Glorious PC Gaming Race Gmmk TKL - Barebone, ANSI-LAYOU

Flash points: - Extremely high quality for the price. Mostly aluminum body, thick braided USB, feet angle is great. Hard to top in price range. - Hot swap PCB constructed well - inserting and removing switches has caused ZERO issues (NOT SO ON ALMOST TWICE AS MUCH DROP CTRL, WHICH FAILED AFTER 2 SWITCH REMOVALS) - RBG light dispersion & patterns standard but quality My only complaint would be to eventually move to an all aluminum chassis for better sound, but they are solving for this by releasing the all aluminum GMMK Pro. Overall, nothing even close in the category. Hot swap opens up an entire switch world for the consumer to explore With the GMMK. Quality is very high for an entry level board. Don’t hesitate if on the fence - it’s a great board.

The aluminum chassis feels and looks great, the Per-key-LED looks gorgeous, especially with pudding keycaps and transparent switch housing, and I am overall very satisfied with this product and now use it as my daily driver. However, there are two minor complaints. First, the stabilizers kind of suck. I have some quiet switches, so for the most part my typing experience has a low volume and a very satisfying sound profile, but the keys that have stabilizers kind of ruin it; theyre loud and clicky. Luckily, by design, theyre easy to remove, so modding or replacing them isnt difficult. They come pre-lubed, though, so if you dont care about the sound they still feel smooth out of the box. The second issue I personally had is that the scroll lock indicator light doesnt seem to work. In MS Excel, I can press the Scroll Lock key, and the program shows that it does indeed turn on, so the key does work and I still have that functionality, so I decided not to get a replacement since I dont use that feature at all (because, lets be honest, who here even know what Scroll Lock does?).

Usually, I review a product with all its pros and cons and try to feel how many stars to give it. I really wanted to like this product. I tried for a whole month but it is just not working out. The firmware on this keyboard makes it just unusable for me and I really cant get any work done with this thing. Pros: The device itself is a thing of beauty: Solid weight, CNC aluminum body, metal back plate, Everything anodized or powder coated... chamfered and chromed edges... the whole 9 yards. It feels so good to hold it in my hands. How should I describe it? Glorious. It feels glorious to hold it and install switches and keycaps on it. The sound while typing is amazing too. Just right. Another huge win is that it accepts all 3 pin cherry style mechanical switches: Cherry, Gateron, Kailh, Outemu and many more. This is the real reason why I bought this product. All Cons from here on: What happened to the firmware and software? Maybe they ran out of money and did not have the budget to make proper firmware for it. Maybe, they outsourced it. Maybe they were taking some strong substances. End of the day, the firmware, LEDs and absurd key combinations make this just unusable. I can live with the FN + IJKL for arrow keys since my Vortex Pok3r from 2014 had it. I just cannot fathom the Fn + for delete. Why not Fn + Backspace or Fn + ? Arent those more logical? I even used the software to program the right ctrl key to delete, but it is still out of the way to be of any use. The rest of the key combinations to control the LEDs are just un-intutive and I cannot memorize them. I should not have to. The LEDs are also very dim to help with working at night. Fn + W = Brightness +. Fn + S Brightness -. More like Dim, Dimmer and Dimmest. I have to squint if I need to see the keys with the lights off. I paired this with the Razer PBT keycaps by the way. They are designed for North Facing LEDs. I even tried another set of keycaps from Tecware. Same thing. Fn + seems to light up only the WASD keys and some others. Most of the time I just ended up with Fn + R to reset it to undo what I accidentally did. And what is it with that horrendous caps lock led? Why is it shining Red all the time when the caps lock is off? Why is it off when the CAPS lock is on? The first time, I rebooted my computer a few times thinking something is wrong. No. This is default. Absolutely unacceptable. It took me a whole day to accept that this was the default. Even then I found myself constantly turn on and off caps lock while typing scripts, or during IMs. When I really needed to get things done, I had to set this aside and grab my trusty rusty POK3R or even the really cheap Eyooso, which is far more usable than this. GMMK: I really need to know. What were you guys thinking and drinking or snorting or whatever? Can I get a sample of it please? It must be really good.

usb-c, hotswap, formfactor that supports many keycap combos. check, check check,. plus its good quality for what you get. greater starter board if you like to hotswap a lot.

good keyboard and it would be been a 5 star besides the fact i got a faulty model

My first diy keyboard and this was so much fun. easy to use and sounds great.

This keyboard is dampened extremely poorly. Very loud pinging when even gently typing and its not from the switches (tested with Halo Clears). If you flick the base itself you can hear the loud ping. Typing with it flat on the desk doesnt help and neither does typing on a deskmat. It is the case itself. Im going to try adding dampening foam under the PCB and see if it helps. Will report back.

Lubed stabs, not bad even at stock. Still very fun to mod. Great entry to mechanical keyboards, as long as you avoid the pre assembled ones.

The market for full size custom keyboards is basically non existent so there isnt a ton of choice. This one is almost great. Build quality is good. LEDs are bright. Design is pretty clean. But the tolerances are not great though. Ive had a ton of trouble getting my switches socketed in properly. Its not easy to open up the case for modding. The best thing this has going for it is that its regularly in stock. But if there was a viable competitor Id have gotten that instead.

This board is 100% perfect for a beginner and even more for those with certain preferences. You need to like the floating style key design to implement this in more expensive builds as well as not mind clipping your 5 pin switches. I dont mind this as they are still compatible with the 5 pin boards after I clip them, and I also do not usually move my switches from a board once it is made. But for a beginner board, most use the floating design and it is seen on keyboards all the way up the money chain in custom kits. It is most likely what you are used to as well from mainstream brand keyboards. The big difference between this and a mainstream keeb is its body is 100% aluminum, under an inch thick with a huge weight to it, and has the switches accessible right on the top layer. Press in your switches and caps, do any lubing or mods you want and its done and a higher quality keyboard than anything you can buy premade from main brands. You can get almost the same level of quality buying a premade from these guys but it will not be lubed or have any mods available beyond its stock foam pads which are still good.