GMMK Pro Review! Best Custom Keyboard for the Price?

all right what's up guys i'm random frank p and today's video is probably one of the biggest reviews in recent memory lots of hype behind this one we're going to be reviewing and building the brand new glorious gmmk pro keyboard in both black and white so this video is going to be a bit more thorough because not only are we reviewing the final keyboard once it's fully built we're going to be looking at the bare bones gmmk pro that you receive when you buy one and the whole modding process behind bringing the keyboard to its final form we got a lot to go over so sit tight grab another cup of coffee and let's get into it so first up this 75 form factor probably isn't what you're used to seeing if you're not involved in the custom keyboard community but it's essentially a smaller version of the fan favorite tkl size keyboards and as i said we have both their black slate and white ice units to show off in all's glory and as a bare bones kit they call it it comes fully assembled for you out of the box so you don't need to build it from like the plate and pcb and all that all you need to finish it off is to buy your own choice of switches and a keycap set it comes with a rotary dom encoder in the top right which is great for volume control zooming in and out or scrubbing a timeline it's all programmable these are fully stoppable by the way you can just pop them out and they sell three different colors with black white and a brass and they're only 9.99 each we have their own lubed goat stabilizers already installed their pcb screw in for extra stability and the color matching gasket mount hotspot pcb for both units supports five pin switches in the south facing orientation which means there won't be any interference issues with certain keycap sets and you can pretty much use any switch you want because with the five pin slots it'll support a three pin switch obviously build wise the gmk pro is a chunk it weighs 3.3 pounds out of the box from its cnc aluminum body it also comes stock with an aluminum plate inside although you can choose to buy either brass or polycarbonate plates as well you have the glorious typeface engraved from the bottom of the keyboard four rubber pads in each corner and there are no flip out feet on the bottom but the back is angled at a six degree angle and man just both super nice and clean when i first unboxed it i was blown away at the quality and the heft of the keyboard so i am going to be dropping an additional giant unboxing video going over every single accessory that you offer for this keyboard that'll probably be tomorrow sometime this week probably but as you see i have this connected with a coiled usb-c cable they do offer these and sell them stock in the box does come with a regular usbc cable but you can pick up your very own because glorious is making colored 5 pin aviator connector cables so the fact that they have these and they're actually offering different colors as well i think is awesome but yes it obviously means the cable is removable here i'm going to recess on the back side seated nicely in the middle then before we start the build just a few more notes the frame is high profile so the switches are seated into the frame so they're not exposed on the sides in addition to the vibrant rgb we also have side lighting to add some extra glow on your desktop and again just the fact that they give us color matching pcbs to the case just really proves they're really paying attention to the aesthetic details here they very easily could have made just one pcb and use them in both colors but no color matching all right next up we're going to fully build up our black unit go through all that and then disassemble the white unit to show you you know what's inside if you want to take a deeper dive into customizing your keyboard okay so for my switches here just out of ease for this build i'm going with their own glorious panda switches these however are lubed with their g-lube out of the box and surprisingly they feel and sound really good for a factory lube job so much so to the point where i didn't even feel the need to take them apart and lube them myself if you guys saw a few weeks back i did lose my own panda switches for the ramakara build and no lie these feel right on par i'm very impressed like that's that's stock that's a really good factory lube job with it being a 75 keyboard we need 83 switches in total and these are tactile switches so pair with that default aluminum plate inside we're still going to feel that tactility real nicely but it's going to be a smoother stroke than a nice bump once they actuate the stem is palm and the housing is nylon and even though i'm team linear these make a hell of an argument for a transition and again since the pcb is hot swap and south facing it's as easy as legos just popping them in make sure the pins are straight an led cutout in the housing of the switch still allows for some rgb to shine up through the switch itself back to their screw-in stabilizers it's their goat stabilizers they call them they completely transparent stem and housing and also they're factory lubed and they definitely applied a generous amount as you can see so we're gonna see how these hold up during our sound test but yeah they're not dried up old ladies they're good to go now for the finishing touch glorious is also selling their own sets of colored pbt keycaps called g pbt and in fact they have seven different colored sets here ranging from a colored gradient to solid colors and the entire 114 key set only costs fifty dollars which i think is super competitive and a hell of a deal especially when you look at how much the typical gmk sets kind of start at like what 120 and obviously with it being a traditional keycap set they're compatible with pretty much any keyboard you have so you can put them on your 60 your full size tkl whatever you currently use and obviously you all know what it is but i'm going to be going with that rainforest set with that nice gradient of a darker to a light steel color i think that splash of color on the all black makes it pop really nicely and as a final result when talking visuals whoo looks killer in terms of rgb it's not too much or distracting in the slightest because head on you can barely see it since the light is already being diffused through our switches and the keycaps aren't shined through the only time you're really going to see the rgb is like from a side angle and you have that additional strip on the left and right but absolutely no complaints here because what i usually do anyways is keep it a static color so inside the software which we'll talk about in a little bit we can match that up to the keycaps a nice teal but if you do want some crazy rgb hang tight i got you covered with that white build coming up next and just like that the black unit's all wrapped up again all you need to buy is a keycap set and switches to fully you know customize and finish off the build so super simple we'll do a sound test in a minute don't worry we still have to take apart and build the whiteboard then we'll get into my overall you know experience and pros and cons of the keyboard still all right so taking it apart is relatively straightforward again i'm sure most people who aren't familiar with custom keyboards may not have used a gasket mount keyboard in the past but it's not complicated taking it apart underneath are eight screws in total that are keeping the top and bottom frame together once they're all out just pop out that rotary knob you can easily just take off that top plate then inside you have the aluminum frame and pcb sandwiched together but to my surprise there's a bit more going on so inside underneath the pcb they actually have a custom cut layer of dampening foam which is to you know cut down on that resonance that may occur when you're typing since the block of aluminum is hollowed out inside to fit these components this pad is going to help keep any micro vibrations to a minimum as it gets absorbed here with this layer then you can see for the bottom housing of that cnc block we have the cutout for the usbc daughter board and a channel to route the cable which powers the pcb now holding the plate and pcb together are two top screws and posts once these are removed there are then 12 additional screws underneath the pcb which holds that and the aluminum plate together even more and again to my surprise another layer of foam sandwiched between these two now since i want to swap out the default aluminum plate with a polycarbonate plate which by the way only costs an additional 19.99 if you want to pick one up as well you first have to reapply the side led diffusers they have these cutouts on the side so they just pop into place really easily then you just line up your pcb so the stabilizers slide down through the plate and then remount those 12 screws to hold it all down and real quick just to point out i'm opting not to use that sandwich foam layer between the polycarbonate plate but obviously you can choose to do so if you wish next step is plugging back in that tiny four pin cable but do make sure underneath that foam and that channel cut out it's laying in there nicely so it sits flush again and you'll see on the bottom frame are those small rubber pads for the plate to sit on that's where the plate gets sandwiched and mounted between the frames hence gasket mount and man how many times i said sandwich who's getting hungry then you just slide that top back on flip it over screw in those original eight screws and it'll take maybe like 10 minutes tops to do this and then now with it being all white the pcb as well the rgb is gonna look nuts on chin because the polycarbonate plate is still going to let a lot of that rgb shine through but it'll also like blend those colors together really really nicely we don't have time today to go over this entire full build for the white unit so i'll probably save that for a third video coming up alright so now we'll do a sound test roughly 45 seconds for each board again for our black unit we have the lubed uh glorious panda switches and for the white unit i didn't show you fully but we're gonna be using these brand new super linear everglide aqua king switches okay so finally into my two cents about the fully built glorious gmmk pro keyboard and keep in mind for this not everybody's going to have the same configuration because when it comes to a bare bones kit like this like i said before you buy the switches you buy the keycaps so your final build is going to differ but i'm taking you know the keyboard as a whole into consideration here uh for my thoughts and opinions at the end of the day whether you are using this for gaming video editing really whatever you're doing with this i am super impressed and honestly it starts right out of the box with the actual frame itself it's super hefty like i said 3.3 pounds built up just over four pounds i primarily test it in game with my black unit that has those tactile glorious panda switches and i've had no issues whatsoever but again you know you don't have to use this for just gaming that's the the glory of a custom keyboard like this especially one with this 75 form factor you still do have those dedicated arrow keys and you get the addition of that rotary knob which i think is really really cool again volume control pretty much whatever you want this to be you can set it and program it in their software it's honestly pretty crazy to me that these only cost a hundred and seventy dollars for the bare bones kit and i know at first glance that might be like you know sticker shock like seeing that at face value it does seem like a bit more money than you're probably used to spending on a pre-built gaming keyboard out there but in this you know custom community of the keyboards and stuff 170 is super super affordable and way more than fair for this you can compare this to the satisfaction 75 which is a little but more than double that's over 400 this 170 uh it is just mind-blowing i really can't see where glorious is cutting corners here like the materials it all feels super premium and really nice definitely a hefty cnc aluminum block it honestly blows my mind that they pulled this off for just 170. another thing that's really cool is yes it's obviously compatible with their glorious core software but it's also compatible if you use qmk or via which are two very popular you know open source software is out there for when it comes to customizing your keyboard so you have the option of either three whatever you're more comfortable with but since the average consumer might just go towards glorious core i'll show you that real quick and it's visually very simple all laid out for you you can have the key bindings tab which will let you go in and reassign any of the keys to be you know macros and other functions it's your typical you know reassigning key binding section here but then again also for that rotary knob since you have three functions of turning it up turning it down and then pressing in as well to actuate you can reassign whatever you want those three actions to be then for the lighting tab under the presets there are 18 different onboard rgb effects you can cycle between both here in the software and actually on the keyboard itself so you have those onboard controls cycle through the effects and the rgb lighting is really really nice here again you can't really see it in the black and four screen unit but with my white unit built up and that uh polycarbonate plate it gets diffused so nicely and the rgb just looks stellar effects are smooth and fluid looks really good then you have the perky tab under lighting which will let you go in and sort of make your own effect if you want to have per key lighting for different colors this will also let you go in and customize the the side strip on each side of the keyboard if you want that to glow a different color then your main keys or whatever you have that all right here very very customizable and for performance you can just go in and set the polling rate so so far it's all been extremely positive almost too good to be true but there are two cons that i noticed and wanted to point out first up i kind of alluded to it earlier with their goat stabilizers definitely heavy on the lube i really had to break in my stabilizers to get them to like not stick or fully you know pop up after i would actuate them so a lot of lube in the stabilizers and second again this won't even apply to you if you're not using this keycap set but with their gpbt i did notice that on some of the keys the font was just kind of uh it didn't seem consistent all across like sometimes it felt slightly more bold i didn't like how on some keys like delete and print screen it was the full width of the key i do realize that's kind of common on most keycap sets but here it was definitely too close to the edge for my liking in terms of you know that visual aesthetic now i understand when it comes to a keycap set the average gamer out there is probably gonna want like some sort of shine through keycaps so these probably won't be for you um if you want to throw on some pudding keycaps i can only imagine it would look pretty crazy on these but now bringing it all together what glorious is doing for 170 is honestly remarkable and we kind of saw this when they released the lightweight 50 model o mouse which completely shifted the entire trend of the lightweight gaming mouse market out there for the better and since we've only had better products lighter mice and it's all because of glorious so with them putting out a fully customizable keyboard like this a kit that you can add on to and fully build up for an extremely budget-friendly price of 170 again it might seem like a lot to you at first but 170 for a custom keyboard like this is absolutely fantastic i cannot be more impressed with what glorious is doing here with the gmmk pro and um this like contender for one of the greatest keyboard kits at that price of all time so like i said i still have a giant unboxing video going over all the accessories um trust me i barely showed off like a fifth of the accessories they offer for this keyboard like if you want to go for a real classy look they also sell a brass plate so you could swap that out all black case get all black key caps also swap out the rotary knob got a brass one here as well i think that would look really nice and classy uh but yeah tons of stuff to unbox and go over in that giant unboxing video and again if you're interested you want to see the actual build video on this ice white unit which looks super super clean love the custom keycaps here and again i have those crazy smooth and linear um everglide aqua king switches those are insane one of the smoothest switches i've ever tried so far if you want to see that let me know but yeah guys that'll wrap it up for my review of the glorious gmmk pro hope you all enjoyed if you want to check it out i'll try to put everything all the stuff i believe the batch 1 reservations are still going on um so if you want to pick this up down below in the description for you guys if you like this video give it a big thumbs up show your support feel free to follow me on twitter at randomfrankp and lastly if you haven't already hit that subscribe button hope you all enjoyed have a good day

Channel: randomfrankp

Views: 691,370

Keywords: randomfrankp, 4k, 2021, GMMK PRO, glorious, glorious gmmk pro 75, glorious gmmk pro review, glorious gmmk pro sound test, review, build, build guide, custom keyboard, custom keyboard build, glorious panda switches, TKL, tkl keyboard, 60 keyboard, 75 keyboard, 75 keyboard build, mechanical, custom gmmk pro, glorious keyboard, forest green gpbt, RGB, gaming keyboard, custom gaming keyboard, glorious gmk, gmk pro, gmmk pro keyboard

Id: TFtuODqNSFg

Length: 17min 11sec (1031 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021