Glorious GMMK Pro review (Glorious Pandas)

[Music] hello and welcome to this review of my gmmk pro keyboard this was a donation from glorious themselves i showed an unboxing of it a while ago and it came with a plethora of optional extras which i'll talk about in a bit i must admit that nowadays mx type hot swap keyboards are kind of beyond my area of interest but this one was special enough that i accept it and i'm glad i did because it's actually quite interesting in the bigger picture i'm late to the party as always apparently pretty much every other youtuber on the planet has already done a review on this although to be honest i haven't watched any of them but judging by all the requests thankfully people still want to see my neolithic perspective of this keyboard anyway the company behind it are called glorious pc gaming race formerly glorious pc master race but ironically that name wasn't considered pc enough due to connotations of slavery which is of course ridiculous i mean nobody would call console gamers slaves just filthy peasants also apparently they wanted to get a separate identity from the original pcmr meme which i guess is why they also changed their stickers and whatnot i reviewed the original gmmk short for glorious modular mechanical keyboard by the way quite a while ago it was one of the first commercial hot swap keyboards out there especially in full size but nowadays hot swap ability is a fairly common trade so they decided to make a new one with a completely different take on it that would set it apart from other hot swap models the concept is what they call an ultra premium gasket mounted 75 percent keyboard all three of which are traits that are quite different from the original which was fairly basic not a gasket mount and wasn't available in 75 so it's quite a radical departure the only thing it shares pretty much is that it's hot swappable hot swap ability is in my opinion an extremely useful trait that's become more valuable as time progressed originally more of a gimmick the increased diversity of mx pin compatible switches on the market means that users can now get better control of what switches they want to use in a keyboard so even if you just put switches in once and never actually swap them out you can choose from a much wider variety of switches than the usual selection of cherry mx switches and clones that's commercially commonly available for example suppose you want a keyboard with box pink or royal you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find a commercial keyboard with those in if they even exist at all but with this you can just put them in yourself plus of course you can experiment with other switches without having to buy new chassis or go soldering so hot swap ability is definitely a useful feature in my opinion one major upgrade from the original is that the gm mk pro has fixing pin holes in the pcb which means that switches with fixing pins which are these things are compatible with the keyboard the original didn't have those so switches with fixing pins didn't fit which was a major and frankly rather silly oversized in the design now the most interesting bit here is the ultra premium designation it's really that which caught my attention this manifests itself in not just a slew of optional extras that you can get for it but a premium chassis plate gaskets pre-lubricated stabilizers a programmable rotary knob here and some other small tidbits as a side note please note that the keycaps and the switches were optional extras too both of which are also called glorious the switches deserve some special mention i'll get back to those later in the video furthermore they also provided a glorious wooden wrist rest a glorious carrying case a glorious coiled cable glorious switch and keycap pullers a glorious toy and a glorious cleaning kit comprising a glorious dishcloth a glorious bruschette and a glorious enema balloon they apparently even market a glorious lube station which together with the balloon sounds like it could make for a series of glorious evenings all in all it's a bit over 200 worth of extras which is actually slightly more than the keyboard itself cost a small rundown so you know at least something about what you're getting the wrist rest is quite comfortable and they do padded designs as well apparently the wire pullers are pretty standard and the switch puller is a known design as well although these are branded and therefore relatively expensive but these are very useful tools to have on hand wire pullers aren't as good for pulling big keycaps as ring pullers like this are but they're much better for single unit keycaps and this sort of switch puller is way better than this simpler design so even if you don't get them from glorious themselves it's good to get these tools from somewhere at least the two-part coiled cable is very stout and the connection in the middle here is apparently so that you can disconnect it without wearing out the actual end connectors i've been told that's a community thing based on aviation cables it's extremely sturdy but the coil is more for show than anything else because it barely stretches please note that the cable and the two pullers are more luxurious versions of what already ships with the keyboard by default so you do already get these things out of the box just less nice versions of them the toy is sadly non-functional i had kind of hoped it was one of those novel keys big switches like this one but whatever it's a cute gesture i guess the cleaning kit could be useful actually i didn't have a turkey baster yet and it's cleaner than blowing spittle into your switches i guess although if you bring it to your office you might get inquisitive looks and or embarrassing questions the key caps are very thick dicer-blind pbt apparently made in-house by glorious themselves this particular set is in a three-tone blue colorway they're extremely tough i'm sure that this will hold up for a long time but of course they don't let the backlight through the lettering and i think i would have preferred it if they stuck the letters in the top left instead of in the middle but that's just my opinion similarly keys like tab and shift are aligned to the cap edge but control and alt are not which is kind of weird and i like the edge aligned look better to be honest however i do like the small caps letters on these keys and the font looks nice and clean too and the lettering is very sharp indeed which is excellent ironically the enter key on this one says ascend which is usually the exact opposite of what an enter key does but it's part of their identity i guess anyway their 50 bucks are set and they're compatible with both full size and the 75 percent layout they also have shine through pudding sets for 35 dollars a quick word on the rotary knob here before i move on to the build quality it's pretty nice and ratcheted as well by default it controls the volume and it has a press function as well which by default is mute but it can be reprogrammed do note that it only changes volume by two percent with each ratchet and it's somewhat stiff so going from zero to one hundred percent looks like this that could have been better anyway let's talk about the ultra premium chassis it consists of a machined aluminium case please note the presence of two eyes in aluminium for those of you who don't speak english properly and it comes with an aluminium mounting plate as well so the case is basically a metal brick and the weight is accordingly massive including keycaps and switches it's around 1700 750 grams or in imperial units 11t apostrophe quotation mark pizza burger hot dogs [Music] to put that into perspective that's roughly the same weight as an ibm ssk model m i remember that this is both smaller and it has a chassis made out of aluminium not steel if it had been steel i reckon it could have given a model f a run for its money heft wise because it feels like an adamantium monolith already and it's a wraparound case too not one with those exposed floating switches that you see on many modern boards i approve in any case it's turbo tough this is going to last you a while definitely feels like a high quality product maybe ultra premium isn't quite the term i would have used but it's impressive nonetheless machine cases like this are very reminiscent of custom keyboards that often go for a similar style sometimes adding a metal weight in the bottom to add yet more heft those weights are generally brass which is even denser than steel but i think that's kind of cheating because that doesn't really make the keyboard tougher just heavier but i digress it also comes with gaskets which are located between the mounting plate and the pcb now the idea behind gaskets is twofold first to dampen the noise and second to provide a bouncier key feel as gasket mount keyboards don't use screws to fix the two together now to me making your keyboard a fraction bouncier sounds like one of the most pointless things anyone ever came up with seriously guys if plate bounciness is something that matters to you you should really get out there and try some keyboards that are actually different but to be honest this keyboard doesn't really feel flexy at all because the mounting plate is so solid and the gaskets are quite firm acoustically i guess it is quieter like this but the chassis is so rock hard that i can't detect as much as a smidgen of bimsy bouncy boogie they also do mounting plates made out of brass and polycarb and those might give a different result plus apparently they're looking into the whole non-flexi gaskets thing at the moment so i suspect they'll wobblify the keyboard in the future finally the switches these are glorious own glorious panda switches which are a commercial repro of holy pounder switches more or less with the difference that they come pre-looped and that they're in actual commercial production whereas the original holy pandas were just homemade mx hack jobs interestingly glorious used the original invere tooling for the housings and the contact leaves to make these panda switches holy pounders took off like a rocket but they were very difficult and expensive to obtain for a long time there were some non-original repro batches from drop but these glorious panda switches being in actual production and coming pre-lubed let alone being fairly competitively priced 36 for 25 almost half of what they cost on drop has made them very popular very quickly and a review of them has been much requested like the holy pandas they're directly based on they're said to be extremely tactile by some in the community which they're not and very rounded feeling which again they're not or not really at least here's a force curve of glorious pandas as you can see barring some waiting differences it's extremely similar to that of holy pandas as well as of input club's halo switches that holy pandas were originally based on hence the name but neither are very rounded nor extremely tactile this is what an extremely tactile switch looks like and this is what an extremely rounded feeling switch looks like quite a big difference as you can see anyway they do feel actually tactile which admittedly is a minor miracle on its own for an mx type switch and they do feel somewhat drawn out but they still can't shake the saw toothy grimy feel that every mx-type tactile switch has also the drawner tactile bump causes the switches to feel stiffer than you might think as a higher force is maintained for longer smoothness is of course a bit difficult to ascertain for a sawtooth switch but i must admit i wouldn't have guessed that these were lubed overall i'm not super impressed by them but frankly it's very hard to find tactile switches that actually feel good in my opinion especially modern ones i much prefer the tactility that clicky switches can offer generally however these holy panda switches do fit the idea of this keyboard like a glove when you think about it to elaborate on that last point having a youtube channel with loads of people commenting on your videos as well as reading the boards of several keyboard communities gives me a good insight into the wide range of tastes and wishes of other keyboard enthusiasts and what i've learned is that most of them are after fundamentally different things than i am because frankly this is not the sort of keyboard nor the type of switches i myself would typically buy see personally i mainly have to switch feel and switch sound i look for the way your keyboard feels and sounds and i accept that to achieve that you sometimes need to dig very deep and find some very obscure sources to get that but most keyboard users don't want to more or less literally sift through piles of rubbish to find ancient keyboards filled with cobwebs which have little or no customizability obviously everyone's welcome to their own opinions and if something works for you that's great that's not the point i'm trying to make but i've seen that many enthusiasts that are into modern keyboards know that if you want the better key feel you can go ibm or alps or hall effect or optoelectric or one of the many many alternatives out there and they know that if you want a nice sounding keyboard with a full bassy typing noise a modern small rigid chassis is never going to cut it compared to a big old resonating vintage one the acoustics just aren't there however what the mx platform offers more than anything else out there by far is customizability the ability to choose from a huge range of key caps to build the board from the ground up to use massive machined cases like this with gaskets in a huge variety of layouts and form factors they care about the keyboard itself much more than i do for example this old laser vtcl keyboard is a plastic piece of barely tougher than a cardboard pizza box but it's got great switches so i still love it in other words mx type switches including holy and glorious pandas are for people who don't actually care about switches they just care about the chassis or commercial availability and that's where this keyboard comes in that's why this is such a good fit the chassis itself is 170 dollars compared to 70 dollars for a bare bones gmm k1 so it's more than twice as expensive as the gmm k1 but you do get quite a bit more keyboard for it as well of course granted you still need to buy switches and keycaps but i'd say that price is fairly reasonable i'm guessing they're basing their profit mainly on all the extras they sell with it so the bigger picture revealed this keyboard is for two types of people those who want to get a keyboard with non-standard switches and don't mind paying for an extra tough chassis and volume knob and those who want something that's similar to a korean custom type keyboard but more easily obtainable and for less money prices on those vary widely from a few hundred to a few thousand my tip get this and one of the key cap sets and stick some box jades or box pinks or something like that in solid build with solid switches for 250 dollars that's it for this review thank you for watching i hope you enjoyed it and following as a typing demonstration of me typing on this keyboard foreign

Channel: Chyrosran22

Views: 64,635

Rating: 4.9250135 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: m5S4F03C-zc

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Chyrosran22]

Today we look at Glorious' new GMMK Pro! With a whole bunch of extras, no less. And aso the much-requested Glorious Pandas. Hope you enjoy the video! :)

[u/OmniSzron]

I love that Thomas just doesn't give a fuck about the latest trends and just gives his own honest opinion on this. Then just recommends Box Thick Clicks for it, because that's the most tactility you can get out of MX switches.

On a side note - the sound of that "pre-lubed" spacebar is just wretched.

[u/cls72]

If this review and post had been made by any other user, this post would have been downvoted into oblivion. Keep up the great work, Thomas!

[u/genericusername353]

Solid review as always, thanks! Not sure if you've done this, or are planning to do this, but any chance of a Model F Labs reproduction vs. Actual Model F comparison in the future?

[u/onceuponabeat]

Wait the cable that comes with the board is coiled? Or is this just everything they sent you

[u/gssmr]

Great vid, I love your take on mx switches lol. I'd like to see your opinion on gazzew u4t switches, and Phoenix switches since you like clickies so much

[u/jusmar]

How did you get pre-lubed glorious pandas?

[u/kibbles333]

... I have recently learned that you have a Reddit account.

Now excuse me... I need to purchase a retro keyboard to expand my horizon.

[u/blazingnoodles]

Well executed review! I like!