Having some keyboard struggles. Should I get the GMMK 2?

[diseasedw0rm]

So I'm thinking about getting the Glorious GMMK 2 prebuilt for the switches and changing the keycaps to the 122 Polar Backlit Keycaps from YMDK, but idk if I should get the GMMK 2 at this point. I've heard plenty of good things and bad things about Glorious. Is this a good decision or is there something else I should get? I want RGB with black/white (mostly black) things so that I can change the colors scheme I think you would call it of my setup without having to buy entirely new things. I'm planning on buying the compact version since I currently have tkl so I'm used to having no numpad and I probably don't have enough room for the full version. Although I am concerned about losing the F1-12 keys. Can I still use those with just the regular numbers without having the actual F1-12 keys?

 

If there are any recommendations for either different switches or a different keyboard, I wanna try to keep it under $150, without tax. With tax I'd already paying more than I originally intended. Almost $20 more than I wanted to spend iirc, although not too much of an issue.

[Neggy-Z]

I recently purchased the GMMK 2 96%, also own the TKL as well.

Quality wise, it's a huge step up from the original keyboards, feels and sounds so much nicer.

I purchased the bare bones keyboard and I'm using everglide aqua king v3 switches, transferred from the tkl to the new 96%.

Using the V1 pudding caps on the tkl while using the newer v2 pudding caps on the 96%, IMO the quality and feel of these has improved too.

Glorious software is still complete garbage though.

 

You mentioned not having enough space for a full size keyboard, the gmmk 2 96% is literally 1 key wider compared to the older gmmk tkl.