Cheap Texas Instruments TI-30X IIS 2-Line Scientific Calculator

I have one of these calculators because our high school chem teacher basically told us to get this one. I never use it anymore, as I have an HP 35S for that role and a TI-89, TI-84 Silver (had to get it for an algebra class), and HP-50G, which I use on tests or complicated problems where having as many stacks as I want and a very quick equation solver help out a lot.

The 30XIIS is for the most part a good value- it costs aboot $15 tops and it has two lines to look at, does logs and lns and the reverse, and basically does what you ask of a serious scientific calculator, so for that I give it 3 stars.

In terms of being a joy to use though, I guess all I can say is that I've long since spent $60 to have a calculator that does roughly the same things, at least for me, because of its weaknesses. For starters, RPN is better, end of story. So in my mind, algebraic input is a weakness. Another weakness is that unlike TI's graphing calculators, you have to painstakingly press '2nd' and then 'ans' to manipulate your current answer further. That may sound trivial, but it's very annoying when you are using it a lot.

But the thing that really makes me hate this calculator for everyday use is the lack of quality. The keys feel sloppy, but worse you can press the crap out of them and not have it register half the time. I had a TI-30XA maybe ten years ago, and it didn't have those kinds of problems.

Basically I wouldn't recommend this calculator. I would highly recommend the HP-35S, but for those who don't want to spend that much on a plain scientific calculator, I've noticed that almost all of the chinese physics grad students at my school use a casio two line scientific calculator that appears similar to the FX-300MS. If it's good enough for those guys, I think it's safe to say that it's a good product, or at least better than this thing.Get more detail about Texas Instruments TI-30X IIS 2-Line Scientific Calculator.