3M’s 84-inch touchscreen table is great for people with eight hands (video)

3M touchscreen table

3M showed off an 84-inch touchscreen table that can handle 40 finger touches at the same time.

The table uses projected capacitive technology to render images with a resolution of 4K (3,840 x 2,160). A year ago, the Minnesota conglomerate had a 46-inch touchscreen table that could handle only 20 fingers at the same time. That’s progress, and the company hopes to ship tables by the end of the year. 3M showed the table at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas.

With this kind of technology, you can leave a water bottle on the table or lean on it, and it won’t interrupt someone else from opening a window on the display. The company may try to sell the tables to museums and schools.

The goal is to ship a version with more than 100 touches. I tried it out, and it’s fast. You can open a screen and toss it over to someone across the table. It would be great for playing table-top games. I just wish I had more hands.

Check out our video.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/57183159 w=500&h=281]

3M’s giant touchscreen table from VentureBeat on Vimeo.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.