The Glorious GMMK 3 Pro HE must be the keyboard equivalent of having an Formula One car on your driveway. It’s the most magnificently over-engineered piece of typing hardware to ever grace my desk – and completely customising it from top to bottom made me feel like part of the pit crew.
You’ll almost need to be on an F1 driver’s salary to afford all the parts. But with boutique ‘boards more popular than they’ve ever been, Glorious’ “have it the way you want” approach could make the investment well worth it for serious keyboard geeks.
The stock experience
You’re not short on options when buying a GMMK 3 Pro off the shelf: there are wired and wireless versions, two different sizes (65% and 75%) and choice of regular or Hall effect switches. I went for a 75% wireless with HE switches, which is $370/£350 even before you start adding extras or swapping out parts.
You’re getting a top-tier gaming keyboard for your cash, with speedy 8000Hz polling rate, per-key RGB illumination, and (if you go for the HE version) all the rapid trigger/snap tap analogue inputs that are all the rage with esports pros – and incurring the wrath of esports game developers. There’s also chunky volume/mute dial, and everything is set into a fully aluminium body. This thing is so hefty you could genuinely use it for property defence.
I like that the power and Windows/Mac button switches are hidden away at the rear next to the USB-C port, keeping the front face refreshingly minimal. You can even swap out the Glorious logo if you want. The built-in Bluetooth proved handy when swapping between my work laptop and gaming PC.
LED strips at the sides give your desk a subtle underglow (or as subtle as rainbow-coloured lights can be) and the extensive shortcut combos mean you don’t need to bother with Glorious’ customisation software unless you want to get properly granular with the patterns or colours. That’s handy, as I’m not the biggest fan of it: my settings wouldn’t always save, and it ignored my asking it not to load automatically on Windows startup.
The typing experience on the standard Fox HE switches was precise, needing only a light touch to trigger an input and with a smooth, linear motion. I was impressed at how quiet they could be when typing at full chat, too – a benefit of the beefy aluminium bottom plate.
I thought I’d struggle with the lack of built-in feet to adjust the angle of tilt, but the entire board is pitched just enough that it proved comfortable right out of the box. I also admit I hammer my keyboards with quite a lot of force, but the GMMK 3 Pro didn’t move a millimetre on my desk. That’s what the near-2kg weight does for you.
Yet this is still just the blank canvas. Head to Glorious’ web store and you get a car-like online configurator where you can customise every exterior and interior element. The firm reckons there are more than a billion possible permutations. It’s once all those extra little boxes arrive that the real fun begins.
Open it up
The GMMK 3 Pro is a fully modular keyboard – and I do mean fully. Changing keycaps is amateur hour: here you can change out the switches themselves, the switch plate they click into (plastic, brass, and even carbon fibre), and the type/amount of gasket modules that sit underneath, providing cushioning that keeps the switch plate from moving about as you type. You can also add and remove sound deadening as you see fit, if you want to bring out more clicks from each key press.
Glorious includes a screwdriver in the box, as well as key cap and key switch pullers, and has a comprehensive set of instructions on its website. The GMMK 3 Pro is practically begging to be taken apart and rebuilt in your own image. There are only four screws holding the top and bottom plate together, and the rubber grommets that protect them are sensibly of the push-fit kind, rather than glued in.
More screws await if you’re doing anything more adventurous than changing the top plate, but with enough desk space I was able to completely strip my unit down with little effort. The ribbon connector wiring the PCB into the USB port needs a more delicate touch, but if you stick with the stock bottom plate (or go for the wired version) Glorious has designed everything that it’d be difficult to do any serious damage.
Removing the battery on my wireless model was the exception, and genuinely unnerving. The glue holding it into the bottom plate was so strong I was worried I’d bend or pierce the cell. Some slow, consistent force coaxed it free. I then swapped the top plate for a translucent purple plastic one, black bottom plate for blue aluminium, black switch plate for a white one, and stripped some sound deadening. Next I replaced every switch with Lynx HEs (which need slightly less force to actuate) and finished with Glorious’ colourful Ocean key cap set. I love the look, but now have zero clue which keys double as multimedia shortcuts.
I probably spent an hour and a half dismantling and reconstructing the GMMK 3 Pro, but was taking my time; as a first-time tinkerer I didn’t want to break anything. Enthusiasts that know what they’re doing can probably be in and out with the speed and precision of a heart surgeon.
The finished product
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I now can’t picture my office desk without this blue and purple stunner sat front and centre. The translucent top plate is a nod to the clear purple Game Boy Colour I had as a kid; the red volume dial is of course Stuff‘s house colour; and the ocean-themed key caps are that much easier on the eyes than a boring black set. That it can also do analogue inputs at ridiculously low latency means I’m not giving up anything on the gaming front either.
How much to replicate this exact build? That’ll be £461.99 plus shipping, thank you very much. Ouch.
The price alone means the GMMK 3 Pro HE absolutely isn’t for everyone, and it’s not a flawless keyboard either. But there’s simply nothing else out there – from a major brand, at least – that offers as much customisation, or makes it as easy to take apart and tinker with. I can’t think of a better entry point into custom keyboards.
