The world of mechanical keyboards has changed dramatically over the past few years, thanks to an influx of high-quality but affordable models from China. The same is now happening to the mouse world and, interestingly, it is often the same brands which have pushed the mechanical keyboard world towards better affordability that are now producing mice as well. The common themes are light weight, high sensitivity and wide connectivity, and that is exactly what the Yunzii M2 offers.
Disclaimer: I received a free unit directly from Yunzii. The M2 retails for $59.99. Additional information is available on the official webpage.
Yunzii M2 At A Glance
| Pros |
Cons |
| + Good build quality
+ High DPI and polling rate + Light weight + Easy-to-use software |
– Scroll wheel is quite stiff
– Inconsistent polling rate – DPI adjustment button located on the bottom – Very poor battery life |
Rating: 6.5/10
Packaging & Accessories
The Yunzii M2 comes in a cardboard box which contains the mouse itself, a USB to USB-C cable, a female USB-C to female USB-A adapter, a USB 2.4 GHz dongle, a set of replacement skid pads and a manual.
Design & Build
The Yunzii M2 sports a very simple design when it comes to its shape: it looks like a lot of other gaming mice, while still being simple-looking. The “head” of the mouse, where you connect the cable, is pointed, as the two buttons are separated by a small bridge. Where the M2 sets itself apart is the texture: whereas most mice have either plain, hard plastic or soft-touch finishes, the Yunzii M2 has a unique finish that uses almost-microscopic grooves going in different directions to create a pattern that reminds me of camo textures. The result is a surface that is very slightly rough (the way a volume knob with grooves is) and therefore offers better grip.
The mouse is available in black, white, orange and pink. The two buttons on the left hand side vary depending on the colour of the mouse; in the case of the white coloration they are bright silver, while the scroll wheel has black rubber on it with silver borders to either side. It is also hollow to reduce weight.
The base hosts two big glide pads at both ends, plus the sensor at the centre (with its own glide pad around it), the DPI button and a status LED that indicates the active DPI level to its left hand side, and the connectivity selector to its right hand side. There is a slot to keep the USB-A adapter which is very well hidden: you need to press the lower skid pad on its rounded end to lift it up; it can be a bit difficult to remove, as it only lifts up by a couple of millimetres. Be prepared to use something to wedge it open, especially if you don’t have nails long enough to get in there. This is a clever solution in theory, but in practice its execution leaves something to be desired – a larger lift to make it easier to open the lid would have been welcome. The mouse also lacks a visible LED or other indicator from above, which makes the design rather clean but also means that you won’t know when the battery is about to run out.
The M2 is average in size, at 121.5 x 63.6 x 39.4 mm, and this means that it is well-suited to small and medium hands that prefer a palm grip; if you have large hands, this mouse might be too small to use with a palm grip. With medium hands like mine, it can also be used with a finger grip and that is, in fact, how I used it most of the time.
The mouse weighs 63 g, which means it is very lightweight. Although it might not be lightest in the category, it still is very light to the point it’s barely noticeable.
The Yunzii M2 is well assembled and it is made with plastic that feels robust. It is perfectly average, in the sense that it doesn’t feel either premium nor cheap; it is what I expect a normal mouse to feel like. The micro-groove surface treatment means that you won’t see shine or wear after use, at least in theory; I have been using the mouse for a couple of months as I write this and the mous still looks and feels new. The only aspect to be aware of is that the grooves tend to capture small skin fragments which accumulate over time and require cleaning.
The primary buttons are slightly concave, which helps with comfort and grip as the fingers naturally tend to land in the middle of the buttons where it is easier to press them. It has to be said, however, that even when pressing in other points of the buttons there is very little difference.
Features & Specs
The Yunzii M2 features the PAW3395 sensor, which offers a polling rate between 125 Hz and 8 kHz and a resolution between 50 and 30,000 DPI. The lift-off distance can be adjusted between 1 and 2 mm. The mouse offers a polling rate up to 8 kHz in both wired and wireless mode, and of 125 Hz in Bluetooth mode.
One thing to note is that Yunzii specifies very high hardware requirements to support 8 kHz polling rate: the company says that your computer should have at least a Ryzen 7 3700X, 16 GB RAM and a NVIDIA GTX1080 or AMD RX 5700 to perform optimally. This is because the polling rate makes it so that it is the operating system that constantly checks the mouse (rather than the mouse sending a signal by itself) and it does so 8 thousand times per second – something that can put quite a bit of strain on CPUs, especially if they are not recent or high-end. In normal desktop use you won’t really feel the difference, but when gaming this can limit the overall performance and this is why Yunzii recommends a relatively high-end setup.
DPI can be adjusted on the fly and without using the companion software, however you need to lift the mouse and press the button to do so – not exactly ideal if you want to quickly adjust the sensitivity while gaming.
Yunzii does not disclose what switches they use, beyond saying that they are optical switches.
Software
The Yunzii M2 offers sensible defaults that will work for the majority of people without the need to customise the settings. If you woul dlike to do so, however, you can use a Web application to alter the settings without the need to install any software locally – both a pro, as you won’t have to deal with the umpteenth program to control your hardware, and a con, as the ability to adjust your mouse’s settings relies on the availability of the online service which could end without warning.
The website is very simple and easy to use, with a home section that recaps the mouse’s status, one to customise the functionality of each button, one to adjust the sensor settings (DPI, polling rate, sensor mode, lift-off distance, and performance mode), an interface to set up macros, an option to keep the DPI status LED always on or to have it off, as well as settings for the sleep time.
Performance & Sound
I do not game competitively and therefore I am not qualified to make claims on this, but my experience playing with the Yunzii M2 has been positive, as the mouse offers great speed, thanks to the high resolution, coupled with decent precision. This is possibly the one area where the M2 could see some improvement, as I often felt like it was difficult to get it to accurately detect smaller, precise movements, especially when setting it to higher DPI values. At 3200 DPI it behaved reasonably well.
I couldn’t tell the difference with polling rate values above 1 kHz, as the mouse is already highly responsive at that level. I guess you need a monitor with ultra-high refresh rates and a high-end computer, as well as the right game, to appreciate that. When testing the polling rate with the Razer tool, it detected wildly varied levels which were close to the advertised 8 kHz, but constantly going up and down.
The scroll wheel is smooth when you rotate it, with quite a bit of “weight” to it that makes it feel rather firm. It offers a good level of precision, with tactile feedback for every “notch”; speed is relatively low and there is no inertia, so you will need to scroll a lot when dealing with long Web pages. The wheel is quite temperamental when you click it as it demands precision: it becomes noticeably harder if you try to apply force to it from an incorrect angle. In general, it is very stiff and requires significant force to be clicked, much more than any other mouse I have tried. This can be an issue if you click the scroll wheel a lot, either in games or during general computer usage (I use it a lot to open links in a new tab when browsing, as an example).
The buttons are relatively loud and stiff. They require a bit of force to be pressed, which can be both a good thing (it is more difficult to click accidentally) and a bad thing (it can become more difficult to click). The mouse has a rather bright click, with the left button having a high-pitched component due to the switch and a lower-pitched component due to the button’s plastic, while the right button only has the higher-pitche sound.
Battery Life
The Yunzii M2 comes with a 500 mAh battery, which should theoretically give it plenty of battery life; however, the company declares a battery life of about 50 hours – which is entirely realistic. In my experience, the M2 lasts for about four days on a single charge, which is very little, even when set to a polling rate of 1 kHz. By default, the mouse enters sleep after one minute of inactivity, in order to save power, but this doesn’t really make it last longer. On top of this, it also makes it impossible to put the computer to sleep, as the mouse wakes it up immediately.
Final Thoughts
The Yunzii M2 is a decent mouse that is offered at an affordable price. It offers good specifications that are above what one would expect from a $60 mouse, good build quality, and a light weight. This isn’t a super-light mouse that goes for extreme measures in order to reduce weight as much as possible, but it does offer an overall low weight which you can feel. The triple connectivity and wide choice of sensitivity and polling rate levels make it very flexible and versatile, especially if you are looking for a gaming mouse that delivers high performance.
Where it falls somewhat short is in the fact that the polling rate is quite uneven and never reaches the advertised 8 kHz, although it gets very close, as well as in the very short battery life and in the scroll wheel being quite hard to press. The placement of the DPI adjustment button on the bottom of the mouse makes it impossible to do adjustments on the fly, which can be an issue with same games. It works well as a gaming mouse, though less so in general usage.
One further thing to keep in mind is that the Yunzii M2 appears to be a rebadge, or at least a variant, of the Xinmeng Zero 3. That mouse offers the exact same body and specs at a similar price point, which makes it likely that we are looking at the same product under different names.
All in all, the Yunzii M2 is a product that deserves attention, although I feel like it is not necessarily on par with the competition which offers better specs at the same price point (e.g. the Akko Dash Ultra, Rapoo VT2 Max). Where the M2 shines is in its micro-groove finish, which gives it a rather unique feel. At its MSRP it is interesting, but not the top choice; at a discount, it could be more enticing.
