GMMK Pro Review: Does It Live Up to The Hype?

[Music] hey guys welcome back my name is marginio and today we're going to be taking a look at the gm mmk pro so this keyboard was first announced by glorious on november 2020 and since then it's been seeing a lot of hype as well as a lot of totally valid speculation it's going to be priced at a very competitive 170 us dollars so let's take a look and see if it will truly shift the custom keyboard scene now full disclosure glorious has actually sent me a unit of the jmk pro for free as well as some other goodies but that will not change my review at all i also want to quickly thank skillshare for being today's sponsor if you're anything like me you enjoy learning new skills and trying out different things and applying it to your everyday life it's just really satisfying one thing i have wanted to learn and master for quite a while is how to manage my time better and how to become more productive throughout the day so i've actually been taking a class called productivity masterclass by thomas frank it's an extremely practical class and it helps to get my ideas and plans from my head to something more concrete that i can actually work with i have a lot of ideas and i'm constantly thinking about what to add for the next or current video that i'm working on and having an organized system helps me to work on those ideas more efficiently and properly skillshare is also incredibly affordable as less than 10 us dollars a month on an annual subscription and also has an amazing community the first thousand people to use the link in my description below will get a free trial of premium skillshare membership to learn anything they want i would have never joined the custom keyboard scene had i not learned new skills and explored different hobbies i highly recommend you guys learn new skills as well and i think skillshare is a great way to do that big thank you to skillshare and back to the video glorious has sent me the black slate jmmk pro which is the matte blank version of the keyboard it comes in very bright flashy glorious style packaging and honestly it's not bad it fits with the overall glorious theme and also provides a great amount of detail and a quick glance which is extremely helpful especially for beginners so well done with that said let's take a look at what's inside we're firstly greeted with a nice welcome cod some protective foam and of course the gmmk pro itself it also comes with one keycap puller one switch puller and one braided usbc cable the usbc cable isn't bad at all it's honestly pretty high quality and i'm definitely very impressed it's much better than most of the cheap usb-c cables that get sent along with the keyboard the switch and keycap pullers on the other hand are terrible i do not recommend using these ever they're not very ergonomic and are extremely tiring to use however glorious will be selling their own switch puller for 8 us dollars and their own keycap puller for 10 separately and i'm not gonna lie the switch and keycap pullers from glorious are really high quality and they are probably my favorite ones i own currently all right so to the gmk pro itself the keyboard is a 75 gasket mounted keyboard with a high profile aluminium chassis and rotary knob on the sides of the gmok pro you also have two acrylic diffusers that provide some pretty clean accent lighting the back of the keyboard also has a recessed hole in the middle of the case for the usbc cable and lastly the bottom of the keyboard also has glorious engraved in the center the overall build quality of the case is superb the cnc machining is really high quality and the aluminium has also been anodized really well the corners have also been rounded off and the edges have been filled which makes it feel that much smoother the hole for the usb-c cable is also deep enough where it hides the metal connector entirely and the glorious engraving on the bottom has a great finish as well i'm glad they went with this approach instead of just printing a logo on the bottom and adds a little more depth to the board without feeling obnoxious and honestly i like it the side profile of the keyboard is sleek sharp and minimal it has a 6 degree incline which also provides for a more elevated typing experience the bezels on the keyboard are pretty thick much thicker than what i'm used to on most of my keyboards which makes it feel a little chunkier than i would normally prefer but i'm assuming the thicker bezels are for the acrylic pieces on the side on the top right of the keyboard we also have our rotary encoder the rotary knob can actually be swapped out really easily and can be replaced with other glorious knobs yes i did just say that scrolling it provides very subtle feedback where it's not too tactile or too smooth i think it's a really nice in-between of both worlds and i'm glad that it provides some feedback clicking the rotary encoder also works and is pretty satisfying it does have some wobble but not to the point where it feels flimsy or cheap there are three options for the rotary knobs you have anodized black silver and gold they have a unique texture on the sides which gives you something to grip onto and the smooth face on the top makes it look really clean alright so let's talk about how this keyboard is assembled the bottom housing is screwed onto the top housing with eight screws the plate pcb and top housing are all secured together and the pcb is connected to a dotted board on the bottom housing via a jst connector the bottom housing comes with foam which is always a great addition it also has a cutout to help route the jst connector and a hole for the daughter board it also has 12 gaskets around the edges of the board which helps to spread out the weight of the board when compressed the pcb is not directly connected to the top housing via any screws and is secured in place through compression with the gaskets when everything is screwed together this is to achieve a more even and soft typing experience which is always a very nice advantage of a gasket mount the plate is secured onto the pcb with eight screws and there are also four screws used to hold two acrylic diffusers on the side for accent lighting these acrylic diffusers have a white card stock on top and have an angle designed to help redirect the light to the sides of the keyboard both the plate and the pcb are fully custom and the plates have tabs on the sides which are designed to allow the gaskets to keep the pcb and plate in place once you've disassembled the pcbm plate you also have a piece of foam in the middle which for some reason was stuck onto the plate i'm not sure why they've done that apparently it's to make sure that the foam doesn't shift or move but it is completely unnecessary the pcb is completely hot swappable which is my personal preference so i'm really happy with that it has an ansi layout and also uses a south facing 5 pin switch configuration which is a great choice for avoiding switch interference each switch has individual rgb lighting and there's also accent lighting on the sides the rotary encoder is soldered onto the pcb on the top right as well the jmmk pro also comes with pre-installed stabilizers these are the glorious goat stabilizers which is kind of a risky name these are glorious own transparent screw and stabilizers which do come pre-lubed with the keyboard and the stabilizer stems are also pre-clipped so you don't have to make any modifications to the stabilizer stems at all the factory lubing is decent it's a little bit inconsistent between each stabilizer but you can tell that glorious knew what needed to be lubed they still have quite a bit of rattle but compared to the majority of other stock stabilizers i've received with keyboards they're definitely not the worst the gmmk pro currently has three plate materials you can choose from there's aluminium polycarbonate and brass on top of the eight screws used to secure it to the pcb they also have two screws for plastic bits that line up the pcb to the plate what plate you end up using really just comes down to personal preference brass is usually for people who like a higher pitch sound and a harder typing experience polycarbonate provides a much softer typing experience and usually produces a deeper and more poppy sound with linears and aluminium is a nice middle ground between polycarbonate and brass in terms of personal preference i'm a huge fan of polycarbonate plates as it provides the most flexible typing experience and it also has in my opinion a really nice sound signature regardless i will be trying out each plate with different switches to give you guys an idea of what it can sound like alright so one thing i have noticed when trying out the plates is that i had a very difficult time getting them to fit if i used durock v2 stabilizers the polycarbonate plate could fit it somewhat the aluminium plate was sort of 50 50 and the brass plate was near impossible as much as i wanted to test out other stabilizers i also didn't want to break my review board so i ended up sticking with the gold stabs for now glorious has informed me that they are working to get their plates to fit third party stabilizers in future batches so hopefully they follow through but for now yeah very disappointing so instead i just ended up modding the goat stabilizers i lubed them with quite talks 205 g0 and i've also wholly modded them i will be making a tutorial on how i mod my stabilizer soon so if you want to know when that comes out please do subscribe [Music] do do so in terms of the typing experience the layout of the board is really comfortable to use i like how the keyboard is fairly spacious and not super compact like the kbd75 v2 for example i am also a huge fan of the rotary encoder i know a lot of people think it's super gimmicky and they were just following the trend and i did too but after using it every day for just volume control and for muting when i'm recording a script it is super convenient and helpful and i really like it the keyboard is compatible with qmk but not with via out of the box but they've also released their own software called core and it actually works really well with the board it comes with a ton of lighting effects and is really easy to use you can also change your key bindings but it's super inconvenient because you have to click save after each key it's not very fun they're still working on the software so for now it doesn't really bother me my personal recommendation for anyone interested in getting the gm mk pro is to get it with the polycarbonate plate in terms of how it sounds and feels this in my opinion is the best plate to get and for a little bonus if you like rgb the polycarbonate plate will help the rgb to come out a little bit more in terms of keycap switches and other accessories it's really up to you glorious is going to be selling a lot of accessories and i'm definitely very interested in covering them in another video when that video will come out i have no idea all right so the gmmk pro is it worth it in my opinion yeah definitely i think it's a great board and this is not just me riding on the hype or trying to please glorious and you know look like a good youtuber nah honestly it's a really solid board now don't get me wrong this isn't the keyboard to end all keyboards and it is not even close to being an endgame keyboard but it's a great place to start i think it's the perfect middle ground for people who want a premium keyboard but without having to you know wait for a group buy or paying really high amounts of money because not everybody is ready and willing to do that so i think the jmmk pro fills that gap really well and with the right switches and plates it can sound really good so in conclusion i really like the gmk pro and i'm very interested to see how it will perform in the market i think glorious is making some big moves and the fact that this keyboard is in stock changes everything people won't have to wait for a group buy and they can't miss a group buy if there isn't one and they don't have to go to the meg market to pay crazy prices it's going to be really available and i am all for it anyways guys that's it for today's video thank you so much for watching i hope you enjoyed if you did please do consider subscribing and please feel free to join my discord server discord dot gg slash mongenio and feel free to follow me on twitter at homagenew i'm sorry i was a little bit late to the initial embargo release i just had some uni assignments and stuff and i'm really trying to keep up so i hope you guys can forgive me and with that i'll see you guys in the next video peace

Channel: Hamaji Neo

Views: 549,764

Keywords: Hamaji Neo, Custom Keyboard, Hamaji Neo Custom Keyboard, Custom Keyboard Build, Budget Custom Keyboard, Hotswap Custom Keyboard, GMMK Pro, GMMK Pro Review, GMMK Pro Keyboard Review, GMMK Pro Sound Test, GMMK Pro Impressions, GMMK Pro Keyboard

Id: NoNRUqtVazw

Length: 13min 15sec (795 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021