Glorious Model D3 Wireless gaming mouse review: Uninterrupted gaming with lightweight ergonomics

After a few generations of minor iterations, Glorious has delivered an innovation worthy of being called a “true upgrade.” Battery life on wireless gaming mice has become quite sufficient to where charging doesn’t need to be frequent, but with the InfinitePlay system, you never need to connect the mouse to a cable. The Glorious Model D3 Wireless brings great performance accompanied by an uninterrupted gameplay experience. It is light and comfortable, with a smart solution for ‘infinite battery life,’ though 8K polling drains battery quite quickly. But, at 4K or even 2K polling, you can get excellent performance and conserve battery, which the Model D3 Wireless allows you to do.

The Glorious Model D3 Wireless is priced at $160 and is available in black and white colors. This is the ergonomic offering and Glorious, as usual, also has an ambidextrous Model O3 Wireless for the same price. You can get the lighter wired versions for cheaper at $70, but that defeats the InfinitePlay idea that sets the V3 mice (Model D3 and Model O3) apart from the competition.

At the time of writing, the Model D3 Wireless is not available on Amazon, but on the official website and Best Buy ($30 off). Amazon does have the Model O3 Wireless in stock ($30 off for black variant).

The Glorious Model D3 Wireless gaming mouse just doesn’t die even when the battery pack runs dry.

• Model D3 Wireless mouse with swappable battery
• Second swappable battery
• Base
• 2.4 GHz dongle
• USB Type-C cable
• Quick start guide
• Stickers

The unboxing experience is nothing special but there’s minimal use of plastic, which is good. One battery is inserted in the mouse while the other is packaged separately, and so is the dongle. As usual, Glorious includes some shiny stickers along with the quick start guide, but there’s no grip tape or replacement PTFE feet included.

With the V3 mice, Glorious has gone with a black/white + orange color scheme and we got the black variant for the review. This means even with the RGB off, there is some color on the mouse as the swappable battery is visible from the back. There are two side buttons and a DPI button on top, behind the scroll wheel. The clicks and the body are separated by a translucent gap where the RGB lighting shines through. The swappable battery slots in from the rear and clicks into place, with a push to release it. At the bottom are 100% PTFE feet along with the power and mode switch combo button.

The D3 Wireless is the ergonomic offering and while the curves are subtle, it still feels quite good in the hand. The size is ideal for small to medium sized hands and for those using palm, claw, or fingertip style grips. With my hybrid grip style, the D3 Wireless feels comfortable.

When it comes to tracking and consistent inputs, the Glorious Model D3 Wireless delivers with no complaints. The lightweight ergonomic form factor makes it comfortable to use over long gaming sessions and the power button on the bottom allows for easy switching between 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth connections. Using the mouse for both work (Bluetooth on Mac) and play (2.4 GHz on Windows PC), it performs great.

The left and right clicks feel consistent over about a month of testing. The side buttons are well-positioned and easy to access while the scroll wheel has defined steps, though a bit soft. Replacing the battery is easy enough, but it’s not a one-handed process.

Speaking of battery, Glorious mentions up to 71 hours on 2.4 GHz and up to 130 hours on Bluetooth. The 71 hours is with 57 hours from one battery pack and 14 hours with the Guardian battery. Those numbers are with 1K Hz polling rate and RGB turned off. At 8K polling, (2.4 GHz, RGB off), it claims 12.5 hours per battery pack with 2.3 hours with the Guardian battery for a total of 27.3 hours. In our testing at 8K with RGB off, we found that the battery life is closer to 8-9 hours per battery pack and about 2 hours with the Guardian battery. That gives us about 18 to 20 hours of battery life. Weirdly, even on Bluetooth, the battery would drain much quicker than it should. We reached out to Glorious about this and they are investigating, but believe it is a macOS related issue.

While the battery life falls short of the claims, the InfinitePlay system works as advertised. If you run out of the removable battery, it automatically switches to the Guardian battery without disconnecting. That gives you enough time to finish up the game and swap the batteries. Since its only 200 mAh per battery pack, they don’t take very long to charge either.  We did notice that a couple of times when the removable battery died, the mouse turned off rather than automatically switching to the Guardian battery. Turning it back on manually then switched to the Guardian battery, something that Glorious is working to fix with a firmware update. For the most part, it switched automatically between the removable and the internal battery.

It's unfortunate that the software doesn’t show battery percentages and the only way check that is through a Bluetooth connection. This also revealed that the battery packs never reported 100% even after being fully charged. The maximum was 96% an hour after when the indicator on the base had turned greed to indicate a full charge.