Introduction

Those who have been following TechPowerUp for a few years now are no doubt familiar with Glorious, which started as the Glorious PC Gaming Race brand complete with all the associated memes. It made a name for itself with the original GMMK—the Glorious Modular Mechanical Keyboard—which helped introduce a lot of PC gamers to mechanical keyboards and arguably was the product to popularize modular switch sockets in keyboards. Then came the GMMK Pro with its CNC-machined aluminium case, first-party screw-in stabilizers, open-source firmware that didn’t necessarily have the best execution, and the ability to purchase as a barebones kit to better appeal to the more enthusiast keyboard community. The more affordable GMMK was updated over two years ago, and we covered both the Compact TKL (65%) and Full-size (96%) offerings on launch day. It seemed apt timing for perhaps a GMMK Pro 2, or even a GMMK 3 thus. Little did I know both would be coming, and in a manner I was not expecting.

Yes, I know calling it Glorious GMMK is a redundant phrase, but blame search engine optimization and everyone referring to these keyboards as much. Either way, Glorious held a product showcase event in Copenhagen this past summer, but I was unable to attend it given the short notice. Our mice editor did go on my behalf, seeing as how he’s also covered several Glorious-branded mice, and you will see the fruits of his travel in this review too. At the event, Glorious talked about the new GMMK 3 series which comes in standard and pro versions, mechanical or HE (Hall effect) versions, different keyboard sizes/languages/layouts, and also in pre-built and barebones options. These alone would be a lot of SKUs for any company to launch, but then Glorious decided to also offer what it calls the Boardsmith feature, effectively making the GMMK 3 the world’s most customizable keyboard. This is a custom configurator you go through to create the keyboard of your dreams with over 1 billion (yes, that’s a B) possible combinations available.

You might have seen multiple reviews of the GMMK 3 last month when it officially launched, all of which were different looking as a result of us getting access to this feature. I was halfway across the world, but was still looking forward to seeing how my specific keyboard came out—it’s not the one in the teaser image above, I just designed one to put forth yet another possibility. I’ll also aim to get my hands on a pre-built version of the GMMK 3 for a separate review, if only because there are so many things to talk about in this keyboard family, but for now I’ll thank Glorious for providing two separate custom GMMK 3 units to TechPowerUp, and this particular review happens to be of the GMMK 3 Pro HE Wireless version. Given the nature of the configurator, having a single set of product specifications doesn’t really work here, so let’s do directly to the unboxing experience on the next page.