I recently had the pleasure (read: displeasure) of helping my sister pick out a new laptop. Not only was there pressure on me to find the perfect machine for her, but I also had to make sure every small detail was taken care of.
After days of searching, I finally landed on a laptop that ticked all her boxes: specs, battery life, thinness, a great display, and solid speakers. It was only two days into using it that I actually got to hear her real complaint, and it wasn't any of the things she'd originally mentioned.
She said the trackpad on her new laptop just wasn't as good as the one on her old machine. And that got me thinking about how these small things end up making a huge difference whenever you buy a new laptop.
The trackpad is one of the things we use every single day without ever really paying attention to it. It's easily the most used part of a laptop for everyday use, unless you've got one of the best touchscreen laptops.
So it got me wondering: how different are mechanical and haptic trackpads on these laptops, really? After testing both across a range of scenarios, I've got a pretty clear favorite. And one of those experiences almost made me want to throw my laptop off the fourth floor.
Before we begin
Now, before we get into it, there are, of course, more scientific ways of testing which trackpad is better. But we put a Lenovo IdeaPad and a MacBook Air side by side and ran through a handful of real-world tests to see which one comes out on top.
While they're not the most scientific, they are definitely rigorous (and a little goofy) and they do mimic how people actually use their laptops. So you'll come away with a pretty good idea of which one works better for you.
It's also worth noting that both laptops were kept on their default out-of-the-box settings. Nothing related to trackpad tracking, speed, or any other setting has been changed.
The sweaty gaming test
For the first test, we put both laptops through a real-world scenario that almost all of us go through: using a laptop while eating and watching something. For this test, I ate a full bag of buttery popcorn to get my fingers properly greasy, then played a game of Minesweeper on both the MacBook and the IdeaPad.
This is a good precision test, in my opinion, since the touch targets are pretty small. It gives us a solid idea of how each trackpad handles when there's something between your fingers and the surface.
As expected, the MacBook Air's haptic trackpad had no trouble at all maintaining pointer precision. I could easily play the game even within that small area, whereas the IdeaPad's mechanical trackpad kept misplacing the cursor by a few pixels every time I moved my finger.
It wasn't a huge difference, and I wouldn't recommend using your trackpad with grease on your fingers regardless. But if that's something you end up doing often, a haptic trackpad handles it far better.
Winner: Haptic trackpad
The commute simulator
For the second test, we needed to simulate the one thing every laptop user eventually deals with: trying to get work done while commuting.
So I got into my car's backseat and had a friend drive me around the block while I tried to highlight the same sentence in a document with the font set to just 6pt. And mind you, my block has plenty of speed bumps, which makes this even better. I think this is a great test for misclicks, since the tiny font leaves no margin for error.
After running the test three or four times on both laptops, I found that both trackpads were equally bad, just for different reasons.
The haptic trackpad is quite sensitive, so even small bumps or sudden movements in the car would cause a completely different line to be selected. The mechanical trackpad wasn't any better, though.
You basically need two hands to reliably select a line on it. Sure, you can do it with one finger, but it just works better with two. And even then, the slightest movement would select more lines than the one I was actually going for.
Winner: Draw
The Drag-and-drop deathmatch
For the final test, I wanted to see how each trackpad holds up under sustained work involving a lot of gestures. Clicking and selecting is one thing, but working with gestures continuously, especially on modern operating systems, is something all of us do daily.
So I set up a few test files arranged in a straight vertical line down my desktop and tried dragging them into a specific folder to see how far I could get. It sounds silly, but moving files between desktops or folders is something I genuinely dread on modern trackpads. This felt like a great test of whether the old mechanical setup could keep up.
It's worth noting that on haptic trackpads, you can simply click and drag, or long-press and drag the icon over to the folder. This functionality has made its way to modern mechanical trackpads, too, where you can now drag and drop while holding. Even so, it still feels easier when you hold down the left click button and drag the icon over the folder with your other finger.
And as expected, the haptic trackpad made dragging and dropping files pretty effortless, since you can do the whole thing in one continuous click. Sure, the mechanical trackpad can technically do the same. It just feels different because the click isn't quite clicky enough. There's always that hollow feeling, and the icon tends to unpress itself halfway through. Dragging with just one finger is noticeably harder.
Of course, a lot of this comes down to trackpad size as well, but the Windows and macOS machines I was using had roughly the same size trackpad.
Winner: Haptic trackpad
Verdict
It's pretty clear that haptic trackpads are generally far more useful than the older mechanical ones. I'm not entirely sure why Windows laptops still stick with the mechanical mechanism (I know, it's the lower manufacturing cost), but I really hope more manufacturers make the switch to haptics sooner rather than later.
I'm hoping the upcoming RTX Spark laptops, set to debut in the second half of the year, make that jump, so we don't just get a performance boost, but a genuine overall experience upgrade as well.
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