At a first glance, this device looks quite unremarkable and generic. In fact, its body and key placement is identical to the older TI-30XS Multiview, except that it is black with aluminium operator keys. It costs about 10 dollars more too, which is more than worth it after you consider the borderline-excessive capabilities of this thing.
It turns out that this variant of an existing Texas Instruments model is in fact a massive upgrade that is intended to be used by both professional engineers and students. Like
the newer advanced scientific calculators, this one simplifies radicals, returns trigonometric operations in simplified radical form when possible, and effortlessly does the same with fractions. It also does things that were traditionally reserved for graphing calculators like Matrix operations (up to 3×3), polynomials, statistical analysis/distributions with lists (but not tests), and calculus. These features have often caused it to be classified as a graphing calculator in terms of what a student is allowed to use on a math exam. Regardless, it is still invaluable for science classes and professional use for several reasons.
I find this calculator so valuable outside of pure math because it retains so many practical graphing calculator functions but at only a fraction of the cost and complexity. Its extensive list of pre-set physics/chemistry constants, combined with its ability to do unit conversions, makes it feel like more of an instrument of science than simply a number cruncher. For example, the imperial/metric length conversion factor of 3.28 is automatically stored in the firmware and can convert in either direction with two ...
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