About 25 years ago my parents got me a Ti84 as a surprise for Christmas and they hid it in the attic so I couldn't find it in the meantime. A few months went by and a couple days before Christmas, when it was time to wrap the presents they couldn't find it anymore. My dad went out and got a Casio something as a late minute replacement, and that was the calculator I used in high school and I never knew about this story. Then last year I found a Ti84 in my parents attic...
Somewhat related. My mom once yelled at me for losing a necklace she really liked. Then we were moving her stuff out of her house and found the necklace behind a wardrobe, wedged between it and the wall. It had been there for like 40 years, layered in dust.
My mom once was getting ready for work and I hear a pop and hear my mom yelling. I go in and her necklace fell off the dresser; a "dust buster" wall wart was plugged in back there and it fell across the prongs, shorting it out.
> 3x Processing Power - Matching one of the speculated options, the calculator appears to use an ARM Cortex CPU, finally retiring the z80 and ez80 family of CPUs that were used in three decades of TI-83 and TI-84 Plus graphing calculators. It's running at 156MHz, compared to the 48MHz of the older calculators. It appears likely that in an unexpected break from over 30 years of TI's operating system codebase, the OS has been re-implemented with new features natively on the ARM CPU rather than using an ez80 emulator to run an updated form of the TI-84 Plus CE operating system.
It looks like TI is finally moving away from the Z80. This must have been a pretty big engineering effort on TI's part. Like the article says, up to this point all of TI's low-end graphing calculators have been Z80 based and use the same system software that has a lineage dating back to the early 1990s. They were previously so wedded to the Z80 that when they introduced Python programming to their calculators, they did so by adding an ARM microcontroller that runs MicroPython, while the main eZ80 CPU acts as a serial terminal.
Much nostalgia. The TI-83 Z80 was how I learned assembly as a teenager, so I could write better calculator games than was possible with TI Basic. Many others here had a similar experience, I’m sure. It’s been a couple decades, but I’m sure I’d still remember most of it if you put me down in front of a bunch of Z80 asm code.
One thing that I remember vividly was you had no MUL or DIV, so you have to implement them yourself with shifts, adds, subtraction, etc. This was an extremely useful learning experience
Real shame since cortex has a admin TrustZone processor that is licensed to special interests only. For the educational market, this "security" is a selling point. It guarantees that a student isn't running unauthorized code or "cheating" apps. It also likely allows OTA auditing of the classroom's state.
TI is like the Intuit of the education world. I want to love them but this is ridiculous - a N4120 celeron laptop is the same price as this new calculator - it might be a garbage laptop but it's doing a heck of a lot more for your $160 than this calculator is.
Well, the TI-83/84 are called a graphing calculators for a reason: you can plot equations and datasets with them and look at them right there[1]. Looking at graphs is huge for learning, or at least it was for me, and school isn't just about plugging things in and getting an answer (or shouldn't be, at least).
Doesn't mean it's not overpriced, but that's one reason and you can get a used TI-83/84 for like $30 or less. They pretty much never break.
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1. Okay, the Casio can QR-code-link you to a graph, but if I have internet/smartphone there are better graphing tools anyway, like Desmos.
Includes GCD and LCM, some of the newer ones don't have them.
If you want graphing, there is the newish fx-CG100 has a nice display, but they removed Casio basic, it now only has micro Python (way too awkward to type on a tiny keypad):
International Baccalaureate math has some stats questions that require a calculator that can do stats questions. Not really possible by hand in exam conditions!
My Casio FX-260 Solar IIs [1][2] (I recently bought 3 more of them) cost me $5 CAD a piece on clearance at Walmart. No battery, a modern solar panel that works great even in dimly lit rooms, and a modern SOC with all the standard scientific calculations, scientific notation, engineering notation, significant figures, and all the basic stats calculations too (sum, mean, pop stddev, sample stddev, permutations, combinations, factorials).
It’s my favourite calculator and the one I always reach for, despite having a bunch of more complicated 2-line calculators etc. It’s just so easy to use and very fast to do anything I’d want with a calculator. If I need graphing I’ll reach for Desmos. If I need algebra I’ll use Sage. I haven’t used Sage since my undergrad, however.
The basic $12 Casio scientific has stats like mean, standard deviation, regression... Stats is a huge field, we're talking highschool level. I think it probably covers it
Oh that’s neat! Probably should’ve checked your link. Not sure what the advantage of the Ti-84 would be for highschool math, but the UX on NumWorks calculators is completely a game changer, especially with stats and graphing questions.
Maybe everything is possible on the Casio, but it’s so much clearer on the NumWorks (especially for eg. Physics questions, where you might want to retrieve values you calculated earlier with full precision, etc). Genuinely felt like a cheat code when I was in highschool. I showed mine to my teacher and they swapped the whole’s schools standard calculators from the Ti-84 CE to the NumWorks, which is cheaper too.
>kids have smartphones, what's the point of a graphing calculator?
Many tests will not allow you to use a smartphone. My son couldn't even use the school issued chromebook on his PSAT, he had to get a loaner Windows laptop or use an approved hard calculator.
I'm with you. Some open source app is all they need.
However to answer your question: phone rules in classrooms vary enormously and the dedicated calculator is faster to interface when you're drilling problems in a homework setting
I finished highschool in the (gasp) 20th century so the modern classroom is certainly something I've had to learn
We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).
I certainly got a lot of educational value out of mine. I managed to program a fully functional Minesweeper game on mine, using the built-in programming tools - no transferring efficient binaries via cable!
But yes. 99% of what we did with them in class - when we were even allowed to use them - could have been handled by a little solar-powered calculator with basic arithmetic functions.
Programming mine in high school is how I ended up coding for the first time and led to my current career. Honestly a pretty good investment (from my parents) I'd say.
In my school, I was part of a group of students who hand-programmed games on TI-81 or TI-82 calculators using TI-BASIC. No cable transfers. Games included: Hangman, Missile Command, Minesweeper, and R-Type. Looking back, it was really amazingly impressive. Both what those calculators could do and how much free time we had to make them do it.
I programmed a Mandelbrot generator on my TI-81 (if I remember the model correctly) when I should have been paying attention in class. Entering the code was slow and painful - fortunately the algorithm is fairly simple. The batteries lasted forever, until one day I set the bailout to a ridiculously high value, given the limited resolution, and walked away.
We made multi-player games over the link cables in the early 1990s. We certainly learned a ton from building those. It's not clear how much the calculators added to the math and chemistry classes where we were supposed to use them.
You're paying $100 for completely antiquated hardware where its core feature is "it doesn't do much".
Pretty much any professional environment that you will need calculations will have access to a computer that can do these calculations significantly faster and better.
I thought my HP was pretty cool in high school, but pretty much the moment I graduated I stopped using it because I figured out how to use Excel and/or a programming language to do number crunchy stuff. Even for CAS stuff, I would just use Wolfram Alpha or SageMath (depending on how ambitious I'm feeling with setting stuff up).
I can't remember the last time I used a calculator outside of showing someone else how to use it.
Well I'd add to that - the real core feature is that the teacher and usually the textbook show you exactly how to use it, that's why it gets listed specifically as a course requirement.
That unfortunately is also why they can charge so much and people buy them anyway, because at best you'll be on your own to learn how to use anything else (and at worst you won't be allowed to use it at all for tests and such).
Yeah I guess I should correct and say that I do use an HP 50G emulator on my iPhone cuz I like RPN.
But even still, the iPhone can do many things and is many times more capable, and you can buy a used iPhone 12 that works fine for about the same price as one of these calculators.
One perk I found is that if I kept it in RPN mode, people stopped asking to borrow my calculator, which was a valid excuse to learn how to use RPN, which is basically all I use now (and indirectly made me really love the Forth language).
Mine was a Casio fx-something. Teachers didn't like it but it didn't let me cheat and it was just the right amount of functionality to help me with math. Carried me through Pre-Cal, Trig, Calculus and Differential Equations.
That was my first graphing calculator in high school, because it was way cheaper than the equivalent TI. Like seriously 1/4 the price for "beginning of the school year" sales.
That thing was fine, and if I hadn't dropped it and broken it, I probably would have kept using it for the rest of high school. I eventually replaced it with an HP.
This is probably right, but just to note that it's very much a generational thing. When I got a TI-83 (and then eventually an 89!) it was easily the most advanced handheld computing hardware I had ever been exposed to. The iPhone made sense to me, and I knew it would be huge, the day it came out because of these amazing calculators.
I know technology has moved on and all, but much nostalgic respect to these amazing calculators.
I distinctly remember my teachers having a debate around whether or not the functions I had programmed into my calculator were "cheating". On one hand, it was a tool and notes that I had access to my peers did not. On the other hand, I had created those tools myself, and if school was supposed to train me for the real world, wouldn't I be able to use the tools I created in the real world?
Ha in my school's math department the cheating thesis won and my silly single variable CAS system (which in retrospect did nothing you couldn't do with the graph functions!) got calculator programs banned. Luckily enough my specific math teacher that year didn't care enough to enforce it and it was soon forgotten
Same. But I agree with the parent, I always got the vibe it was a giant racket between public schools and TI. Writing code for it was probably cool back in the 80s-90s but it's so dated now.
Agreed, it's insane to me that in an era of Google Colab (et al) schools still require students to shell out >$100 for one of these. I'm sure there is some backroom arrangement with schools of some kind.
A lack of functionality is the point. You don't want a full CAS or Internet search results available, or many students will just take the easy route and not learn anything.
Neither teachers nor school districts have the time or resources to audit every new tool someone wants to use, or to help students figure out how to use their preferred tool to do something - find something that works and just use that
30 years ago, we had the option of the TI-82 Or (83?) and the 85. A bunch of the kids with the 85 were playing Tetris and some were writing little programs. I got the cheaper 82/83, and I don't actually remember using it for anything, even once, even though I did the IB track (stats, trig, algebra, calculus, etc).
Back in the mid-90's we had a TI version of sneakernet where you would copy programs from one student on to your TI-85 via a link cable; this is how I got Tetris back in the day. I assume OP did the same.
IIRC there was a way to connect the TI-85 to your serial port and use some Windows or DOS software to copy files onto it. (Everyone's PC still had at least one serial port on it back then).
(Edit: I am assuming you were asking how it's possible I didn't use it, not how it's possible that people were copying programs onto their calculators.)
I don't know. It's been too long. We must have done graphing on paper.
I don't remember a lot of coursework in math that required me to produce a decimal value. For example, we wanted √2 instead of 1.414.
In physics, I think we used regular calculators.
I used to be bewildered at my parents not remembering certain things from high school. But, now I'm living it :).
Definitely. At the very least, given the slow change in which ones are accepted, a cheap rental setup seems like the baseline that should exist... but everyone had to buy their own for my schools.
Ti really needs to stop with the artificial product differentiation. There's no reason 15 years after the Nspire CX CAS came out that everyone of their calculators can't do CAS.
Wow, they used to be allowed back when I was in high school. It came in super clutch for SAT but much more importantly AP. Our school mandated the original CS CAS and drilled us on how to use it effectively and I got good mileage out of it through high school testing and college.
I lost it at some point and got the version 2 and I would occasionally use it for work. I wish it had USB-C because who has a mini-B cable for charging these days
CollegeBoard only seemed to realize recently, the ban on CAS calculators on the SAT, PSAT, and AP exams came last September if I remember correctly, maybe August or October
As someone who also menu-3-1'd their way through the SAT, I'm surprised it was ever allowed. Super useful outside of school but knowing that a good portion of my classmates using Ti-84s were doing the same problems on paper felt rather unfair.
Advanced calculators are in an unusual space with external constraints on it. Some of the features or differentiation they add serves the constraint of "if you don't, we won't let students use it in the classroom".
When a calculator is used in a classroom, there's a concern about people using the calculator to replace the skill that's being taught. So, for instance, there's space for a calculator with no CAS, for a class that's trying to teach you to do algebra. That is in some ways easier than "don't use this function of the calculator".
Yeah there's not really a purpose for advanced calculators anymore (apart from the niche market of people who just enjoy using them). Calculators are basically only a thing now to make it harder to cheat on exams. If you don't have that constraint, you might as well use Wolfram or Matlab or whatever.
It is not really classroom. It is more so setting testing standard that matches the standardised testing that schooling aims for. This ofc then extends to testing in classroom tests as that is best way to prepare students.
Not that any of this matter anymore as it can be entirely replaced with LLMs in near future.
My linear algebra class used F_2 as our field probably half the time that it was specified. Realistically almost any course probably doesn't need calculators at all (or they could at least be kept for homework). If you're not teaching arithmetic, you keep the arithmetic simple. If you're not teaching algebra, you keep the algebra simple. etc.
I don't think it's been about costs or CPU for at least 20 years, but isn't it more that for kids to learn to do math, it's better not to have CAS always at hand? So that's why there are some in the lineup without it.
It's about ensuring "academic honesty" on exams. Also, it's nice to have buttons rather than a touchscreen. Also, there is something to be said about using a device with a different form-factor than the one on which a student also scrolls TikTok/IG and distracts themselves otherwise.
I'm surprised to see "Approved for Exams" featured so prominently, as handheld calculators for lots of standardized exams are being phased out.
All of the exams listed are either already offered in a computerized format or in a transition phase, with the PSAT, SAT, APs, and ACT all already offering Desmos in their testing apps.
I love handheld calculators, but, especially in a time-sensitive environment, it's hard to beat a large screen and full keyboard.
tests like SAT, ACT, and some AP exams are using Desmos, yes
however:
- this means you have to fiddle with a popover window and can't always see the full problem (especially when the reference sheet is also online)
- you have less muscle memory and often take longer
- harder to multitask (you use paper anyways, and the paper to calculator friction is lower than the paper to trackpad friction
- trackpads on school computers are usually worse, which compounds the problem
- some specific functions just don't exist
essentially using Desmos is like using a physical mouse/trackpad, while using your calculator is like using VIM motions and keyboard shortcuts with a concave split keyboard. it's technically more intuitive and can help in certain scenarios, but it's useful to have both.
this sounds trivial, but it's not, especially on tests where you have about or less than a minute per question
ideally you have both a handheld calculator and Desmos though
The comments on this are fascinating. Although, I was waiting for someone to chime in with "HP is better cuz RPN."
2 dinners out for a family of four would cover the cost of this calculator. If my kid's school required this for math, I wouldn't bat an eye at purchasing one.
I needed a Ti-83 for school in 1996-1998. If you couldn't afford one, the school would loan you one for the semester. Band instruments were the same way.
> The keypad layout removes clutter and makes commands and shortcuts easier to see, so you can work faster with fewer steps.
I don't see it. I compared a screenshot of one of these to a older T-84, and it looks like they have same number of buttons, and the buttons are just as cluttered (except the EVO has secondary labels on the keycaps instead of the case).
That's a good thing, since one of the best things about calculators is they typically have a ton of buttons for quick access to a lot of functions.
The $0.03 LED, $0.04 diffuser panel and the extra 3 cents for manufacturing keys with transparency will eat into their 93% profit margin. Can't have that. The children will just have to use a desk light.
A TI-83 was about $100 in the year 2000, and it doesn't look like it's that much cheaper today. I would've expected Texas Instruments to try gouging their very captive market.
But you can't divorce that from computing technology in general. A TI-83 used a z80 in 2000 and was priced at 1990's z80 rates, it was already gouging even back then! Now 26 years later the TI-84 uses an ez80 (or something something similar), which was introduced in 2001.
TI has always gouged their captive market. It is just increasingly ridiculous when those students also have smartphones.
FWIW I think these graphing calculators are quite good for 2026 students! It is nice to have a computer which is actually comprehensible. They just need to be more like $50. $160 is just evil.
Shrug. The SAT and ACT don't let you use an iPhone on their exams. $160 is what the market will bear. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it just is, and perhaps there's a market for a much cheaper competitor to beat TI here.
You previously acknowledged it's a "very captive market" that you "would've expected Texas Instruments to try gouging" :) "$160 is what the very captive market will bear until the state-sanctioned gouging backfires" is a less compelling argument.
"Shrug" is kind of gross. Seems like you're being reflexively cynical.
Edit: to be clear the problem here is really local school boards being antidemocratic and unaccountable, not TI being greedy.
I don't know either what they meant, but for comparison NumWorks calculators are clocked at 216 MHz (100 MHz for the older models, and 550 MHz for some of the latest ones, but not everywhere), so it doesn't look that much out of the ordinary, maybe a little underpowered from my experience with the first NumWorks but eh idk it's a calculator and unlike the first NumWorks they don't try to do CAS.
Thanks for clarifying. I think this is an ARM and a break from a history of Z80 and Z80 adjacent CPUs. I do get the impression TI have done a good (financial) job milking these products whilst under investing in real product innovation.
I bought a DM42n last year. I didn't need it. I don't use it so often that I can justify its purchase. Still, wow, I do so enjoy working with it. It's one of those tools that just feels good to use.
I loved my TI-84+ SE and wish I still had it (had all sorts of custom programs on it but it got lost or stolen before I finished high school).
That said, I find it really hard to believe that they can't provide better specs and feature set for the cost. User-available memory of 3.5MB is incredibly low, especially with Python support. These could be really cool handheld computers if TI put more effort into their devices that already have a massive install base.
Currently, most of their popularity in my experience is "lock in" effect from teachers who are familiar with TI calculators and lab / curriculum materials that are specifically built around teaching through TI calculators. At this rate they're charging a lot and resting on their near monopoly status in education, which I'm sure is very profitable for TI.
There used to be a great app called WabbitEmu that emulated these devices on Android. I think they got a cease and desist but it was pretty neat to have back in the day
I learned to program on a TI-83 and later bought a TI-84+ with the cable that allowed me to transfer my apps and games between my device and other students devices. I have fond memories of hand typing into a TI-83 BASIC for hours using code I found online at the local library - games like Drug Wars and other similar choose this or that console based games. I would later get a USB cable that allowed me to download apps and games onto my device. Good times. Decades later and I'm still programming.
What calculators are you guys using that aren't in academia anymore and don't need the "exam approved" limitations?
Or are we all just using software on our computers now.
That would be sad.
(I've had a Casio fx-991EX on my desk for a few years, that replaced a broken Casio fx-991ES. Though designed for academia, its operation is burned into my brain at this point.)
I collect HP calculators: I have an HP 12C, an HP 15C Collector's Edition (there are a few of them left still for sale), an HP 32Sii, and an HP 48SX. I sometimes use them, but whenever I'm in front of a computer (which is almost all the time), I find myself using the Unix dc command.
Handheld calculators are nice, but outside of exam settings, I could use a smartphone or a computer, though calculators are nice when I want to work distraction-free through something that requires performing calculations. I believe this is why HP largely exited the calculator market: HP's target market was professionals, and cheap computers and smartphones killed the calculator market for them, similar to how electronic calculators killed the slide rule. Texas Instruments, however, is still in the calculator business, largely due to their successful courting of American middle and high schools, as well as ETS and other testing agencies, beginning in the 1990s. I don't know the situation in Japan regarding calculator usage, but I see Casio scientific and graphing calculators proudly displayed at electronics stores such as Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera.
I use emu48 on my phone emulating the HP-50g, which was almost exactly the same size as the phone so my muscle memory somewhat carries over (minus the tactile feedback of a real keyboard). I still have the physical calculator on my desk at home, with no batteries in it so it's only usable within reach of its USB cable.
Anything that goes beyond what that calculator's UI can reasonably handle is going to end up in a Jupyter notebook or something like that.
Similarly, I still have my HP-42s but I usually use Free42[0] on my phone and tablet. They also have it for desktops. It's great if you like RPN calculators. Or if anyone wants to learn about them, you can use that program and follow along with the original manual(s)[1]. It's nice to be able to handle the order of operations without parentheses.
> What calculators are you guys using that aren't in academia anymore and don't need the "exam approved" limitations?
I still have my TI-85, but I essentially haven't used it since I left college. For 99% of what I need, I use either Python, or what's built into Firefox (e.g. unit conversion), or DDG. For that last 1% (e.g. full CAS functionality), I tend to grab whatever web-based non-AI tool is handy.
honestly, I think it makes no sense to spend more than 30$ on a calculator if it can't do symbolic math.
The way you input things like division, integrals, matrix, etc. on newer calculators like the nspire is far superior than the older calculators (eg. ti-84, ti-89, etc.). They look like how you write them on a blackboard instead of relying on purely parentheses or "," and ";" to separate parameters. It's like going from Excel to Mathcad
I used to keep my old TI-82 (or was it -84?) from high school and a simpler sturdy solar-powered calculator near my desk, but I realized I always just used either my computer (IRB in the terminal usually) or Apple's calculator app on my phone and never ever touched my physical calculators. So they've now been put in storage.
The most common way for me to do basic arithmetic is by opening up a Python shell and using it as a calculator. This is what I typically do when I go through my finances every few months and calculate prices for things.
I still use my TI-89 from high school, but I'm interested to find if there are any open hardware/firmware calculator projects with basic engineering tools and a CAS.
156MHz and 3,5MB user memory... Why do I feel like that is a joke these days.. I think some ESP32s are faster and have more memory, but not sure if they are fully comparable...
I have no idea how on earth a scientific calculator costs almost as much as a cheap android phone. Do they use oled and snapdragon soc these days?
Back in my school days a 20$ Casio seems more than enough.
How is the battery life? Rechargeable sure is nice, but the older models lasted forever on 4 AAAs (at least my TI-83). That's one aspect that would justify the low processing power for today's standards for portable computing devices.
"Built to be a reliable learning tool, not a distraction"
They clearly haven't met a classroom of high school kids. Then again... I didn't have access to the internet in my pocket when I was in high school so....
Genuine question, who uses these in practice? In my experience, calculators beyond the basic were always banned in high school and college, cause everyone's so afraid people might store something into them, and afterwards it's just matlab and python. It's not like laptops aren't a thing that everyone has on hand.
Electronics engineer here. I use my HP Prime G2 daily in the lab for basic things as well as quickly calculating complicated stuff, since you can pretty much program it to do whatever you want.
You might say why not use Python or Matlab?! It‘s true that you don‘t need a small handheld device to do engineering calculations where there is a ton of other much stronger and free options out there. But the thing is, a calculator is a pure dedication to one thing. You turn it on, you do your calculation, get the answer and move on. It gets out of your way. Plus it is a better feeling to type stuff using the dedicated buttons in a calculator than using a keyboard.
IIRC You don’t use them in the dumb kids class much, you use them a fair amount in the sort of smart class, and you don’t use them much in the actually smart class.
These have been standard equipment (that you buy, or the school loans out) in middle-class US high school math since the 90's (and gone basically unchanged since then). The math books even have content tailored to particular models so that you'll have to buy them instead of alternatives from other vendors.
Poor? In what sense? I graduated a few years ago (in Europe) and I think I could’ve gone through my entire education without owning one. Math, for me, went from nice numbers to ugly numbers that you had to do by hand (because that was the point), then to just letters and squiggles.
At no point was there a need to work with hard numbers or to learn to work with a physical calculator (I haven’t seen one in the wild in years).
Sure calculators were allowed in some cases, the "scientific" kind, not the graphing kind.
But yes I would agree. So much time spent making sure people don't learn to use the tools they'll always have on hand. Programming exams on paper and that kind of inane bullshit.
Is there any information on exactly what kind of processor is inside this thing? Since running python I'm thinking it's actually a low end mobile processor.
Looking at the price of this and other calculators, I wonder if there's a market for "dumb calculators" analogous to dumb terminals: a device with the calculator form factor, keyboard, and display, but where the actual computation happens on a paired computer/phone or a cloud endpoint over WiFi/Bluetooth.
The cost of these devices isn't the computation, and if anything more connectivity would probably make these more expensive and harder to use (many "smart" devices in classrooms have networking issues and if even one of them can't connect, it hurts the ability to run a lesson). I think standalone computation abilities are pretty important, and connectivity can be a downside for preventing cheating in standardized exams etc.
I think those were aimed at different market segments. And that would be engineers, professionals and working academics that is not students.
Generally limitations in education on what was allowed led to more limited feature sets. Where as full feature set that could be upsold with qwerty keyboard was aimed for different users.
About 25 years ago my parents got me a Ti84 as a surprise for Christmas and they hid it in the attic so I couldn't find it in the meantime. A few months went by and a couple days before Christmas, when it was time to wrap the presents they couldn't find it anymore. My dad went out and got a Casio something as a late minute replacement, and that was the calculator I used in high school and I never knew about this story. Then last year I found a Ti84 in my parents attic...
Must have been closer to 20 years, 84(+) didn't come out until 2004.
Hahaha! This is great.
Somewhat related. My mom once yelled at me for losing a necklace she really liked. Then we were moving her stuff out of her house and found the necklace behind a wardrobe, wedged between it and the wall. It had been there for like 40 years, layered in dust.
My mom once was getting ready for work and I hear a pop and hear my mom yelling. I go in and her necklace fell off the dresser; a "dust buster" wall wart was plugged in back there and it fell across the prongs, shorting it out.
From here: https://www.cemetech.net/news/2026/4/1062/_/ti-84-evo-calcul...
> 3x Processing Power - Matching one of the speculated options, the calculator appears to use an ARM Cortex CPU, finally retiring the z80 and ez80 family of CPUs that were used in three decades of TI-83 and TI-84 Plus graphing calculators. It's running at 156MHz, compared to the 48MHz of the older calculators. It appears likely that in an unexpected break from over 30 years of TI's operating system codebase, the OS has been re-implemented with new features natively on the ARM CPU rather than using an ez80 emulator to run an updated form of the TI-84 Plus CE operating system.
It looks like TI is finally moving away from the Z80. This must have been a pretty big engineering effort on TI's part. Like the article says, up to this point all of TI's low-end graphing calculators have been Z80 based and use the same system software that has a lineage dating back to the early 1990s. They were previously so wedded to the Z80 that when they introduced Python programming to their calculators, they did so by adding an ARM microcontroller that runs MicroPython, while the main eZ80 CPU acts as a serial terminal.
Much nostalgia. The TI-83 Z80 was how I learned assembly as a teenager, so I could write better calculator games than was possible with TI Basic. Many others here had a similar experience, I’m sure. It’s been a couple decades, but I’m sure I’d still remember most of it if you put me down in front of a bunch of Z80 asm code.
One thing that I remember vividly was you had no MUL or DIV, so you have to implement them yourself with shifts, adds, subtraction, etc. This was an extremely useful learning experience
>cemetech
>Kerm Martian
There's some names I haven't heard in a while :)
Real shame since cortex has a admin TrustZone processor that is licensed to special interests only. For the educational market, this "security" is a selling point. It guarantees that a student isn't running unauthorized code or "cheating" apps. It also likely allows OTA auditing of the classroom's state.
Any secure boot design can achieve that, you don't need TrustZone to do that
What prevents a motivated cheater from swapping out the processor entirely?
One-shotted with Claude Code. Chef kiss.
Show me a highschool math problem you can't do on a $12 Casio scientific like the classic FX-300MS https://www.usaofficemachines.com/csofx300ms-fx-300ms-scient...
There's even knockoffs of it for $1: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809744184708.html
I picked one up when the 99 cent store was shutting down. It works fine.
Look what you can get for $20: https://www.casio.com/intl/scientific-calculators/product.FX...
TI is like the Intuit of the education world. I want to love them but this is ridiculous - a N4120 celeron laptop is the same price as this new calculator - it might be a garbage laptop but it's doing a heck of a lot more for your $160 than this calculator is.
Well, the TI-83/84 are called a graphing calculators for a reason: you can plot equations and datasets with them and look at them right there[1]. Looking at graphs is huge for learning, or at least it was for me, and school isn't just about plugging things in and getting an answer (or shouldn't be, at least).
Doesn't mean it's not overpriced, but that's one reason and you can get a used TI-83/84 for like $30 or less. They pretty much never break.
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1. Okay, the Casio can QR-code-link you to a graph, but if I have internet/smartphone there are better graphing tools anyway, like Desmos.
casio can do it for under $40
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Casio-FX-9750Glll-Graphing-Calcul...
The reason you can get used ti's for $30 is because that's how much they're actually worth.
If you count basic calculus as high school level, TI89's can do symbolic integration. They're usually banned on tests for that exact reason tho.
My favorite cheap Casio is fx-115ES Plus 2nd Edition, $17
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-fx-115ESPLS2-Advanced-Scientifi...
Includes GCD and LCM, some of the newer ones don't have them.
If you want graphing, there is the newish fx-CG100 has a nice display, but they removed Casio basic, it now only has micro Python (way too awkward to type on a tiny keypad):
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-ClassWiz%C2%AE-Calculator-Funct...
The older ones that still have basic:
https://www.amazon.com/Casio-fx-9750GIII-Graphing-Calculator...
BTW, here is a review I made of many calculators, measuring keyboard efficiency: (HP-15c still the best)
https://github.com/jhallen/calculator/wiki
The contrived ones where they make you graph stuff, but that’s about it.
International Baccalaureate math has some stats questions that require a calculator that can do stats questions. Not really possible by hand in exam conditions!
My Casio FX-260 Solar IIs [1][2] (I recently bought 3 more of them) cost me $5 CAD a piece on clearance at Walmart. No battery, a modern solar panel that works great even in dimly lit rooms, and a modern SOC with all the standard scientific calculations, scientific notation, engineering notation, significant figures, and all the basic stats calculations too (sum, mean, pop stddev, sample stddev, permutations, combinations, factorials).
It’s my favourite calculator and the one I always reach for, despite having a bunch of more complicated 2-line calculators etc. It’s just so easy to use and very fast to do anything I’d want with a calculator. If I need graphing I’ll reach for Desmos. If I need algebra I’ll use Sage. I haven’t used Sage since my undergrad, however.
[1] https://www.casio.com/content/dam/casio/product-info/locales...
[2] https://www.casio.com/ca-en/scientific-calculators/product.F...
HL or SL? (It's been a while for me, but I know I needed PDF/CDF functions... and I don't knkow about the optional modules/Further.)
The basic $12 Casio scientific has stats like mean, standard deviation, regression... Stats is a huge field, we're talking highschool level. I think it probably covers it
Oh that’s neat! Probably should’ve checked your link. Not sure what the advantage of the Ti-84 would be for highschool math, but the UX on NumWorks calculators is completely a game changer, especially with stats and graphing questions.
Maybe everything is possible on the Casio, but it’s so much clearer on the NumWorks (especially for eg. Physics questions, where you might want to retrieve values you calculated earlier with full precision, etc). Genuinely felt like a cheat code when I was in highschool. I showed mine to my teacher and they swapped the whole’s schools standard calculators from the Ti-84 CE to the NumWorks, which is cheaper too.
I mean sure. Unlimited precision calculation I don't think is the proper domain of the cheap desk calculator.
I mean what do these do? I think like 10 digits worth?
If you're actually doing something requiring over 10 digits of accuracy and you can reliably hit that you probably have a $10 million lab...
So honestly what are we talking about here...If it's pure mathematics this is a bad tool for that as well.
Generating a QR code to see the graph online is kind of cool, but also kinda dumb too.
I mean, these days kids have smartphones, what's the point of a graphing calculator?
>kids have smartphones, what's the point of a graphing calculator?
Many tests will not allow you to use a smartphone. My son couldn't even use the school issued chromebook on his PSAT, he had to get a loaner Windows laptop or use an approved hard calculator.
I'm with you. Some open source app is all they need.
However to answer your question: phone rules in classrooms vary enormously and the dedicated calculator is faster to interface when you're drilling problems in a homework setting
I finished highschool in the (gasp) 20th century so the modern classroom is certainly something I've had to learn
We had to buy those calculators for highschool and it was a waste of money, felt like somebody must be paying somebody off to have thousands of students buy a device that they will certainly never have to use (and is of little educational value).
I certainly got a lot of educational value out of mine. I managed to program a fully functional Minesweeper game on mine, using the built-in programming tools - no transferring efficient binaries via cable!
But yes. 99% of what we did with them in class - when we were even allowed to use them - could have been handled by a little solar-powered calculator with basic arithmetic functions.
Programming mine in high school is how I ended up coding for the first time and led to my current career. Honestly a pretty good investment (from my parents) I'd say.
same. My first real exposure to coding was hacking Drug Wars on my brothers old ti-89 in math class.
In my school, I was part of a group of students who hand-programmed games on TI-81 or TI-82 calculators using TI-BASIC. No cable transfers. Games included: Hangman, Missile Command, Minesweeper, and R-Type. Looking back, it was really amazingly impressive. Both what those calculators could do and how much free time we had to make them do it.
I programmed a Mandelbrot generator on my TI-81 (if I remember the model correctly) when I should have been paying attention in class. Entering the code was slow and painful - fortunately the algorithm is fairly simple. The batteries lasted forever, until one day I set the bailout to a ridiculously high value, given the limited resolution, and walked away.
We made multi-player games over the link cables in the early 1990s. We certainly learned a ton from building those. It's not clear how much the calculators added to the math and chemistry classes where we were supposed to use them.
I sort of agree.
You're paying $100 for completely antiquated hardware where its core feature is "it doesn't do much".
Pretty much any professional environment that you will need calculations will have access to a computer that can do these calculations significantly faster and better.
I thought my HP was pretty cool in high school, but pretty much the moment I graduated I stopped using it because I figured out how to use Excel and/or a programming language to do number crunchy stuff. Even for CAS stuff, I would just use Wolfram Alpha or SageMath (depending on how ambitious I'm feeling with setting stuff up).
I can't remember the last time I used a calculator outside of showing someone else how to use it.
Well I'd add to that - the real core feature is that the teacher and usually the textbook show you exactly how to use it, that's why it gets listed specifically as a course requirement.
That unfortunately is also why they can charge so much and people buy them anyway, because at best you'll be on your own to learn how to use anything else (and at worst you won't be allowed to use it at all for tests and such).
The interface is great for what it does though. I still use ti-83 interface with the calculator app on my phone.
Yeah I guess I should correct and say that I do use an HP 50G emulator on my iPhone cuz I like RPN.
But even still, the iPhone can do many things and is many times more capable, and you can buy a used iPhone 12 that works fine for about the same price as one of these calculators.
I got an HP50g from Craigslist in high school that
- was cheaper than a TI
- had a primitive CAS system
- teachers had no idea how to put it into test mode
It carried me through AP calc BC, I would’ve gotten <4 off of my own knowledge alone
I had the same one. I thought it was pretty cool.
One perk I found is that if I kept it in RPN mode, people stopped asking to borrow my calculator, which was a valid excuse to learn how to use RPN, which is basically all I use now (and indirectly made me really love the Forth language).
Mine was a Casio fx-something. Teachers didn't like it but it didn't let me cheat and it was just the right amount of functionality to help me with math. Carried me through Pre-Cal, Trig, Calculus and Differential Equations.
That was my first graphing calculator in high school, because it was way cheaper than the equivalent TI. Like seriously 1/4 the price for "beginning of the school year" sales.
That thing was fine, and if I hadn't dropped it and broken it, I probably would have kept using it for the rest of high school. I eventually replaced it with an HP.
This is probably right, but just to note that it's very much a generational thing. When I got a TI-83 (and then eventually an 89!) it was easily the most advanced handheld computing hardware I had ever been exposed to. The iPhone made sense to me, and I knew it would be huge, the day it came out because of these amazing calculators.
I know technology has moved on and all, but much nostalgic respect to these amazing calculators.
I learned programming on that calculator. I learned programming because of that calculator. I owe so much to that calculator.
Same.
I distinctly remember my teachers having a debate around whether or not the functions I had programmed into my calculator were "cheating". On one hand, it was a tool and notes that I had access to my peers did not. On the other hand, I had created those tools myself, and if school was supposed to train me for the real world, wouldn't I be able to use the tools I created in the real world?
Ha in my school's math department the cheating thesis won and my silly single variable CAS system (which in retrospect did nothing you couldn't do with the graph functions!) got calculator programs banned. Luckily enough my specific math teacher that year didn't care enough to enforce it and it was soon forgotten
There are many of us, I make a living today because my dad brought home a Ti-83 Plus and I kept messing with the "PGRM" menu
I used mine constantly in highschool (10 years ago).
I used mine in highschool (20 years ago) and still use one today.
Same except mine was over 30 years ago (an OG TI-85). Still on my desk, still use it almost every day for something or other.
I use mine constantly in high school (now).
Same. But I agree with the parent, I always got the vibe it was a giant racket between public schools and TI. Writing code for it was probably cool back in the 80s-90s but it's so dated now.
Agreed, it's insane to me that in an era of Google Colab (et al) schools still require students to shell out >$100 for one of these. I'm sure there is some backroom arrangement with schools of some kind.
A lack of functionality is the point. You don't want a full CAS or Internet search results available, or many students will just take the easy route and not learn anything.
Neither teachers nor school districts have the time or resources to audit every new tool someone wants to use, or to help students figure out how to use their preferred tool to do something - find something that works and just use that
30 years ago, we had the option of the TI-82 Or (83?) and the 85. A bunch of the kids with the 85 were playing Tetris and some were writing little programs. I got the cheaper 82/83, and I don't actually remember using it for anything, even once, even though I did the IB track (stats, trig, algebra, calculus, etc).
How is that possible?
I wouldn’t have been able to function without it in school (20 years ago). But we also didn’t have iPhones.
Back in the mid-90's we had a TI version of sneakernet where you would copy programs from one student on to your TI-85 via a link cable; this is how I got Tetris back in the day. I assume OP did the same.
IIRC there was a way to connect the TI-85 to your serial port and use some Windows or DOS software to copy files onto it. (Everyone's PC still had at least one serial port on it back then).
(Edit: I am assuming you were asking how it's possible I didn't use it, not how it's possible that people were copying programs onto their calculators.)
I don't know. It's been too long. We must have done graphing on paper.
I don't remember a lot of coursework in math that required me to produce a decimal value. For example, we wanted √2 instead of 1.414.
In physics, I think we used regular calculators.
I used to be bewildered at my parents not remembering certain things from high school. But, now I'm living it :).
Definitely. At the very least, given the slow change in which ones are accepted, a cheap rental setup seems like the baseline that should exist... but everyone had to buy their own for my schools.
concur .. better to have a 40-buck fx82 for daily math and use Desmos for graphing, than fork out 250 to 300 for a super-duper calc they wont use.
I was in (Catholic) HS 30 years ago and we used our TI-82s extensively in AP Calc.
Probably have not touched mine since college.
Ti really needs to stop with the artificial product differentiation. There's no reason 15 years after the Nspire CX CAS came out that everyone of their calculators can't do CAS.
CAS capabilities are prohibited in the SAT: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/what-to-bring-do/calcu...
Wow, they used to be allowed back when I was in high school. It came in super clutch for SAT but much more importantly AP. Our school mandated the original CS CAS and drilled us on how to use it effectively and I got good mileage out of it through high school testing and college.
I lost it at some point and got the version 2 and I would occasionally use it for work. I wish it had USB-C because who has a mini-B cable for charging these days
CollegeBoard only seemed to realize recently, the ban on CAS calculators on the SAT, PSAT, and AP exams came last September if I remember correctly, maybe August or October
As someone who also menu-3-1'd their way through the SAT, I'm surprised it was ever allowed. Super useful outside of school but knowing that a good portion of my classmates using Ti-84s were doing the same problems on paper felt rather unfair.
I vaguely remember they were banned by a proxy that stopped working after the Ti-89 came out: no QWERTY keyboards
Originally that blocked the Ti-92, but then the Ti-89 and Nspire line had numeric keypads + CAS
Advanced calculators are in an unusual space with external constraints on it. Some of the features or differentiation they add serves the constraint of "if you don't, we won't let students use it in the classroom".
When a calculator is used in a classroom, there's a concern about people using the calculator to replace the skill that's being taught. So, for instance, there's space for a calculator with no CAS, for a class that's trying to teach you to do algebra. That is in some ways easier than "don't use this function of the calculator".
Yeah there's not really a purpose for advanced calculators anymore (apart from the niche market of people who just enjoy using them). Calculators are basically only a thing now to make it harder to cheat on exams. If you don't have that constraint, you might as well use Wolfram or Matlab or whatever.
It is not really classroom. It is more so setting testing standard that matches the standardised testing that schooling aims for. This ofc then extends to testing in classroom tests as that is best way to prepare students.
Not that any of this matter anymore as it can be entirely replaced with LLMs in near future.
My linear algebra class used F_2 as our field probably half the time that it was specified. Realistically almost any course probably doesn't need calculators at all (or they could at least be kept for homework). If you're not teaching arithmetic, you keep the arithmetic simple. If you're not teaching algebra, you keep the algebra simple. etc.
The reason is exam requirements - some professional certifications don’t allow CAS calculators and have other restrictions.
I don't think it's been about costs or CPU for at least 20 years, but isn't it more that for kids to learn to do math, it's better not to have CAS always at hand? So that's why there are some in the lineup without it.
It doesn't help students learn if the tool does everything for them. This isn't a tool for professionals.
Heck, you could do a decent amount with the CAS back in the TI-89.
Decent? I'm not sure the new CAS models do anything that the TI-89 didn't.
Which is why it was notoriously banned from exams.
Honest question: Why do we need physical graphing calculators anymore? Can't this just be a phone app?
That screen resolution for one is horrible for 2026.
Mostly for students in settings that may disallow either smartphones or calculators with specific advanced features (schools, SAT exams etc)
Also I don’t know about you but these days I welcome stuff that allows me to stay away from the damn phone.
It's about ensuring "academic honesty" on exams. Also, it's nice to have buttons rather than a touchscreen. Also, there is something to be said about using a device with a different form-factor than the one on which a student also scrolls TikTok/IG and distracts themselves otherwise.
i moved my ti-89 to be a phone app, but it was much much slower to type on the soft keyboard than it is to press the actual buttons.
I'm surprised to see "Approved for Exams" featured so prominently, as handheld calculators for lots of standardized exams are being phased out.
All of the exams listed are either already offered in a computerized format or in a transition phase, with the PSAT, SAT, APs, and ACT all already offering Desmos in their testing apps.
I love handheld calculators, but, especially in a time-sensitive environment, it's hard to beat a large screen and full keyboard.
for context
tests like SAT, ACT, and some AP exams are using Desmos, yes
however:
- this means you have to fiddle with a popover window and can't always see the full problem (especially when the reference sheet is also online)
- you have less muscle memory and often take longer
- harder to multitask (you use paper anyways, and the paper to calculator friction is lower than the paper to trackpad friction
- trackpads on school computers are usually worse, which compounds the problem
- some specific functions just don't exist
essentially using Desmos is like using a physical mouse/trackpad, while using your calculator is like using VIM motions and keyboard shortcuts with a concave split keyboard. it's technically more intuitive and can help in certain scenarios, but it's useful to have both.
this sounds trivial, but it's not, especially on tests where you have about or less than a minute per question
ideally you have both a handheld calculator and Desmos though
TIL Desmos. Thanks for the interesting info, seems super cool!
The comments on this are fascinating. Although, I was waiting for someone to chime in with "HP is better cuz RPN."
2 dinners out for a family of four would cover the cost of this calculator. If my kid's school required this for math, I wouldn't bat an eye at purchasing one.
I needed a Ti-83 for school in 1996-1998. If you couldn't afford one, the school would loan you one for the semester. Band instruments were the same way.
> I was waiting for someone to chime in with "HP is better cuz RPN."
Well, it is ;) The Swiss Micros clones are pretty awesome:
https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm41x
> Simplified keypad
> The keypad layout removes clutter and makes commands and shortcuts easier to see, so you can work faster with fewer steps.
I don't see it. I compared a screenshot of one of these to a older T-84, and it looks like they have same number of buttons, and the buttons are just as cluttered (except the EVO has secondary labels on the keycaps instead of the case).
That's a good thing, since one of the best things about calculators is they typically have a ton of buttons for quick access to a lot of functions.
$160 at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-TI84-TI-Calculator/...
Not as bad as I would've expected. Also, apparently it includes a very simple Python environment? https://education.ti.com/en/product-resources/eguides/eguide...
For a $10 BoM and maybe a year of R&D I would say that $160 is bad.
Their engineers are still trying to figure out how to make backlit keys. Just give them another two decades, I'm sure they'll crack it.
The $0.03 LED, $0.04 diffuser panel and the extra 3 cents for manufacturing keys with transparency will eat into their 93% profit margin. Can't have that. The children will just have to use a desk light.
A TI-83 was about $100 in the year 2000, and it doesn't look like it's that much cheaper today. I would've expected Texas Instruments to try gouging their very captive market.
But you can't divorce that from computing technology in general. A TI-83 used a z80 in 2000 and was priced at 1990's z80 rates, it was already gouging even back then! Now 26 years later the TI-84 uses an ez80 (or something something similar), which was introduced in 2001.
TI has always gouged their captive market. It is just increasingly ridiculous when those students also have smartphones.
FWIW I think these graphing calculators are quite good for 2026 students! It is nice to have a computer which is actually comprehensible. They just need to be more like $50. $160 is just evil.
This has a 156Mhz processor.
My lightbulb has more calculating power than that.
Shrug. The SAT and ACT don't let you use an iPhone on their exams. $160 is what the market will bear. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it just is, and perhaps there's a market for a much cheaper competitor to beat TI here.
Is it a free market? Can students choose any calculator they want as long as it’s certified for their tests or is it mandated by the school?
> $160 is what the market will bear.
You previously acknowledged it's a "very captive market" that you "would've expected Texas Instruments to try gouging" :) "$160 is what the very captive market will bear until the state-sanctioned gouging backfires" is a less compelling argument.
"Shrug" is kind of gross. Seems like you're being reflexively cynical.
Edit: to be clear the problem here is really local school boards being antidemocratic and unaccountable, not TI being greedy.
Seems like you're being reflexively cynical
There are plenty of things in the world for me to spend my limited supply of outrage on. Calculator pricing doesn't make it into the top 100.
With a CPU 3x faster than a z80, you gotta wonder how many seconds per python instruction.
> Not just an upgrade — an EVOlution
Oh no.
You’re absolutely right!
…LLM-isms are like nails on chalkboard I swear. Instant turn off the moment I read them.
Even if they’re maybe not lol, doesn’t matter my visceral reaction is negative.
This made me double check if it wasn't someone's vibe code scam website.
156 MHz!!!!
Surprisingly high or surprisingly low?
I don't know either what they meant, but for comparison NumWorks calculators are clocked at 216 MHz (100 MHz for the older models, and 550 MHz for some of the latest ones, but not everywhere), so it doesn't look that much out of the ordinary, maybe a little underpowered from my experience with the first NumWorks but eh idk it's a calculator and unlike the first NumWorks they don't try to do CAS.
IMHO surprisingly low. Still not clear to me why they don't just port these things to ARM or similar?
Thanks for clarifying. I think this is an ARM and a break from a history of Z80 and Z80 adjacent CPUs. I do get the impression TI have done a good (financial) job milking these products whilst under investing in real product innovation.
> Built to be a reliable learning tool, not a distraction
15 year old me in math class programming my loaned TI-82: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
Jokes on you, you learned to program.
Those who have used various classic HP calculators in the past may be interested in this:
https://www.swissmicros.com/products
These are clones of various older calculators.
I bought a DM42n last year. I didn't need it. I don't use it so often that I can justify its purchase. Still, wow, I do so enjoy working with it. It's one of those tools that just feels good to use.
There is a certain joy in working with RPN and in using a piece of technology that was designed as a tool, not as a toy or an educational appliance.
With phone emulation, I probably need half a calculator. I have three.
I loved my TI-84+ SE and wish I still had it (had all sorts of custom programs on it but it got lost or stolen before I finished high school).
That said, I find it really hard to believe that they can't provide better specs and feature set for the cost. User-available memory of 3.5MB is incredibly low, especially with Python support. These could be really cool handheld computers if TI put more effort into their devices that already have a massive install base.
Currently, most of their popularity in my experience is "lock in" effect from teachers who are familiar with TI calculators and lab / curriculum materials that are specifically built around teaching through TI calculators. At this rate they're charging a lot and resting on their near monopoly status in education, which I'm sure is very profitable for TI.
There used to be a great app called WabbitEmu that emulated these devices on Android. I think they got a cease and desist but it was pretty neat to have back in the day
I learned to program on a TI-83 and later bought a TI-84+ with the cable that allowed me to transfer my apps and games between my device and other students devices. I have fond memories of hand typing into a TI-83 BASIC for hours using code I found online at the local library - games like Drug Wars and other similar choose this or that console based games. I would later get a USB cable that allowed me to download apps and games onto my device. Good times. Decades later and I'm still programming.
If only they would build a Ti-84 RPN, I would snap it up in a heartbeat
Apparently, you can use it in RPN mode!
There's the NumWorks which is very similar for a more reasonable price, that also run Python
Numworks is so much better. According to kids that have access to Ti and HP graphing calculators.
The hardware and software design similarities between this Evo and Numworks is a strong endorsement.
And you can tell that TI pretty clearly copied the NumWorks calculator.
Loved it in university and still use it on my phone:
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.eanema.graph89/
What calculators are you guys using that aren't in academia anymore and don't need the "exam approved" limitations?
Or are we all just using software on our computers now.
That would be sad.
(I've had a Casio fx-991EX on my desk for a few years, that replaced a broken Casio fx-991ES. Though designed for academia, its operation is burned into my brain at this point.)
I collect HP calculators: I have an HP 12C, an HP 15C Collector's Edition (there are a few of them left still for sale), an HP 32Sii, and an HP 48SX. I sometimes use them, but whenever I'm in front of a computer (which is almost all the time), I find myself using the Unix dc command.
Handheld calculators are nice, but outside of exam settings, I could use a smartphone or a computer, though calculators are nice when I want to work distraction-free through something that requires performing calculations. I believe this is why HP largely exited the calculator market: HP's target market was professionals, and cheap computers and smartphones killed the calculator market for them, similar to how electronic calculators killed the slide rule. Texas Instruments, however, is still in the calculator business, largely due to their successful courting of American middle and high schools, as well as ETS and other testing agencies, beginning in the 1990s. I don't know the situation in Japan regarding calculator usage, but I see Casio scientific and graphing calculators proudly displayed at electronics stores such as Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera.
I use emu48 on my phone emulating the HP-50g, which was almost exactly the same size as the phone so my muscle memory somewhat carries over (minus the tactile feedback of a real keyboard). I still have the physical calculator on my desk at home, with no batteries in it so it's only usable within reach of its USB cable.
Anything that goes beyond what that calculator's UI can reasonably handle is going to end up in a Jupyter notebook or something like that.
Similarly, I still have my HP-42s but I usually use Free42[0] on my phone and tablet. They also have it for desktops. It's great if you like RPN calculators. Or if anyone wants to learn about them, you can use that program and follow along with the original manual(s)[1]. It's nice to be able to handle the order of operations without parentheses.
[0] https://thomasokken.com/free42/ I should send them a donation.
[1] https://literature.hpcalc.org/community/hp42s-om-en.pdf followed by https://literature.hpcalc.org/community/hp42s-prog-en.pdf
> What calculators are you guys using that aren't in academia anymore and don't need the "exam approved" limitations?
I still have my TI-85, but I essentially haven't used it since I left college. For 99% of what I need, I use either Python, or what's built into Firefox (e.g. unit conversion), or DDG. For that last 1% (e.g. full CAS functionality), I tend to grab whatever web-based non-AI tool is handy.
Web based AI tools are remarkably helpful these days since they no longer try to do math themselves and instead write python to do it.
I use a TI nspire CX CAS.
honestly, I think it makes no sense to spend more than 30$ on a calculator if it can't do symbolic math.
The way you input things like division, integrals, matrix, etc. on newer calculators like the nspire is far superior than the older calculators (eg. ti-84, ti-89, etc.). They look like how you write them on a blackboard instead of relying on purely parentheses or "," and ";" to separate parameters. It's like going from Excel to Mathcad
I used to keep my old TI-82 (or was it -84?) from high school and a simpler sturdy solar-powered calculator near my desk, but I realized I always just used either my computer (IRB in the terminal usually) or Apple's calculator app on my phone and never ever touched my physical calculators. So they've now been put in storage.
The most common way for me to do basic arithmetic is by opening up a Python shell and using it as a calculator. This is what I typically do when I go through my finances every few months and calculate prices for things.
I still use my TI-89 from high school, but I'm interested to find if there are any open hardware/firmware calculator projects with basic engineering tools and a CAS.
Ti89 emulator on my android. Muscle memory from high school and college use is strong.
Honestly, most of the time whatever the newest variant of the TI-30 is ends up being plenty (and what I have at my desk).
If only kids of today loved this more than their phones.
156MHz and 3,5MB user memory... Why do I feel like that is a joke these days.. I think some ESP32s are faster and have more memory, but not sure if they are fully comparable...
I have no idea how on earth a scientific calculator costs almost as much as a cheap android phone. Do they use oled and snapdragon soc these days? Back in my school days a 20$ Casio seems more than enough.
How is the battery life? Rechargeable sure is nice, but the older models lasted forever on 4 AAAs (at least my TI-83). That's one aspect that would justify the low processing power for today's standards for portable computing devices.
It runs Python!
National exams will be wild for the kids capable of programming or vibe coding.
With a 156MHz processor and 3.5 megabytes of user-available memory the kids will even learn how to optimize their code!
"Built to be a reliable learning tool, not a distraction"
They clearly haven't met a classroom of high school kids. Then again... I didn't have access to the internet in my pocket when I was in high school so....
Interesting that this doesn't seem to include a computer algebra system like the Nspire CAS. Wonder if it's a testing environment compliance thing?
Absolutely is
You will have to pry my TI-89 from my cold dead hands. I wish they still made it
Hand reaches over and I lovingly pat the HP-67 sitting on my desk.
And those goddamn displays still have the pixel density of a Tamagotchi.
But can it play BlockDude?
Nice to see the hardware move forward. I still wish calculators were more open, or at least less locked into school-age pricing.
Genuine question, who uses these in practice? In my experience, calculators beyond the basic were always banned in high school and college, cause everyone's so afraid people might store something into them, and afterwards it's just matlab and python. It's not like laptops aren't a thing that everyone has on hand.
Electronics engineer here. I use my HP Prime G2 daily in the lab for basic things as well as quickly calculating complicated stuff, since you can pretty much program it to do whatever you want.
You might say why not use Python or Matlab?! It‘s true that you don‘t need a small handheld device to do engineering calculations where there is a ton of other much stronger and free options out there. But the thing is, a calculator is a pure dedication to one thing. You turn it on, you do your calculation, get the answer and move on. It gets out of your way. Plus it is a better feeling to type stuff using the dedicated buttons in a calculator than using a keyboard.
IIRC You don’t use them in the dumb kids class much, you use them a fair amount in the sort of smart class, and you don’t use them much in the actually smart class.
These have been standard equipment (that you buy, or the school loans out) in middle-class US high school math since the 90's (and gone basically unchanged since then). The math books even have content tailored to particular models so that you'll have to buy them instead of alternatives from other vendors.
Those are permitted in schools and even exams in the US, for example. That’s also why they’re often so limited, to make the exam cartels happy.
You may have gone to a poor high school and college. I saw plenty of calculator use in high school and college a long time ago.
Poor? In what sense? I graduated a few years ago (in Europe) and I think I could’ve gone through my entire education without owning one. Math, for me, went from nice numbers to ugly numbers that you had to do by hand (because that was the point), then to just letters and squiggles.
At no point was there a need to work with hard numbers or to learn to work with a physical calculator (I haven’t seen one in the wild in years).
Sure calculators were allowed in some cases, the "scientific" kind, not the graphing kind.
But yes I would agree. So much time spent making sure people don't learn to use the tools they'll always have on hand. Programming exams on paper and that kind of inane bullshit.
is any of this really necessary now that we have LLMs ?
ever been to school?
Distraction free tools like this calculator, is increasingly important to help keeping focus.
What's the "online calculator license" ?
"Online calculator included (four-year subscription) •($80 value)"
Apparently just a TI-84 Evo emulator(?) that you can run in a browser for $20/year:
https://education.ti.com/en/products/calculators/graphing-ca...
My guess is that they are trying to encourage people not to use the various clones and unofficial emulators available for their calculators.
75” 4k OLED screens would have been unobtainable when I first used a TI.
10yrs ago they would have been 4 to 5 figures.
Now they are what? A couple hundred?
How in the world is a TI graphing calculator still $160? These 30yr old calculator chips apparently hold their value like gold…
It’s got a 3x faster processor brah
Good point, my understanding of a cubic function in 02 was totally stunted by the processor speed…
Biggest ripoff in academics.
There should be a cheap open source calculators for schools and exams. It’s ridiculous that TI is still charging this.
The biggest ripoffs were the textbooks. Especially the textbooks written by the teachers, themselves, who forced you to buy them.
nostalgia
The race to run custom code on these is on :D
Is there any information on exactly what kind of processor is inside this thing? Since running python I'm thinking it's actually a low end mobile processor.
Looking at the price of this and other calculators, I wonder if there's a market for "dumb calculators" analogous to dumb terminals: a device with the calculator form factor, keyboard, and display, but where the actual computation happens on a paired computer/phone or a cloud endpoint over WiFi/Bluetooth.
The cost of these devices isn't the computation, and if anything more connectivity would probably make these more expensive and harder to use (many "smart" devices in classrooms have networking issues and if even one of them can't connect, it hurts the ability to run a lesson). I think standalone computation abilities are pretty important, and connectivity can be a downside for preventing cheating in standardized exams etc.
It's a shame that maths in American schools is equated with calculation. All you need to be a mathematician is a calculator!
It has Python? That's pretty cool.
It doesn’t have a qwerty keyboard. That would be such a pain to type on.
For some reason qwerty keyboard calculators are banned in tests.
I think those were aimed at different market segments. And that would be engineers, professionals and working academics that is not students.
Generally limitations in education on what was allowed led to more limited feature sets. Where as full feature set that could be upsold with qwerty keyboard was aimed for different users.