The Backlighting

Backlighting

Some may pan the GMMK for its lack of RGB backlighting. It’s wise to not get too fancy, and that’s what Glorious have done here. The RGB and Tenkeyless versions will surely show, as glory takes time to manifest. Being very well attuned to the market, Glorious have included all the backlight modes you’d expect, including a demo and a ‘cat’ mode. I cannot confirm that the ‘cat’ mode works as intended (my cats were disinterested), but you’ll use maybe two of the seven modes, the all-on, WASD, and perhaps the tracer modes.
  

 
With Cherry MX switches, there’s a hole in the switch where you normally would mount the LED. This is for windowed keycaps, like the Caps Lock, and Numlock, where the LED would indicate what state the key is in, on or off. For the GMMK, the LED lights are mounted to the PCB, in a surface mount (SMD) package. This has the advantage of being easier to produce, and much easier compatibility with various keycaps that would otherwise get stuck on the switch mounted LED. Good job.
  

RGB LEDs are much more difficult to work with, and you need to design around them. You know what would be cool? Having the PCMR avatar animated in the backlight.

It’s also red only. Why red? I’m pretty sure that Glorious draws on the knowledge that human eyes are not affected by red light in a dark environment, maintaining their night vision acuity. Using red flashlights at astronomy clubs is pretty much mandatory for this reason, for example. I had always thought that the light of glory would be golden, not red. I must be mistaken.

Artisinal Keycap 

The ‘artisan’ keycap. The one keycap that really, really, should be double-shot is the Ascend key. Here we find that it’s merely dye sublimated, with a not-so-easy white ink on salmon pink. It’s also not an ‘artisan’ keycap, it’s a novelty keycap. No, this is an artisan keycap:
  

 
Artisan keycaps, like Jellykey, Brocaps, Clack Factory, and many others, are fine examples of artisan keycaps. Some artisans are absurdly expensive, not so much for the design, but because they are hand made in very small numbers, and a lot of people want them. Not to mention, working with plastic by hand can only be described as hazardous.
  

 
You may be cynical and say that there’s some irony in having a lesser quality novelty keycap that says ‘Ascend’ on it, and you’d be correct. So, that’s the one key that desperately needs to be doubleshot.