What Are Precision Drivers and How to Install Them? [2024]

Since their introduction in the 1990s, Touchpads have become the most common pointing device for laptops. Over the years, touchpad technology has evolved significantly. Taking these advancements even further, Windows introduced its Precision Touchpad. Powered by “Precision Drivers“, this technology allows for precise movements and provides an even better user experience.

These drivers, now a standard for all Windows 11 devices, offer a smoother, more responsive experience, making touchpad interactions more intuitive and precise. In this article we will look into precision drivers, explaining what they are, their key features, and how to install them. 

What Are Precision Drivers?

During the Windows 8.1 era, Apple dominated the touchpad experience, with no Windows laptop coming close in comparison. To address this gap, Microsoft introduced a set of unique drivers known as “Precision Touchpad” drivers.

These drivers were designed to standardize the touchpad experience across all Windows devices, providing smoother, more consistent, and responsive performance to rival Apple’s superior touchpad technology.

Precision drivers were first introduced in Surface Laptop 2 and have since become part of the Microsoft Surface lineup. Moreover, due to its overwhelming success precision drivers have become a requirement for Windows 11.

What makes precision drivers so adaptive and accurate is the fact that they come with drivers that are regularly upgraded. This ensures that the drivers are bug-free, up-to-date with the latest technology, and well-optimized.

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How Do Precision Drivers Work?

Precision touchpads use a diving board-like surface that has moving parts underneath it and falls a little when it’s clicked hence the name “diving board“. The touchpad is integrated with software and hardware on your computer to deliver a precise and responsive user experience. Additionally, the driver’s sensitivity settings are highly customizable allowing for precise control of cursor movements. 

The touchpad also comes with a new type of technology called “Palm Detection Technology“. This helps the computer differentiate between intentional movements on the touchpad and accidental contact from either the wrist or the palm.

To further enhance the user experience, precision drivers are also capable of recognizing Multi-Touch Gestures such as two-finger scrolling, pinch-to-zoom, and three or four finger swipes. Thus, allowing users to perform multiple tasks by simply interacting with the touchpad.

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Why are Precision Drivers Updates Important?

Regular upgrades to the precision drivers serve a lot of important purposes. Following is a brief list of each:

1. Improved Performance

New updates help optimize the driver’s performance and reduce input lag, thus making the touchpad more responsive ensuring a smoother user experience. Moreover, updates can also help make the drivers more accurate, making navigation easier for the users.

2. Bug Fixes

Bugs are a real threat when it comes to software as they can disrupt your entire user experience causing issues like inaccurate navigation or reduced responsiveness. Updates act as a crucial way of fixing minor bugs faced by users and maintaining a reliable and functional touchpad experience.

3. Ensuring Compatibility

Computer hardware goes through changes and upgrades all the time, so it’s essential that your laptop’s drivers keep up with these changes and continue to work seamlessly with the latest hardware on the market.

Furthermore, OS updates also change the way computers communicate with drivers. Therefore, to ensure compatibility with new system updates and hardware, it’s crucial to regularly update your Precision drivers.

4. Introducing New Features

Updates are an effective way to introduce new features and enhance the overall functionality of Precision drivers without the need to completely overhaul or replace them. Updates have been a significant part of Precision Driver’s history and have brought about a lot of useful features for the users. Here’s a brief list of some of the features that were added over the years through driver updates:

• The Windows 10 Anniversary Update in 2016 introduced advanced gestures such as a Three-finger swipe for task view, a four-finger swipe for switching desktops, and customizable gestures
• In 2017 the Windows 10 Fall Update introduced customizable gestures allowing users to now customize 3 or 4-finger gestures.
• The Windows 10 April 2018 Update built upon the previous update and gave the users enhanced options to configure gestures.
• In 2020 a Windows 10 Update added additional customization options for touchpad gestures.
• The latest update in 2023 integrated AI in the touchpad for even better gesture recognition.

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How To Check If Your Laptop Has Precision Drivers?

If you own a Windows 11 laptop then there’s no need to check for Precision Drivers as they are pre-installed in all Windows 11 devices. However, this is not the case for Windows 10 laptops; they may or may not come with Precision Drivers installed. So, here’s a quick guide to check whether your laptop has them installed.

1. Click on the Windows button on the Taskbar and go to Settings. 
   

   

2. Navigate the the “Devices” tab.
   

   

3. Click on the “Touchpad” button. Now if your PC does have a Precision Touchpad you should see a note saying “Your PC has a precision touchpad” at the top of the window.
   

   

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How to Install Precision Drivers on Your Laptop

If your laptop doesn’t currently have precision drivers there’s a way to switch to them. Regardless of what drivers your laptop currently has (Elan or Synaptics), it’s possible to switch to precision drivers because all the drivers use the same hardware.

1. Prerequisites

Before we get to installing the Precision drivers, you first have to figure out the type of touchpad your laptop is currently using as each touchpad needs different Precision Drivers. For this, you’ll need to open up the Device Manager and here you will see a list of peripheral devices. Expand the “mice and other pointing device” one and see what type your current touchpad is.

Once you have your current touchpad in mind, you’ll need to head to the respective website and download the precision drivers from there. Here’s the link for both of these to help you out:

• For Synaptics: Download Synaptics Precision Drivers.
• For ELAN: Download ELAN Precision Drivers

2. Installation

After you have downloaded the drivers from the website, your last step is to install them on your computer. Here’s how that is done:

1. Extract the downloaded driver files to a folder.
   

   

2. In Device Manager, right-click your touchpad device and select “Update driver“.
   

   

3. Choose “Browse my computer for driver software“.
   

   

4. Navigate to the folder where you extracted the drivers and select it.
   

   

5. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.
6. After the installation is complete restart your laptop to apply the changes and you are done!

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Precision Drivers vs. Elan and Synaptic Drivers

Precision drivers are the latest drivers introduced by Windows and have a range of benefits over its other two counterparts. The key differences between the Precision Drivers and Elan And Synaptic drivers are as follows:

1. Integration and Compatibility

The first major difference between the three is integrated with Windows. Precision drivers are developed by Windows itself and therefore are well integrated in all of their products. On the other hand, Elan and Synaptic Drivers are developed by third-party manufacturers, which means their integration with Windows is pretty limited.

Another noticeable difference between the three is compatibility. Due to being developed by Windows, Precision Drivers are compatible with a wide range of devices. Whereas. Elan and Synaptics drivers are designed to work with specific devices, such as the Acer Aspire Series, Lenovo IdeaPad Series, HP Pavilion Series, and Dell Inspiron Series, respectively.

2. Gesture Support and Customization 

A major reason why the Precision Drivers stand out from other drives is its huge gesture support- allowing users to perform multiple complex actions via the touchpad. Precision Drivers offer extensive support for multi-finger gestures, including three and four-finger swipes, taps, and pinches.

Elan and Synaptic drivers lag in that regard as they only offer basic gesture support. On top of that, Precision Drivers allow the users to customize gestures according to their needs and preferences; something the other two drivers don’t offer.

3. Responsiveness

As the name suggests Precision Drivers are highly accurate and responsive. They come with a very high sensitivity so even the slightest of touches don’t go unnoticed. Elan and Synaptic drivers on the other hand, although pretty decent, come nowhere near to the level of responsiveness that Precision Drivers offer and are considered inferior in this regard.

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Wrapping Up

Precision Drivers are Microsoft’s attempt to improve the everyday touchpad experience. They offer enhanced responsiveness, touch sensitivity, and new gesture features, setting them apart from other drivers. While most newer Windows devices come with Precision Drivers pre-installed, you can easily install them on your device if yours didn’t by following the steps outlined in this article.