Glorious GMMK 3 review: the last keyboard you’ll ever need?

Glorious’ new GMMK 3 has over a billion possible combinations. That’s not just some marketing number — if you do the math on all of the options available, there are over a billion possible configurations. With an extensive ecosystem of accessories, a redesigned keyboard builder, and support for third-party components you won’t even find on the best gaming keyboards, the GMMK 3 wants to be the last keyboard you ever buy.

It very well could be, too. Glorious has the aesthetic end of the spectrum nailed, with plenty of experience building out accessories for its previous GMMK Pro and GMMK 2, but the redesigned GMMK 3 goes even further. It makes otherwise involved keyboard mods simple, allowing you to completely rebuild the board from the ground up with just about any components you could want.

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A note on this review: During my evaluation period, my GMMK 3 developed keyboard chatter. This is where a single keystroke will register multiple inputs. I’ve found a software solution to this problem, but it appears the issue is specific to the GMMK 3. Glorious tells me that this is a software issue when using a particular configuration of a Hall Effect board with standard MX switches. It’s working on a fix now, but I’ve scored this review with the bug in mind. I’ll revisit the score, and any potential awards for the GMMK 3, once a fix is available.

Glorious GMMK 3 specs

Have your cake (and eat it too)

The GMMK 3 lineup is absolutely dizzying, so let’s start with why you should care about the keyboard in the first place. That mainly comes down to the internals, and more importantly, how you can change them.

The biggest draw for the GMMK 3 is that you can use Hall Effect (magnetic) switches or regular 3- or 5-pin switches. We’ve seen Hall Effect switches plenty of times already, including on keyboards like the Meletrix Boog 75 and Keychron Q1 HE. Because of how these switches work, you usually can’t mix and match them with regular switches. The magic trick of the GMMK 3 is that it supports both.

If you order the GMMK 3 with a Hall Effect PCB, you can swap in either other Hall Effect switches or regular 3/5-pin switches. That’s normally something that requires an entirely new PCB. You can use them side-by-side, too. If you want, for example, Hall Effect switches for your WASD keys but regular mechanical switches for the rest of the keyboard, the GMMK 3 allows you to do that. To my knowledge, there isn’t another keyboard on the market that allows you to do that.

It’s a ton of flexibility, but it comes with a caveat. If you go with a Hall Effect board, you can only use Glorious’ Hall Effect switches. Any regular 3- or 5-pin switches work, but you can’t swap in third-party Hall Effect switches. This isn’t Glorious locking down its ecosystem — that’s evident in every other aspect of the GMMK 3 — but a necessary compromise to support both Hall Effect switches and regular MX switches.

I built my GMMK 3 with Glorious’ Lynx HE switches, which is a linear switch that feels buttery smooth out of the box. After playing around with the HE features — more on those later — I ended up swapping in a heavier set of WS Morandi switches. The fact that I can mess around with different switches while still getting the benefits of Hall Effect should I want it is a major plus for the GMMK 3.

The switches are the main draw, but the GMMK 3 has flexibility elsewhere. Glorious offers the keyboard with a polycarbonate, aluminum, FR4, or brass plate, and you can pick up these plates on their own. In addition, you can choose between silicon or Poron (foam) gaskets, as well as mix and match them inside the keyboard. I went with an FR4 plate and Poron gaskets, but I already plan on ordering some silicon gaskets to change up the feel of the keyboard.

There are ways to fully customize a keyboard outside of the GMMK 3, but it involves digging through various niche vendors, a lot of foresight, and generally some amount of money wasted on components you don’t want or need. And if you make a decision like going with a Hall Effect keyboard, you’ll need something completely different to switch back to MX switches. What’s great about the GMMK 3 is that it offers this flexibility after the fact. You can grow with the keyboard, swapping out components like Odysseus’ ship until you have something completely new.

The options

With over a billion combinations, it’s impossible to go over all of the options the GMMK 3 offers. Thankfully, you can play around with the configuration yourself with Glorious’ new Boardsmith builder. It allows you customize a GMMK 3, which is then hand-built and delivered to you fully assembled. At a high level, Glorious is offering 14 different versions of the GMMK 3 in three categories.

You can see how the 14 keyboards break down below, along with their associated price. These prices are for a prebuilt keyboard, which is available is either white or black. You can also order a barebones kit without switches or key caps, or a custom build through Boardsmith.

There are a few critical decisions you need to make regardless of the route you choose. Here’s how that breaks down:

• Size: The GMMK 3 is available in 65%, 75%, and 100% layouts.
• PCB: The GMMK 3 is available with either a MX or Hall Effect PCB, the latter of which supports Hall Effect and MX switches.
• Connectivity: The regular GMMK 3 is wired, while the GMMK 3 Pro is available either wired or wirelessly with a 2.4GHz and Bluetooth connection. All versions support an 8,000Hz polling rate in wired mode.
• Material: The regular GMMK 3 uses an ABS polymer (plastic) body, while the GMMK 3 Pro uses a fully aluminum body.

You can already see how this combination of different customization points adds up to create that massive number Glorious quotes, but the GMMK 3 goes even further. You can change your switch plate, top and bottom frame, volume knob, key caps, switches, and the new magnetic Glorious badge that sits on the outer edge of the keyboard. Glorious is maintaining an ecosystem of these components, too, so you can put together a keyboard that not only feels personal but also feels cohesive.

Options for the sake of options isn’t a selling point of the GMMK 3, but the ecosystem certainly is. Glorious has proved with the GMMK Pro and GMMK 2 that it can maintain a long list of accessories for its keyboards, and that’s all coming together with the GMMK 3. You don’t need to use Glorious’ own accessories for several of the customization points, either.

I’ve reviewed countless keyboards from the ROG Azoth Extreme to the SteelSeries Apex Pro Mini that are all trying to nail that perfect combination of features and aesthetics. The GMMK 3 isn’t trying to nail that combination. Instead, it provides a platform to build the perfect keyboard for you.

Personalized for a price

The GMMK 3 isn’t cheap, that’s for sure, but even the prices you can see in the above section don’t encompass how expensive the keyboard can be. You can personalize the GMMK 3 in just about every way imaginable, but you need to be ready to spend up if you want to trick out your keyboard with all of the bells and whistles.

I won’t go through all of the options here — you can try out Boardsmith if you want to see how much your ideal configuration would run — but some changes come at a steep price. The default aluminum plate won’t raise the price, for example, but a brass plate certainly will. You’ll also spend extra for one of Glorious’ limited edition key cap sets and shell colors, along with $50 for an admittedly high-quality coiled USB-C cable.

The GMMK Pro and GMMK 2 were never cheap keyboards, and the GMMK 3 — particularly the Pro variant — comes with some clear upgrades. Still, mainstream keyboards like Asus ROG Azoth are available for under $250, and if you do some digging, you can pick up keyboards like the WobKey Rainy 75 for a little over $100. Boardsmith and the custom GMMK 3 it delivers is exceptional — Glorious even writes your name in the box — but for the most budget-friendly build, a barebones kit is definitely the way to go.

The Pro difference

My GMMK 3 sample is the Pro variant, which definitely feels worth the upgrade. Although I haven’t used the base GMMK 3, there’s no doubting the quality on display with the CNC aluminum frame on the GMMK 3 Pro. The last keyboard I’ve used that felt this nice with the Meletrix Boog 75, and if you’ve ever touched that keyboard, you’ll know how high of praise that statement really is.

I went with a jade green top plate and electric green bottom casing, accented by the limited edition Volt key cap set and an electric green badge. It’s stunning set up next to my Fractal Terra case in jade green, and Glorious’ massive green coiled cable brings the look all together. It wasn’t hard to get this kind of cohesive look with Boardsmith, either. Particularly with more niche keyboard brands, I’ve always struggled to find a color scheme that I’m truly in love with. With the GMMK 3, I’m free to mix and match to get the perfect look.

The big seller is wireless, however, and it’s what makes the Pro version worth the upgrade. You can connect with the 2.4GHz dongle, or if you need to, connect to a device with Bluetooth. A toggle switch allows you to switch between the three modes (2.4GHz, Bluetooth, or wired), and the GMMK 3 instantly toggles between them. Even when the keyboard put itself to sleep, I was immediately able to resume typing without separately waking the keyboard first.

Alongside the wireless toggle, you’ll find a toggle for Windows or macOS layouts, which is available on both the GMMK 3 and GMMK 3 Pro. Glorious includes a few extra keys in the box if you want to use the keyboard with macOS, and if you ordered a particular key cap set through Boardsmith, you’ll get all of the extra keys along with your preassembled keyboard.

Inside Glorious Core

Bringing the GMMK 3 together is Glorious Core, which the company updated alongside the release of the keyboard. Compared to mainstream brands like Asus, Razer, and Corsair, Glorious Core is a little barebones at first. It doesn’t have the wealth of customization options you find on more robust software suites. On the other end, it’s much more flexible and responsive than the suite of QMK interfaces you find with enthusiast-level keyboards.

In particular, Glorious Core doesn’t have a ton of lighting options. You still get per-key lighting, along with RGB zones on the badge and sides of the keyboard, and Glorious includes a slate of preset effects that you can apply to the keyboard with some color customization options. It’s a far cry from what you’ll find with something like Corsair’s iCue, however, where multiple layers and effects can come together to create something wholly unique. As someone who likes a static color and not much else, Glorious Core works just fine. But you should know about the limited color customization regardless.

Glorious doesn’t sacrifice when it comes to key bindings and macros, however. You can rebind all of the keys to different functions, mouse controls, macros, or shortcuts, as well as organize your bindings into three layers. This is fairly standard fare for a modern gaming keyboard, but it’s nice to see regardless.

If you bought a Hall Effect PCB, you have even more controls. As with other Hall Effect keyboards, you have an adjustable actuation between 0.1mm and 4mm, which you can customize globally or on a per-key basis. In addition, you can bind up to four commands to a single keystroke on a Hall Effect switch, as well as use them in analogue mode — particularly useful for emulating games.

That’s all well and good, but the real draw of Hall Effect right now is the rapid trigger feature, where the key will dynamically actuate and reset based on how far it’s been pressed, not a set actuation point. It’s such a big deal in competitive games that Valve banned it from use in Counter-Strike 2. The GMMK 3 with Hall Effect switches has a rapid trigger mode, though it’s a feature you’ll need to turn on and off through Glorious Core.

All of your settings are rounded up and stored in one of three on-board profiles, but you can save even more profiles in the cloud if you sign up for a Glorious account — thankfully, you don’t need an account to use the software. Although lighting isn’t as involved as some other apps, Glorious Core doesn’t get in your way much.

It’s not littered with ads or extraneous settings that you’ll find in all-in-one apps like Asus Armoury Crate or Razer Synapse, allowing you to quickly dial in your settings, save them, and be on with your day.

The last keyboard you’ll buy

I haven’t talked much about the sound or feel of using the GMMK 3, and that’s because the keyboard is really what you make of it. I’ve been toying around with my review unit, and with some hand-lubed WS Morandi switches and (hopefully) silicon gaskets, I’m loving the way it sounds and feels. Your GMMK 3 won’t sound, feel, or look anything like mine, though, and that’s the beauty of this keyboard.

Glorious built a platform where, barring some major advancement in mechanical keyboard technology, it could very well be the last keyboard you ever buy. There’s an insane amount of flexibility, and from a company that’s proven over the past several years that it can support a large ecosystem of accessories online and in big box retailers. I’ve stopped looking at new keyboards to buy with the GMMK 3 and started thinking about ways I can tweak this keyboard to make it even better.

That’s just my approach with the GMMK 3, too. You can build your own from the ground up with a barebones kit, or get it fully assembled and customized to your tastes through Boardsmith. And if you can’t commit to either, a standard prebuilt version is available, too. Regardless of where you’re entering, it’s hard to go wrong with the GMMK 3. If you don’t like something, you can just change it.

However, I can’t recommend the GMMK 3 right now, at least not the Hall Effect version that I reviewed. As mentioned at the top of this review, what looks like a software bug is causing keyboard chatter on the Hall Effect version when using standard MX switches. Because of that, I’m withholding a recommendation for now until Glorious has fixed the problem.