The authors report here recent advances in reflection acoustic microscopy using an obliquely incident focused acoustic beam. Results show that, in addition to exaggerated surface contouring on objects such as integrated circuits and blood cells, a contrast enhancement is observed which facilitates the study of thin‐film polymers such as MylarX (Dupont). A theoretical explanation is presented which describes these results and provides a means of predicting which objects are best studied in the normal incidence and oblique incidence reflection acoustic microscopes.