What is record type in Salesforce?

Record Type represents the metadata associated with any record type. It basically make the page layouts available with respect to their record types.

Let's say, while creating a record in Account I want to display some field to only official users but not to any individual ones then record type would be the solution of it. Please have a look in below image that how record type looks once created.

Hope this answer would be helpful!!

Record Types are often used to extend an object's usefulness - rather than create a brand new custom object. As an example, the CASE object in Salesforce is a very generic service object to handle all sorts of inquiries or requests. You may have multiple record types to identify the sort of case that could be stored (for example, an internal employee HR case versus a customer support case). There is a balance between using record types versus custom picklist fields to identify and segregate. As the others pointed out, record types are useful if you want to have different page layouts (views) or picklist choices of records that show different sets of fields.

Hello,

ere’s an example of how record types can work in your org. Let’s say you have two sales divisions, hardware and consulting, and only your consulting division receives leads through seminars. You can choose to display the Seminar contact lead source for the consulting division only.

Step 1: Manage master picklists
Define a list of contact Lead Source picklist values that contains all of the values used by both the Hardware and Consulting divisions, including Seminar.
Step 2: Create record types
Create two contact record types: one called Hardware and another called Consulting. This step includes adding master picklist values to the record types.
Step 3: Add record types to profiles
Add the Hardware record type to the profiles for all users in the hardware sales division. Add the Consulting record type to the profiles of all users in the consulting sales division.
Step 4: Set personal options for record types
Allow users of both the hardware and consulting sales divisions to bypass the prompt that asks them to select a record type when creating a new contact. If you have users that create contact records for both sales divisions, they can customize their personal settings to always prompt them to select a record type.

Thanks.