Introduction

CIDOO is a keyboard company that is most famous for helping bring out Flaretech optical switches, implemented in keyboards back in 2010. For those unaware, Flaretech is one of the very few companies developing and releasing optical and analog switches, so there’s a certain reputation CIDOO developed in the enthusiast keyboard community before the likes of Wooting came along. Since then the company has brought out mechanical keyboards that are fully dust- and water-proof—a feature that’s I have yet to see adopted by most other brands. CIDOO has recently collaborated with another brand, ABM, to come out with a new keyboard lineup that Epomaker was excited about, sending a review sample to TechPowerUp for us to look over.

As the name suggests, the CIDOO ABM084 is an 84-key, 80% keyboard, in that it takes a tenkeyless (TKL) keyboard as the base design and then modifies it slightly. This is usually seen in the form of 75% keyboards such as the System76 Launch we saw recently, but the ABM084 instead simply foregoes a few keys on the top right section in favor of a dedicated volume knob and two other keys alongside. It does seem that 2022 is the year of the large volume knob when it comes to keyboards! Adding to the feature set is hybrid wireless connectivity, and a variety of different versions being available, including the one above that is different from mine when it comes to the keycap profile and switches used. There’s a lot to cover in this review, so let’s begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications