a "pre-sale" keyboard. If you like, you can wait for the follow-up factory to increase production capacity before making a decision.

The author declares that there is interest in this article, please respect the author and the content shared, communicate friendly, and make rational decisions~