Glorious PC Gaming Race Model D mouse review: High-class honeycomb

Gaming mice have been a staple of the PC peripherals market for more than twenty years now. Virtually every company with some stake in the game has released a few in an attempt to win favor with notoriously picky PC gamers. What drives a person to go with a particular mouse can be as simple as raw performance or as complicated as finding a cosmetic fit to an existing gaming station that still meets ergonomic needs. Today, I’m taking a closer look at the Model D, one of the flagship mice from Glorious PC Gaming Race. It offers a classic shape with some very adventurous design choices to reduce overall weight.

Tale of the tape

The Model D is very similar to the first mouse from Glorious PC Gaming Race, the Model O. The primary difference is the Model D offers an ergo shape for right-handed users where the original had an ambidextrous design to accommodate a wider variety of users. The Model D is shaped similarly to the iconic Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 and will offer a familiar feel to PC gamers who have been around for eons. Unlike the mice that inspired it, the Model D’s outer shell is full of honeycomb cutouts intended to lower the overall weight of the mouse. It looks different from any other mouse and seems weird at first glance.

The outer dimensions are 67mm in width (near the bottom end), 128mm in total length, and 42mm in height (measured at the center hump). It is available in either a matte or glossy finish. The matte finish variant weighs in at 68 grams and the glossy finish variant comes in at 69 grams (nice). Comparatively, the Razer Deathadder v2, itself a modern take on the Intellimouse design, tips the scales at 82 grams. The honeycomb cutouts do make a meaningful difference in weight and, according to conventional wisdom, lighter mice are better for competitive play. 

Does the Model D improve my score in Call of Duty: Warzone? Absolutely not. This has much more to do with my skill level and overall oldness than the mouse itself. Did I find it worthy of a spot on my desk for when I actually want to excel in gaming? Yes. The lighter weight took twenty or thirty minutes to adjust to coming from a heavier daily driver, but the familiar shape and quality internals left me satisfied. The box came with extra skates that reportedly provide additional slide, but I found the stock skates to perform wonderfully on my cloth mat.

If you took a hammer to the Model D to get a glimpse of the insides you can’t see through the cutouts, you’ll find the Pixart PMW-3360 sensor. It is an industry-standard at this point and will offer reliable tracking across most surfaces. Omron switches are also onboard, much like most other gaming mice at this price point. The Glorious PC Gaming Race website spends a bit of time extolling the virtues of the Model D’s ‘Ascended’ cable. It is a mouse cable for sure. I had no problems with it, though I didn’t necessarily agree with the marketing’s claims of a wireless feel. With Glorious PC Gaming Race also hawking a branded cable bungie on the Model D’s product page, I’ll assume that most users would come to the same conclusions about the cable that I did.

Because you can’t sell any gaming peripheral in 2021 without RGBs, the Model D comes loaded with them. A pair of LED strips lie in the seam between the top shell and side grips and the wheel is also illuminated. You can toggle the various lighting modes by pressing a combination of thumb rest, wheel, and DPI buttons. This is great because you don’t need to install any bloated software to get access to the basic functions of the mouse or its lights. There is available software for those who want to take the tinkering even further, though. 

Coming from the software suites from Razer and Steelseries, the simplicity and lightness of the Glorious PC Gaming Race software is a breath of fresh air. Its tools are intuitive to use and it doesn’t ask me to make new accounts and submit blood tests. If only all mouse/keyboard software was like this.

Wrapping up

I got my first hands-on time with Glorious PC Gaming Race gear last year when I took their GMMK mechanical keyboard for a spin and came away impressed. It paired high-quality parts with a no-nonsense design that lacked flash but performed wonderfully. I get the same vibe from the Model D mouse. I’m not ready to fully commit to making it my daily driver, but for what it costs, I’m not really sure of any better alternatives. Players who prefer larger mice in the classic Intellimouse style need to put the Model D on their shortlist. It looks weird, but it does its job perfectly and the lack of software bloat makes its value proposition even higher in my eyes.

This review is based on hardware provided by the vendor for review consideration. The Glorious PC Gaming Race Model D retails for $49.99 and is available directly from the manufacturer.

Chris Jarrard

Contributing Tech Editor

Chris Jarrard likes playing games, crankin' tunes, and looking for fights on obscure online message boards. He understands that breakfast food is the only true food. Don't @ him.