Casio Graphing Calculators

For over a decade, Texas Instruments has dominated the graphing calculator market. But TI is not a student's only choice. Casio provides an alternative that is appealing to a lot of students. Casio markets itself as a low cost and simple to use alternative to the other brands of calculators available today. This is true when held up against TI products. Casio graphing calculators are significantly cheaper, and their usability is such that you can pick them up and get started with almost no training

The top of the line calculator Casio makes for general use is the fx-9860GII. You could think of this calculator as a competitor to the Texas Instruments TI-84. In fact, it has more features than the TI-84, is cheaper, and you'll learn to use it in no time. It's noticeably better in graph mode, where you don't have to mess with the "left bound-right bound" decisions of the TI-84.

The fx-9860GII has a USB port for adding apps and upgrading the operating system. There is also a version with an SD cart port, making it one of the only graphing calculators today with SD card capabilities. Check out this Casio fx-9860GII review.

If you the 9860GII is too expensive for you, the fx-9750GII could be the way for you to go. At under $50, it is one of the cheapest graphing calculators available today. It has most, but not all,  of the features fx-9860 GII. It does not have "mathprint" formatting. That means you'll have to use the carrot symbol ("^") instead of having floating exponents, fractions will use the division symbol instead of the fraction bar, etc. It's still a very good calculator for the price; you'll just have to adjust to learning more calculator syntax on the fx-9750GII. 

The only touchpad graphing calculator on the market today is made by Casio, so if you're looking for a unique calculator for more than day-to-day class use, you should consider the Casio ClassPad 330. Just be aware that the ClassPad is banned from the ACT, SAT, and virtually every other standardized test. The ClassPad 330 uses a stylus input.

The newest member of the Casio graphing calculator family is the Casio Prizm. Scheduled for release in early 2011, it features a backlit display, over 50,000 colors, and the ability to do regression graphing right onto photographs that can be loaded onto the calculator. It is Casio's answer to the TI-Nspire. It is expected to cost about $130, right around the same cost as a TI-Nspire.