Texas Instruments TI-36X Pro Engineering/Scientific Calculator | 9.7 Inch | Black.

Im not sure if they allow this type of calculator for the ACT. But it works well altough there are a few things I cant figure out. It helps a lot and its simple to use once you figure out where everything is but for right now Ill keep struggling.

I bought this calculator for my upcoming FE Exam in October 2013. I have been using it for the past couple of months to get acquainted and to study. When I was in school I used the TI-89 Titanium religiously. Unfortunately thats not permitted on the FE exam so I chose this one. Upon using it I must say that for a non-graphic calculator its fantastic. The shortcut keys (for exponents, powers of 10, fractions, etc.) are a nice touch. The built in equation solver, polynomial equation solver, system of equation solver certainly shave a lot of time off of my calculations concerning static equilibrium, quadratic equations and circuits. This calculator also does Matrices, up to 3x3 and vectors in three dimensions. It even has popular constants (permittivity, Boltzmann, Ideal Gas, standard atm, etc) built in along with a whole conversion menu. On top of that it does numerical integration and numerical derivatives and plenty of other things Im probably not going to mention. I consider it to be more user friendly than the TI-89 Titanium because of the shortcut keys and nice interface. For example, to calculate a determinant on the TI-89 you must press 2nd, MATH then scroll to Matrix, then select Det( and press enter. Then you have to remember the syntax which is det([a1, a2, a3][b1, b2, b3][c1, c2, c3]) and finally press enter. On the Ti-36X Pro all you have to do is press 2nd, Matrix and scroll to edit and enter how many columns and rows you want in the specified matrix, press enter and then put in your values. Then once the values are saved you go back to the Matrix menu and select Determinant and put in the name of the matrix where you saved the information. Pretty slick for a smaller calculator. The four line display provides enough room to see what your doing and the text is fairly large which I like. With the bigger calculators you usually have to squint to see some numbers, especially in low-light situations. This calculator also features Mathprint. This means that fractions, integrals and most other mathematical notation shows up as its supposed to. However if you dont like this there is a feature to turn it off. This is especially useful for when youre calculating something like a parallel resistance circuit and you want to see that big fraction to make sure you didnt make a mistake. Of course no review is complete without listing the gripes. Theres not too many problems with this calculator however there are something that really bug me. The first one being that there is no option to toggle insert like the TI-89 has. Usually I find myself needed to edit an equation that I just entered. Therefore I have to press second, then insert and put whatever I needed into the equation. Not a big deal but can get annoying at times. Second, I dont like the chrome arithmetic buttons. At times I find myself hitting the subtract button when I wanted to do some addition. However I solved this problem by running a fine-tipped sharpie over the buttons and rubbing off the excess on the surface. Now the symbols have a black color in contrast with the chrome. Much easier to see and I suggest this method if anyone else has this problem. Third, you must press a button multiple times to get what you need. For example say I want to type a complex number (3+5i) on the screen. I press 3, +, 5 and then I have to press the pi, e, i key three times just to get the i symbol. Can be a bit annoying/frustrating and you might make a mistake if youve had way too much caffeine as I normally do. Although I suppose they had to do this to consolidate space in the design process so I can respect that. Just a little annoying but I guess it comes with the territory. This can add a bit of time to the learning curve if youre not used to these multipress buttons. Thats basically it. For a non-graphing calculator I give it a 9/10. Comparing budget calculators, Ive had the TI-30Xa and the Ti-30XIIS before and this one blows them out of the water obviously, hence the name TI-36X PRO. Ive never had a Casio calculator so I cant compare. With this many features and usability at the price of $17 or so its certainly an exemplary buy. A great budget engineering calculator and certainly the best to use on the FE exam in my opinion. Go with this one!

Best calc to use for FE if you are accustomed to TI brand calcs. I like it a lot, great value.

Broke after a short term of use

Have use it for math test, it have most of the things that you need for the exam, lucky this time for a good test score.

The overall calculator is amazing and its fast working but the buttons are small and a little hard to real so if you cant see close up buy something else other than that its a pretty decent calculator

I had an old TI-30X that I was using for a while. I recently picked up the TI-36x and its functions have been a gamechanger for my engineering classes.

Even though Im not a heavy user of calculators, I like em. Last count I had about 30 around the house. I especially like owning the best out there...just to play with. Weird, I know. Even though I own high end CAS models in TI and HP, these require opening the manual just to navigate around the keypad and menus. I dont want to fire up a tank when a jeep will do. My primary area of mathematical interest is in number theory. Scientific calcs generally fail miserable for this purpose. But, for the most part, graphing functionality is not that critical to me. I frequently work on problems involving prime numbers, so I like that the TI-36X Pro can factor numbers upto 1,000,000, find gcd and lcm, do modular arithmetic, has good functionality with arrays and lists, including generating them by specifying a range of arguments for a function. The screen also displays in textbook format. The Ti-36X Pro provides all this while being about half the volume and weight of a typical graphing calc, and a fraction of the cost. Another advantage is the solar panel and button cell that run it. The power consumption of the cpu in graphing calcs is beyond what solar power can reasonably provide, and some eat AAAs like Cheerios. Because the TI-36X Pro is chip based rather than separate cpu and operating system, it does not have a full programming language and cannot be customized with apps, backed up or interfaced with a computer - features that most graphing calcs now provide. But the TI36X Pro is my current favorite for number theory operations that would otherwise require a spreadsheet or a graphing calc. Its also a great scientific calc, with a full quiver of operations for calculus, statistics, vectors, matrices, solvers, base conversion, etc. CAS would be nice, but this is impractical to developed for a chip based calc. I suspect you wont find a calc with more functionality without going to an o/s and cpu bases unit. Ok, its wonderful. There is a minor display problem (documented on Wikipedia) which may concern some, but I regard it as trivial. Now for my one peeve about this calc and how I resolved it. The shiny chrome buttons are too hard to read unless angled just right. Maybe you have better eyes than mine. Maybe you would just memorize these few buttons. But I couldnt live with it. Not a problem, I love taking things apart. I found the TI-30XS to have the same outer shell, so I swapped the enter and 4 math operator buttons between them. Unfortunately, access to the buttons is was more difficult than expected. Instead of finding the usual mounting screws for a circuit board, this calc has the board mounted by moulded plastic fasteners. It was designed to be permanently assembled, making what should have been a simple modification quite challenging. I used a soldering iron, but wasnt convinced this was the best way. Im not suggesting or recommending you try this (and will not be responsible for your results)! It could easily be botched. I did each disassembly / reassembly step on the TI-30XS first to have that experience before doing the same on the Pro. Be prepared to sacrifice at least the TI-30SX. I managed to get both reassembled, but ended up with my sin button upside down on the Pro and have been reluctant to disassemble it again, because remelting the fasteners would deteriorate the plastic further. There is a high probability for not getting one or both of the circuit boards to remount. If this happens, you could try inserting a thin piece of closed cell foam between the board and case back to provide enough pressure to hold the board in place during key presses.

Satisfactory

This calculator was an upgrade from my son’s middle school one (TI-30xiis). I was looking for something that would carry him into advanced math and even college maths, without being a full-functioning expensive graphing calculator. So far, straight out of the package, I can already see that it was a good choice to upgrade. It has more functions, a user guide cheat sheet in the lid, rubberized grips both on the calculator and lid, a larger display screen, and more. The function buttons are NOT metallic as shown and mentioned in older reviews. See pics.