Run the same interval on a laptop trackpad and on a gaming mouse, with the same hand on the same day, and the mouse wins by 60 to 120 CPM. The reason is not that the mouse is faster. It is that the trackpad is doing more work.
What a trackpad has to decide
A mouse button is a switch: closed or open. A trackpad is a capacitive surface that must classify what just happened before it can report anything.
- Was that a tap, or the start of a scroll?
- One finger, or two?
- A click, or a palm resting?
That classification takes time, and it cannot begin until enough of the gesture has happened to be classifiable. On a force-feedback trackpad there is also a pressure threshold to cross. The result is a floor on the interval between two reportable clicks that has nothing to do with your finger.
The numbers
| Input | Typical 10-second run |
|---|---|
| Gaming mouse, light switch | 380–520 CPM |
| Office mouse | 320–440 CPM |
| Laptop trackpad | 260–380 CPM |
| Phone touchscreen | 240–360 CPM |
A touchscreen loses for a different reason again: it samples at the display’s refresh rate rather than a polling rate, so 60 Hz gives you a 16-millisecond grid to land presses on.
What to do with a trackpad reading
Keep it, and compare it only against other trackpad readings. A trackpad number is a perfectly good measurement of you on a trackpad; it just is not comparable to a mouse number, in the same way a ten-second run is not comparable to a sixty-second one.
If you are buying hardware to improve a reading, the switch matters more than anything on the box. A light actuation force with a short reset adds more than any polling rate ever will.