The Glorious PC Gaming Race GMMK-BRN Modular Mechanical Keyboard Review

Final Words

I always try to use every keyboard that we review as my personal keyboard for at least a week. My typical weekly usage includes a lot of typing (about 100-150 pages), a few hours of gaming and some casual usage, such as internet browsing and messaging. The Glorious PC Gaming Race GMMK-BRN with the Gateron Brown switches was an excellent keyboard for my professional needs. The tactile switches are great for typing and their low noise output helps with the long term comfort of the user. A wrist rest is a necessity for long term typing though, as the height of the keyboard is unforgiving to the wrists. Note that all mechanical switches, including these, are audible when the key bottoms down and when it resets, so they can easily become annoying while working late at night or near others. Audible tactile switches such as the Cherry MX Blue variants just magnify this issue.

The primary focus of this keyboard is gaming and while it works as a basic keyboard, gamers accustomed to advanced features commonly found on today's high-end keyboards will find it inadequate for the task. It is of high quality and responsive, but lacks virtually any features that would assist gamers. There are no extra macro buttons or dedicated media controls and no programmability capabilities at all. For all practical purposes, the Glorious GMMK-BRN is just a typical mechanical keyboard, without any advanced functions at all. This may be suitable for certain types of games, such as most FPS/Action games, but it's more likely to be an issue for advanced MOBA/MMO/RPG gamers, where macro use is more common.

Glorious PC Gaming Race markets the GMMK-BRN as a minimalistic design, with even the LED indicators being discreet. The aluminum top cover with the chamfered edges and the floating design do enthuse elegance, but we feel that the reddish ESC keycap intrudes into the overall design theme. We also feel unsure about the glossy sides of the keycaps, especially when the LEDs are turned on. Some people do like glossy surfaces but they can be a pain to keep clean. They are also easily scratched, requiring great attention when using a keycap puller.

The ability to remove and replace the switches is the primary selling feature of this keyboard, allowing the users to easily mix and match several switch types. This is interesting as a concept, but we feel that few users will find it actually practical, especially considering that the keyboard is lacking any advanced features whatsoever. There are very few users that actually want to mix different switches onto a single keyboard, and we struggle to come up with scenarios where it makes sense to do so. It could be a useful feature for separating different groups of keys to generate a layout purely designed for gaming, but the mixing of different switch types on a keyboard that cannot be reprogrammed in any way simply does not make much sense.

The true advantage of having modular switches on such a keyboard is the ability to change to a different type of switch without having to buy a whole keyboard. The disadvantage is that the ability to remove the switches raises reliability concerns. The board is designed so as to have gold-plated contacts on the PCB pressing against the contact pins of the switches. These contacts can need adjustment after several switch changes, especially if switches from different manufacturers are being used. Glorious recommends that the contacts should be adjusted using tweezers. With the plating on the contacts being just a few μm thick, they can be damaged in the long term, eventually forcing the user to either replace the contacts or buy another board.

Overall, the Glorious PC Gaming Race GMMK-BRN Modular Mechanical Keyboard is a fine quality product, with an attractive, minimalist aesthetic design. The board lacks any significant advanced functionality though, and the ability to replace the switches without the keyboard being capable of any advanced programmability functions means there aren't very many useful applications for that ability. Ultimately we believe that though solid, the keyboard is too simplistic to be priced against advanced gaming keyboards; that buyers are unlikely to benefit from the $99 keyboard's minimalism. With competitors offering fully programmable keyboards using original Cherry MX switches attached for less than what the GMMK-BRN currently retails for, the keyboard occupies an odd niche as a minimalist keyboard for gamers willing to pay premium prices, and a niche that we feel will cause it to struggle to compete in today’s cutthroat market.