Your reaction to Logitech’s Alto Keys K98M hot-swappable mechanical keyboard may come down to one thing: how often you use the Home key.
A mechanical keyboard with a vibration-absorbing cushioned gasket design? Plus hot-swappable switches for customizers or do-it-yourselfers? That’s something you’d expect from a boutique vendor like Keychron or NuPhy, not mass-marketer Logitech—and probably for $150 or more instead of $119.99. But the Alto Keys K98M is both a more stylish and more affordable successor to Logitech’s MX Mechanical Keyboard. Indeed, only one odd layout quirk keeps it from joining the Razer Pro Type Ultra in Editors’ Choice and top-recommendation territory.Design: The Colors Are Dull, Duller, and Dynamic
Among Logitech’s 40-plus keyboards, the Alto Keys K98M straddles a couple of segments: office productivity and mechanical/enthusiast. It’s available in three colors, each with a contrasting space bar and Enter key: dark graphite; generic off-white; or (our review unit) a vivid lilac that would look at home on the desk of a K-Pop Demon Hunter. Alas, the boring hues have a higher percentage of recycled plastic—25 percent and 19 percent, respectively, versus a paltry 10 percent for the lilac.
At 1.6 by 15.8 by 5.8 inches (HWD), the Alto Keys offers a slightly trimmer footprint than most full-sized wireless keyboards, though it weighs a husky 2.43 pounds. The 98-key layout—Logitech sells a tenkeyless K75M version in Asia that may hit the States soonish—includes a numeric keypad but not the six-key cluster (Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down) usually seen above the cursor arrow keys.
That’s the layout kink that knocks a star off our review rating. The four keys above the keypad are labeled Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down—but Home also acts as a Delete key, and is labelled as such.
