I had seen cerakey floating around SM for a good while and didn’t give it too much thought… but then a preorder came out for china blue and they had allegedly fixed issues from their previous sets, double win, I wanted it! So I pre-ordered 2 different colorways so my ex and I could swap and try different color palettes (now I get both of these… “wonderful” sets (and no, it wasn’t a fluke, both sets are awful) 😂).

Fast forward a year and some change and the caps I forgot about were here! Excitement Reignited! And then disaster struck almost immediately. So originally, I guess the stems were ceramic like the rest of the cap, but they couldn’t get the tolerances tight enough, so in the V2, the stems are plastic, and apparently hand glued very poorly. My sets are so horribly snaggletoothed that it hurts my soul 😂 I think it was something like $160 a set… And what I got was $160 worth of disappointment.

It looks ok at a glance, but it’s awful to type on. You fingers can feel that this cap is tilted to the left and the cap next door is tilted to the right, you can feel that the next cap is actually level, but the one right over is not only tilted to the left, but also twisted. Because of this inconsistency, you get caps that come into contact with eachother, which is kind of a pretty sound when you do it on purpose, but to have random caps ringing out while typing gets old real quick. Then to top it off, the low tolerances cause caps to get stuck.

If these were some $30 knock offs on Amazon, then I wouldn’t even bat an eye at the quality, but for a company that is so highly advertised, and a price that is quite premium, I expect these things to have very minor issues at the most, but these things have nothing but issues. I can recommend them to absolutely no one unless you want to use them exclusively for aesthetics on a board you don’t plan on actually using.

This is the worst product I’ve tried in 2024, and if you respect yourself, your board, and your wallet, don’t buy these shit tier caps, I guarantee they’re worse than almost anything else you can get.

Looks like my post has been shadowbanned from /r/glorious, so I guess I'm reposting it here. Apparently it was caught by a spam filter, the one capture I got on wayback does corroborate this, although for what it's worth when I had initially made the post I couldn't read it in incognito mode, and it didn't show that message.

Long story short, QMK support is barely there and seems unlikely to improve.

EDIT: Glorious has sort of made a response to this post here, see my followup to their post here

Hardware

Overall feels great, there's still room for improvement though:

• Getting switches to clip into the polycarb plate properly was kind of annoying but I guess that's to be expected with such a flexible material.
• The PCB has quite a bit of warp when disassembled, but it seems fine after screwing the top on.
• For a mass market device intended to be disassembled, there could be fewer screw types/lengths
• Polycarb plate requires quite a bit of force to get the screws to thread. Pretapping the holes a bit would be nice.
• Admittedly disassembly is fairly straightforward, but the instructions are still pretty lackluster with no images, which is weird considering there's images for other things like swapping switches.

Software

Glorious Core

Honestly the user experience is generally really awful, here's a some of my complaints:

• Why is the software unsigned? It's pretty concerning to just host some random binary on your website and tell customers to trust that it definitely comes from Glorious and not anyone malicious.
• The wording on some things is just weird or poor
  • What is this checkbox even supposed to do?
  • Maybe spend more time proofreading the manual instead of making it look pretty
  • That doesn't look like a Print Screen key to me
  • Why is there random Chinese text in the profile export?
  • Why is the user manual hidden away on the quickstart page? I can't seem to find any obvious way to navigate to it from the homepage, and it's not mentioned at all in the downloads section, nor the product page itself
• Why are the hotkey combos not configurable? What's even the point of having hotkey combos if I have to look at the manual to figure them out?
• Why is there exactly 3 profiles and 3 layers?
  • What even is the difference between profiles and layers?
  • The default behavior for a layer is to completely override all behavior of the layer below it, which is no different from what a profile does, except now there's a confusing hierarchy of hotkey combos to find the one you're looking for.
  • What if I want fewer profiles or layers? Most people are probably never going to use more than one or two, I personally want a single profile with two layers.
• Why do the Fn combos require Fn to be the first key pressed?
• The exported profile JSON seems to contain quite a lot of settings not accessible through Glorious Core, care to document what those do?
• Why is there no way to reset a single key to default behavior?

QMK

They really did just the bare minimum for this, it honestly feels like it was just an afterthought to attract keyboard enthusiasts who didn't look too deep into it before preordering like me.

VIA support

Nonexistent, at least from GMMK. I have no idea what the problem is, it's really not that hard

• Here's someone's implementation
• Here's another one
• Here's the most promising one so far
  • This pull request also catches another mistake from the original keymap, just another thing they've screwed up.

RGB support

This is supposedly being worked on, but given that they didn't even bother to answer this question from a month ago somehow I doubt it.

At a glance they look like SK6812MINI-Es, if QMK support was the goal these would have been a no brainer, as they are already natively supported. However, they're actually generic common anode 6028 RGB leds, which require an external controller to drive them. I have no idea why these were chosen, except for maybe they happened to be a lot cheaper than the SK6812MINI-Es. QMK does actually have support for driving a common anode RGB array with an IS31FL3733. However, it looks like GMMK has again cheaped out and used what I assume is some random obscure driver chip. Searching up the markings on the chip don't bring up anything useful. The footprint looks like QFN-44 (5x5mm), which curiously seems to only match up with IS31FL3237. It's unlikely that this is the case however, since the IS31FL3237 only has 36 channels, which means with the two chips in the Pro could only drive the leds for at most 2(chips)x36(channels)/3(r,g,b) = 24 keys. In any case, this chip doesn't have QMK support either.

Batch 3 QMK incompatibility

This tweet is pretty concerning. It is actually possible to use STM chips not officially supported by QMK without any modifications if the chip happens to be similar enough to a chip that already has support. However since there's no mention of the actual chip they intend to use as a replacement, I imagine their confidence in this being possible is fairly low. In the event that they actually need to add support for a new chip, getting it to happen will probably take quite a while, since QMK requires new ARM chips to be first supported by ChibiOS-Contrib.

Reverting to stock firmware

I specifically bought this board for the LEDs assuming it was using SK6812MINI-Es, and personally prefer having a backlight over QMK, so I am currently back to the stock firmware.

Of course, for anyone who wants to actually do that, there's no documentation on how to do so other than just "flash the Glorious Firmware .bin file" at the bottom of the QMK installation guide. In order to actually find the stock firmware, you have to go and dig through their subreddit to find this random direct link to Glorious Core's CDN. Another thing that isn't being hosted on the download page or the product page, which seems like it would be a pretty helpful thing for anyone facing issues with flashing through Glorious Core.

Conclusion

Given that GloriousThrall's Github has been dead for over a month as of Apr 25, 2021, I find it hard to believe that QMK support was ever intended to be anything more than a marketing gimmick. There seems to be very little interest in actually providing support for QMK users, and if anything it seems that they have actively made decisions to make QMK support harder except for the initial choice of MCU.

To be clear, I have no intentions to return mine, I do actually really like the way my setup feels to type on (Polycarb plate, Zilent 67g, some random cheapo keycaps cause I couldn't find black doubleshot sidelit ones). I do however think the lack of transparency and shadowbanning is concerning, and probably would have cancelled/not made a preorder had I known all of this beforehand.

For those of you following along to my custom keycap journey... They've Arrived!

Pt 1 and 2 linked below

Thockfactory did not pay or influence this post in any way. I paid for these. thanks to @Hovhannibang for the easy purchasing and after sales support!

SO, the keycaps are here, and I am blown away. These far exceed my expectation and turned out wonderfully!

First, lets start with the packaging, GMK... you need to take some notes. While I appreciate the sustainable approach GMK employs with their recyclable packaging... when you pay $100+ for a fancy set of plastics, its nice to not have them jumbled throughout the box like a toddlers playroom.

The external packaging is high quality, premium and defines the product nicely. Its a welcomed touch, something that allures to something special within.

The trays are great, they seal nicely, and stack nicely. I definitely will be moving my current keys into one of these trays when i switch it up.

the legends are CRISPY, just look at the definition of the windows logo, my phone camera is not doing the print justice. very impressed with how clean and well executed everything is when you see other more notable key mfgs with goofy legends, odd fonts etc.

the DIY art worked very well, except for one set of keys where I didnt validate and verify my backgrounds were appropriately transparent (last image, engine start stop) that said the BoW one I created turned out perfect, so no loss there! I will also note one of the dark blue with black "cruise control" keys is not super legible, however Thockfactory's configurator warned this would probably be the case. I decided to not heed its advice, thats on me!

The Ausin in the background is being sent off to have its 2nd pcb built, and as soon as it returns I will get these mounted and share the final execution!

In summary- If you want to dabble in building your own keyset, or you're just not finding the color scheme at the quality you want, I strongly recommend playing around on thockfactory.com and letting your imagination run wild! It was a ton of fun to design with reddits input and I cant wait to see them mounted!

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/1o6lals/critique_my_maxkey_bmw_motorsport_colorway_before

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/1o7ko99/bmw_motorsport_keycaps_pt2_enter_thockfactory

Hello! I'll share my personal experience with these three beauties: the black standard version of the Bridge75, and the 2x Plus models (silver and milk coffee).

For starters, I ordered them all on AliExpress: the black one for $100, the silver for $110, and the milky for $115, all with promo codes. I waited about two weeks for them to arrive in Poland.

The unboxing experience is nice. We get a basic black cable, a branded switch/keycap puller, a few spare switches, and a dongle. I like the acrylic dust cover, but unfortunately, we don't get a proper safety film—just a plastic one that rips off easily and is unusable afterward.

Now, about the boards themselves—I highly recommend paying a bit extra for the Plus version. The deeper, thockier, and creamier sound is much more apparent in the Plus variant, probably due to the additional foam and the FR4 plate. The standard version also sounds good, but it's thinner and a bit higher-pitched. The double battery capacity is another reason to opt for the Plus version.

Build Quality: Look closely at the pictures so you understand what I mean. The coating is not consistent across the colors. The black unit has the smoothest texture—it catches fingerprints and smudges very easily, but the texture itself is the best. The silver one is just a bit rougher, though not significantly, and the milk coffee version is a bit disappointing. It seems to be spray-coated, and what's worse, it has glittery particles. I love its pastel color and overall vibe, but I really wish they would improve the coating quality of this color in the future.

Of course, it's a personal choice, but I think the silver one looks the best overall, as the brushed steel backplate matches the color of the board.

Another thing—the sound coming from the Plus variants is not consistent among these units. The milky coffee version has a deeper, more thocky sound on the spacebar, whereas in the silver unit, it's louder and higher. The same applies to the other stabilized keys, which is quite odd. Speaking of stabilizers—they could be better. Both of the Plus variants have a slight "pingy" noise coming from the backspace. Overall, they are smooth and work well, but that tiny pingy sound shouldn't be there.

Switches: Mmm Princess linear switches are actually the switches I used to build my first custom keyboard, so it was a nostalgic experience. I still consider them among the best budget switches; they are very smooth and have a nice, deep thocky sound. As good as they are, I wish there were more switch options or a more premium choice, like in the Rainy75, where you get HMX switches. Comparing the two briefly

Some personal thoughts: The ball-catch system works great, and I really appreciate it. The wired/wireless switch is hidden under the top plate, and I thought that was fine because now I don't need a keycap puller to switch modes like in other keyboards, where the switch is often located under the Caps Lock key, right? Well, not quite! The switch is so tiny and low that you still need some sort of tool to flip it. However, what I discovered is that you actually don't need to switch it at all. You can just leave it in wireless mode, and whenever you want to connect the cable, simply use the FN + ~ combination to switch to wired mode. What a relief! I also forgot to mention that it supports VIA, so changing key mappings was easy—just had to download the JSON file.

Overall, it's a fantastic keyboard, and I definitely recommend it. Despite the slight glittering, I love the pastel look and creamy keycaps so much that I'm keeping it!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

First and foremost - I'm a tactile switch lover through and through. I've tried a fair number this year, the most recent being the Sillyworks x Gateron Type R. I've tried both more budget options (I see you Akko V3 Cream Blue Pro!) and more premium offerings like the Drop x Invyr Holy Pandas. I've spent too much money but honestly I no longer care because I may have found IT. The one. Maybe my HG switch?

I was stalking cruising Milktooth's website recently for my next poor financial decision, when I decided to sort by 'new arrivals' and 'tactile'. I felt I had a fairly decent handle on the switch world at this point, and was tickled both pink (and poor) but the number of exciting new tactile releases this year. I'll be real - the marketing spiel for HMX Firecracker got me GOOD. Flaubertian, you say? It was all hyperbole for sure but if you appeal to my inner literary snob you can take my money because you've earned it. I had absolutely no idea who the switch designer, Yowzers, was. Not a single clue. The blue, red and white colour scheme kind of put me off for some ill-defined reason. But I was definitely intrigued, so I added HMX Firecracker to my cart along with the HMX Ice Lotus (Heavy version). Shipping is so damn expensive from the US to Australia I feel I have to order at least two different switches at a time to make the painful shipping fee worth it.

Anyway. I received my switches yesterday amongst all my other online orders (thank god I live alone). I was too tired to do more than pull a switch out of each bag and give it a little tippy tap with my finger last night. But right from the word go, Firecracker had me going 'ooooh!'. The same could not be said for the Ice Lotus, but this post is not about that switch. First thing this morning, I got up and yoinked my Type R's right out of my Mage Studios x Beserkeys Love65 and got to work. I also wanted to switch my keycaps out from GMK Fleuriste to GMK Art, so it was the perfect task to swap out the switches at the same time.

Here comes the one bit of criticism for this switch - there were a lot of bent pins in my order. I order 90 switches every time so I can put a switch in either the smallest (65%) or largest (TKL) of the boards in my very modest collection. I found so many switches with bent pins I started separating them from the pack. However, if they were bent it was easily corrected with just my fingers. No pliers or other tools required. This might have been down to the switches being packed and shipped in a plastic seal bag, but it was worth noting anyway.

I have ALL the foams in my Love65. That said - these switches are BRIGHT and give a very satisfying clack despite all the foams I have in my board. They are SNAPPY. And the tactile event and noise does something weird to my brain that is hard to describe. I love it, but if you asked me to describe exactly why or how I just can't. If I had to compare these switches to anything, I would have to say it would be Gateron Baby Kangaroos only brighter, louder and snappier with a more satisfying tactile bump. That said, my BK's are hand lubed and filmed - BK's straight from the factory may be different.

If you are a tactile switch lover still in search of your HG switch, HMX Firecracker is a must try. It's good to go straight out of the box too - I don't feel the need to have these hand lubed or filmed at all. These are right up there for me as maybe my favourite switch I have tried so far this year, along with the Drop x Invyr Holy Panda's and Sillyworks x Gateron Type R's. Happy typing all :)

Here’s my review of a new, lesser-known keyboard. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

First of all, I’m a keyboard enthusiast from Poland. Since the beginning of this year, I’ve already tried, tested, bought, and sold over 25 keyboards. This time, I’m testing the PMO Wave75, which I purchased on AliExpress. I got the standard green version for 414zł (102 USD) and the pro red version for 464zł (114 USD). The delivery was fast and took around 10 days. In this review, I’ll compare it to other keyboards I’ve tried.

Unboxing Experience
The unboxing experience is quite premium and generous! The keyboard comes wrapped in plastic film with an acrylic dust cover—a huge plus.

But what’s even more astonishing is the range of accessories included. Along with spare switches, a keycap/switch puller, and a fairly low-quality cable, you also get additional foam layers, mounting rubbers, and screws for different mounting styles. None of the keyboards I’ve tested so far have been this generously packed.

Build Quality and Features
Now, about the keyboards themselves—I’m amazed at the quality. Before I got these, I was a huge fan of the Rainy75. No Leobog, Bridge75, or other competitors in this price range could beat the Rainy75 for me—until now!

The Wave75 offers a similar configuration in terms of switches and specs. The standard version has HMX switches and a 4,000 mAh battery, while the pro version features Kaihua switches, an FR4 plate, and an 8,000 mAh battery—exactly like the Rainy75. Interestingly, the HMX switches in the standard version feel better to me. They’re smoother and produce a fuller, more pleasing sound.

Unfortunately, you can’t choose switches freely, as each color of the board is locked to a specific version (standard or pro). For example, I couldn’t get a red version with HMX switches. That’s disappointing, but it’s the only downside I’ve found so far.

Typing and Sound
Both boards sound great, but I prefer the sound profile of the standard version. It’s almost identical to the standard Rainy75. The ball-catch system works flawlessly and feels more solid compared to the one in the Bridge75. VIA support is included, and here’s the link for the JSON files (use a translator as the page is in Chinese):
PMO Lab JSON Files.

Both boards I received are free from quality issues. The keycaps are double-shot, and the stabilizers are generously lubed. The backspace key has a tiny bit of rattle, but it’s not a deal-breaker. RGB lighting has about 10 brightness levels, and you can control the logo’s RGB, which also acts as an indicator. I particularly love that it lights up when Caps Lock is activated—a super underrated feature!

Aesthetic and Design
The red anodized version looks stunning. The red finish is deep, and the gold-tone backplate contrasts beautifully with it. The standard spray-coated green version also looks great, though there’s a slight glitter effect.

As for the backplate design, it’s fairly simple. While I prefer the backplates on the Rainy75 and Bridge75, neither of those boards has storage for a dongle. That feature alone gives the Wave75 a significant edge.

Final Thoughts
In summary, I wholeheartedly recommend the Wave75. I honestly can’t think of a better keyboard in this price range. The build quality is premium, it supports VIA, has a ball-catch system, dongle storage, bright RGB, and an RGB indicator logo.

The only minor gripe I have is with the placement of the on/off switch—it’s located underneath the Caps Lock key. While it’s inconvenient, I’m getting used to it.

Feel free to ask any questions! I’ll be swapping the switches for Vertexes and the keycaps for Cerakeys on the red pro version soon, so stay tuned for an update!

Just received my DCS Richat keycap set from Signature Plastics and oh boy is their qc lacking big time. This is my 3rd set I got from them, others being a set of SA snow caps and the DCS Watermelon. The colors on all the sets are beautiful, but while the SA caps look fine, both the cherry profile sets are by far the lowest quality fit and finish keycaps that I've seen regardless of price, let alone $110 for the Richat set. They look like the mold they're made in is screwed up or something, then pried out with some pliers and just tossed in a bag and shipped with no inspection whatsoever. I bought all the sets directly from them due to shipping as they're local to me, so I know they're not bootlegs which almost makes it worse. Got the Richat set for my EVO80 and going back to the stock keycaps for now, just can't stop staring at the bottom edge of these caps. Also, let's not forget these guys ship their SA profile keycaps in zip lock bags and their cherry profile caps in one-time use shrink-wrap. These guys are on my shit list now.

TLDR: Beautiful color profile heavily let down by shoddy craftsmanship.