Those who have experienced laptops with Haptic Touchpads love this type of touchpad and do not want to return to the traditional touchpad. Why is that, what is Haptic Touchpad and where does its “magic” come from?
For laptop users, touchpads are often just a temporary solution, and almost everyone equips themselves with a mouse to have easier manipulation. To improve the feeling of using the touchpad, a new technology has been born, Haptic Touchpad, with many outstanding advantages. You should really experience this new type of touchpad yourself to know why it is being favored by laptop users recently.
What is Haptic Touchpad and why should you experience it yourself?
What is Haptic Touchpad and why should you experience it yourself?
Table of Contents
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- What is Haptic Touchpad?
- How does a Haptic Touchpad work?
- Why should you look for a laptop with a Haptic Touchpad?
- Try a Haptic Touchpad for yourself!
What is a Haptic Touchpad?
In terms of appearance, a Haptic Touchpad (also known as a Haptic Trackpad) is almost no different from the normal touchpads you’ve seen on laptops for years. It’s simply a square or rectangular area located below the laptop keyboard, allowing users to control the mouse cursor with their fingers.
What is a Haptic Touchpad and why should you try it for yourself?
Traditional touchpads are characterized by physical buttons.
The main difference between a traditional touchpad and a Haptic Touchpad is how they work. While traditional touchpads can detect where your finger is touching, they still have to use mechanical buttons (either switches or membranes) to act as mouse buttons. Haptic touchpads, on the other hand, have no buttons at all, but they can create a clicking sensation thanks to vibrations similar to those on phones or game controllers.
With this feature, Haptic Touchpads bring some significant advantages. They do not need any physical buttons, so they are less susceptible to wear and tear over time. They can also be thinner to reduce the weight of the laptop, have a larger surface area to make it easier to move the cursor, creating comfort for the user.
What is a Haptic Touchpad and why should you experience it yourself?
Haptic Touchpads usually do not have buttons, but not all buttonless buttons are Haptic!
Of course, with advantages, there must also be disadvantages. Haptic Touchpads are significantly more expensive, so they are usually only equipped by manufacturers for high-end laptop lines. However, according to Sforum’s observations, this type of touchpad is now starting to appear more on mid-range and low-end devices.
How does Haptic Touchpad work?
Before “dissecting” how Haptic Touchpad works, Sforum wants to share with you how traditional touchpads work. The vast majority of them have the same principle: a capacitive touch layer with buttons made of plastic, acrylic, metal, etc.
When your finger touches the touchpad surface, the body’s natural current will be recorded by the touch layer and create an alternating current, causing interference to the touchpad’s electrostatic field. This information will be recorded and processed to help the operating system know how you want to control the mouse pointer.
Although this technology has existed for decades and is constantly being improved, it still has many disadvantages. We can mention the lack of haptic feedback, imprecision and clumsiness, requiring physical buttons to register the click, etc. More modern touchpads using Microsoft Precision drivers greatly improve these issues and allow for more control operations such as swiping, multiple touch points, etc.
Haptic Touchpads also use a capacitive touch layer, but the physical buttons are replaced by force sensors and haptic feedback vibrators (haptic actuators). Each time you touch the touchpad surface, the force sensor will be able to distinguish whether you just want to move the mouse position, press lightly or hold. Then, the haptic feedback vibrators will vibrate to provide different feedback depending on your operation, for example if you just drag the mouse pointer there will be no feedback, while pressing operations will create vibrations with different times and intensities.
What is a Haptic Touchpad and why should you experience it yourself?
A Sensel Haptic Touchpad module
Higher-end Haptic Touchpad models are even capable of detecting more than 2 levels of pressure, allowing users to freely customize according to their intended use.
There are several different types of vibrators on the market today, of which the 2 most commonly used are:
Linear Resonant Actuator: The most commonly used type in personal devices such as phones, smart watches/rings, laptops. They use electromagnets with the advantage of fast response, and the cost varies from cheap to expensive.
Piezoelectric: This type is much more expensive and has extremely high accuracy, often used in medical devices or