Output may refer to any of the following:

  1. Any information processed by and sent out from a computer or other electronic device is considered output. An example of output is anything viewed on your computer monitor screen, such as the words you type on your keyboard. Without some type of output that a human could see, feel, or hear, a human could not interact with the computer. In the picture, the bottom half shows data sent from a computer to a printer. When the printer finishes printing its hard copy, the paper is considered a form of output.

Examples of output on a computer

There are four basic types of output: audio output, graphics output, text output, and video output. Below are examples of each type of these outputs.

Audio output

  • Digital music files
  • Digitized speech
  • Podcasts
  • Screen reader
  • Speech synthesis
  • Text-to-speech
  • VoIP

Graphics output

  • Charts and graphs
  • Hard copy
  • Images
  • Photos
  • Soft copy

Text output

  • Blog
  • Hard copy
  • Soft copy
  • Website

Video output

  • Soft copy
  • Streaming content
  • Video clips
  • Vlogging

In addition to computers, output can be produced from any electronic device. For example, a water heater may receive input from a temperature sensor. The output would be a signal that turns on a pilot light or gas burner to heat the water to the desired temperature.

See our output device page for a list of output devices used with a computer.

  1. When referring to HTML, thetag displays the result of a user’s action or a calculation.
  • What is the difference between an input and output device?
  • How does a computer process data into information?

Control unit, Hard copy, Hardware terms, Input, Input/Output device, IPOS, Output device, Output screen, Output stream, Tactile output