Glorious GMMK 3 HE keyboard review
When it comes to enthusiast keyboards, you'll find wildly varying opinions as to what components make for the best keeb. Some will prefer clicky, snappy switches, while others will want something as smooth as silk, and that's just the beginning. Never mind the aesthetic options—there you enter a world filled with custom keycaps, painted chassis designs, and all sorts of varying preferences.
Glorious thinks it has the answer. Its GMMK 3 keyboard is designed with a two-pronged principle of attack towards the ever-growing enthusiast keyboard market, and it looks like this: You can either jump on the Glorious website and use its Boardsmith building tool to create exactly the sort of keyboard you desire, or you can pick up a standard GMMK 3 from multiple retailers and, throughout its life, gradually turn it into the keyboard of your dreams.
That's thanks to a modular, easy-to-disassemble design that allows you to gradually swap out all of the components with billions of potential combinations of more boutique offerings. It's a clever concept, and one I was itching to try when it was first revealed.
Thus, Glorious has sent two different keyboards for review. What I have sitting in front of me is the 75% version of the GMMK 3 HE, one of the more standard models Glorious wants you to pick up from a shelf and gradually customise over its lifetime. It's available for $190/£190, and is one of the more basic versions of the GMMK3 you can find, albeit with Hall effect switches as standard.
Switches: Fox Hall effect linear magnetic red
Keycaps: GPBT Doubleshot
Connectivity: Wired
Keys: 81
Tilting: Yes, rear-mounted flip-out stands
Backlighting: three zone RGB: per-key, sidelights, badge
Dimensions: 335 mm x 125 mm x 42.5 mm
Price: $190/£190 (standard)
It's supposed to be a jumping-off point, the beginning of a keyboard obsession that Glorious hopes will stay with you for life. A ship of Theseus of a keeb, if you will. Glorious also challenged me to build my own review sample using its
