Capacitive vs. resistive touch screens: what’s the difference?

While capacitive and resistive touch screens have similar pixel resolution, they have different properties when exposed to light. The many individual layers in resistive touch devices make them susceptible to light glare. Whether indoors or outdoors, light will bounce off the top layers of the device to create a blinding glare.

On the other hand, capacitive touch screens don’t reflect light. Instead, they maintain a neutral surface when exposed to light, so they don’t create any major or otherwise distracting glare.

We’re going to get a little bit more technical here. There are two main types of resistive touch screens (4-wire and 5-wire) and two options of technology for capacitive touch screens (surface capacitive and projected capacitive). Among these four types, only one by default supports multi-touch controls: the projected capacitive touch screen. This is in stark contrast to the other devices, which only support single touch. There is one caveat:avcompany has developed a 2-touch resistive controller that only works on 5-wire resistive touch screens.

The use of multi-touch support allows for greater versatility in terms of control, making it the ideal choice for some industrial and commercial applications. Multi-touch technology can collect multi-point signals at the same time and judge the meaning of each signal, allowing for gesture recognition (like pinching). This is why most smartphones and tablets use projected capacitive screens.

When manufactured by a reputable, trusted company, both capacitive and resistive touch screen devices will last for a very long time. In fact, most have an average lifespan in excess of a million touches. For the average user, that’s a very long time. With that said, capacitive touch screen devices typically last longer than resistive devices simply because they don’t use pressure to identify touch commands. Without pressure being placed against the interface, capacitive devices are less susceptible to wear and tear, resulting in a longer lifespan.

Both resistive and capacitive touch screen devices are accurate. Of the two, however, the former comes out on top. Resistive touch screen devices offer the highest level of accuracy, with the ability to pinpoint the precise location of your touch commands. Projected capacitive devices come in second, followed by surface capacitive in third place.

Resistive touch screen devices are more resistant to water, dust, and debris than capacitive. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re waterproof (unless stated in specifications). However, you can expect a resistive device to hold uplonger in wet/humid conditions when compared to a capacitive device.

It typically costs more to produce a capacitive touch screen device than a resistive device. So, if you’re looking for an inexpensive touch screen device, you may want to stick with a resistive model for this very reason.