Beyond control options and design aesthetics, touch screens can be divided into three common types of technology: resistive touch screens, optical touch screens, and SAW touch screens. The materials and technology typically differ between touch screen manufacturers, with some favoring certain materials and designs above others. There’s also capacitive, multi-touch and Infrared touch-screens but we’ll focus on the widespread types…

Resistive touch screens

operate similarly to a two-axis effects screen, a common accessory for musicians and audio editors. User actions and inputs are detected by two separate electronically conductive layers, each pressed together when pressure is applied to the screen. The screen’s spacer-style construction pinpoints the location of each touch, and sends the information onwards to the computer unit.

These touch screen units are the most common variety, appearing in a range of touch screen kiosks and display units. While image quality can occasionally be compromised, their versatility – resistive screens can be used with fingers, styluses, materials, and other pointing devices – makes them an ideal option for retail displays and commercial touch interfaces.

Beyond resistive touch, two other types of touch screen are widely used. The second is an optical touch screen

. Rather than operate on touch command, optical touch screens detect user action shortly before pressure is applied. This allows them to operate effectively without pressure being applied, giving users the ability to operate the PC with relatively light touches and a wide variety of pointing devices.

Finally, SAW (surface acoustic wave) touch screens

operate by detecting motion through sound waves. As users move their finger across the screen and apply pressure, a constant audio presence monitors for disrupted signals. Due to the complete lack of touch-based detection, these screens retain higher image quality than their resistive counterparts. However, a lack of durability makes them inappropriate for public use, especially use in retail and industrial locations.