Are touchscreen laptops good? The touchscreen is a feature that is present in convertible or 2-in-1 laptops. There are also non-convertible laptops that have touchscreen displays.
A touchscreen laptop certainly has its pros and cons. Here are the pros and cons of touchscreen laptops.
How Does A Touchscreen Display Work?
There are several types of touchscreens that gadgets and electronics use. But we will be looking at the ones commonly used in laptops: resistive and capacitive touchscreen displays.
Resistive touchscreen displays are made up of two layers and rely on pressure from your touch. The two layers are kept apart – one is resistive and the other is conductive. Both have electric currents running through them.
When you touch the screen the resistive layer feels “hard” to touch and comes into contact with the conductive layer. This then causes the electric current to change at the point of contact.
The software then recognizes the change in electric current and carries out its tasks of opening, swiping or closing an application.
Resistive touchscreen displays can’t support multiple fingers at the same time because the software can only recognize a point of contact not several.
Capacitive touchscreen displays, on the other hand, do not have two layers but one. This eliminates the need of two layers to come together in other for the touchscreen to work.
Capacitive touchscreens are made up of a single layer grid that acts as coordinates. The way they work is that the human body holds an electrical charge.
And touching the capacitive touchscreen display is going to change the flow of electrical energy.
This technology allows the software to recognize multiple points of contact on the display. That’s why such displays are able to support multiple fingers or have multi-touch support.
You are able to zoom in and out but can’t do so on resistive touchscreen displays because of the difference in technology.
Now that we have gone through how a touchscreen laptop works let’s look at the pros and cons of touchscreen laptops.
Pros Of A Touchscreen Laptop
Has That Luxurious Cool Effect
Having a touchscreen laptop has that kind of luxurious cool effect. Look around you most people use laptops that have bland displays and are uninspiring at best.
It sets you apart from the everyday laptop user. Your experience using a laptop basically changes not for the worse but for the better.
The touchscreen feature makes navigation easier and faster. You can perform a lot of tasks that your mouse or trackpad wouldn’t be able to do.
Switching between applications is very fast so as launching applications. There is also a hidden benefit.
When your trackpad fails you can use the touchscreen feature to do the function of the trackpad. By far this is the best reason to have a laptop with touchscreen functionality.
Even if your keyboard fails you can make use of the on-screen keyboard. Your laptop also starts to feel a lot like a tablet or smartphone.
Drawing And Taking Notes
Graphic designers and artists will find having a touchscreen very helpful. An example of a popular touchscreen laptop is the Microsoft Surface Book.
The touchscreen and stylus make it very useful for drawing. You can quickly make sketches or draw pictures.
It also becomes very useful for note-taking, especially for students. Put a stylus and a touchscreen laptop together you won’t need to carry notebooks to class anymore.
Touchscreen Laptops Have Better Brightness and Colour Accuracy
Touchscreen laptops have the best displays out there. They have higher brightness and colour accuracy. And the majority of them have higher resolution displays.
This is because of the glossy display. Glossy displays are the go-to for touchscreen laptops because they respond to touch far better than matte displays. They also have higher colour accuracy, reproduction and vibrancy.
That’s why they are preferred by people who work with colours. Basically getting a touchscreen laptop makes watching movies and pictures a pleasant experience. Because the colours pop out.
Cons Of A Touchscreen Laptop
You Will Pay a Little Extra
On average touchscreen laptops are more expensive than non-touchscreen laptops. That’s the price you have to pay for the luxurious cool effect.
Shorter Battery Life
Touchscreen laptops drain battery power far faster than non-touchscreen laptops. Even if you disable it you won’t get more battery life. The touchscreen is an extra component your laptop has to power.
And having a lot of components are going to affect battery life in a negative way. The touchscreen digitizer is one of the components that sucks up battery power.
Fingerprint Magnet
Because touchscreen laptops make use of glossy displays and in addition to also touching the screen.
There is going to be a lot of fingerprints and smudges that you will regularly have to clean. You can’t avoid this if you want the display to be spick and span at all times.
Glare And Screen Reflections
Glossy touchscreen displays come with a lot of glare which causes discomfort, eye strain and in serious cases macular degeneration.
Glare is a visual sensation that happens when there are very bright and uncontrolled lights. Also, glossy displays are reflective making it next to impossible to use in a bright room or outdoors because of the reflections.
3 Things You Can Do Only With A Touchscreen Laptop
- Reading PDFs in tablet mode makes it more effective and easier in scrolling, editing etc.
- Take notes with your stylus
- You can bring out the artist in you or if you are already one you can start drawing
Are Touchscreen Laptops Worth It?
Touchscreen laptops definitely have their pros and cons. Most people think having a touchscreen laptop makes you more productive. This is somewhat true.
Ever done something that you already have experience in doing but couldn’t get the job done quickly because of bad tools. That’s how a touchscreen laptop works.
They have their place when it comes to certain tasks. Like note-taking, drawing or sketching as mentioned above.
They also make navigating through your display using a finger or multiple fingers. It is all about identifying your needs and seeing if the benefits of a touchscreen laptop fits them.
This is not to say that touchscreen laptops don’t also have their cons. They drain battery power faster and are more expensive on average.
All in all, if you think owning a touchscreen laptop is a nice feature to have and getting that cool luxurious effect.
Then you can skip on whether a touchscreen laptop suits your needs and go for it. There is nothing wrong with owning a touchscreen laptop.
After all, everyone has their own personal preference and some features in a laptop might be a deal-breaker for your friend but not for you.
