For the fifth year in a row, Cemetech is excited to bring you Back to School guides, helping you figure out the best graphing calculator to get for school and how to use it. In 2011 and 2012, we published trios of guides, showing you which calculator to buy, how to get programs and games onto your calculator, and how to learn to program your calculator. In 2013 and 2014, we held your hand through Which Graphing Calculator Should I Buy?. This year, we once again present a guide to selecting from the baffling array of graphing calculators now available to high school and college students. We'll help you figure out which calculator is right for elementary school, high school, or college students, whether for yourself, your child, or your students.

This year, we went the democratic route and asked Cemetech's members to vote on the best calculators in three categories: (1) High School Math and Science; (2) CAS (College); (3) Programming. As you'll see in the discussion below, the brand-new TI-84 Plus CE released this year was a very popular contender, along with TI's TI-Nspire CX CAS and HP's HP Prime. All three of these calculators are accepted on standardized tests like the SAT, and of the three, only the TI-84 Plus CE is allowed on the ACT. Since they've been phased out, we're no longer recommending the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. Although the TI-Nspire CX is a fairly popular high school math and science calculator, we feel that the TI-84 Plus CE is a better, easier-to-use choice.

:: Math and Science: The brand-new TI-84 Plus CE is TI's newest entry to the 17-year-old TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus line, offering a bright color screen and a rechargeable battery. The interface is nearly identical to the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition released two years earlier, but the processor is faster, the RAM is larger, and the case is slimmer and lighter. The interface is also very similar to the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, but with a higher-resolution color screen that can fit more math and more detailed graphs. The color screen makes it easier to graph and explore multiple functions, and it introduces a few new statistics features (as detailed in Chapter 12 of "Using the TI-84 Plus"). Its greatest strengths lie in how it reinforces already-proven TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus features, since the underlying CPU and memory do not improve significantly on the older calculators. Cemetech and community leader ticalc.org's download statistics (along with the number of emails we've received asking why Doors CSE for the TI-84 Plus CE does exist yet) indicate that most students buying new calculators have welcomed the TI-84 Plus CE with open arms, and we recommend that you do too. The TI-84+CE has a 48MHz z80 processor, 154KB of user-accessible RAM, 3.0MB of user-accessible Flash memory, a 10-hour rechargeable battery, and a $129 price tag (plus, it comes in 8 fun colors). The quintessential calculator for high school (and some college) math and science, now updated with better specs, a high-resolution color screen, a slim, light case, and a rechargeable battery.

::CAS (College) The TI-Nspire CX CAS has a color screen equal in size to the TI-84 Plus CE's LCD, a new mouse-based interface, and support for Lua programs. The TI-Nspire's operating system is based around the idea of Documents, in which you type calculations, enter equations, and draw graphs. It has templates for linear, parabolic, circular, elliptical, and hyperbolic equations in which you can enter coefficients and graph the result. The OS has a "Scratchpad" for quick calculations, and like the TI-84 Plus series, variables are shared between the calculation and graph modes. It can perform all of the trig functions you need for math classes. You can name your own variables, and are thus not limited to the A-Z variables of the TI-84 Plus, and variables are "linked" with graphs so that when you change a variable, a graph that uses the variable will be updated as well. The TI-Nspire CX is between $130 and $150, depending on whether you get the CAS or non-CAS model. If you have an iPad, consider the TI-Nspire Apps for iPad, an App version of this calculator.The TI-Nspire CX CAS is physically identical to the non-CAS model, but allows students to perform symbolic computations, great for calculus, physics, and other advanced courses. With the CAS, you can integrate, differentiate, and simplify symbolic expressions. The TI-Nspire CX CAS has a Document-based interface, like its non-CAS sibling, and is generally available for about $10 to $20 more. Both the TI-Nspire CX and the TI-Nspire CX CAS are allowed on the SAT, while the non-CAS model is permitted on the ACT, but some teachers will not allow a CAS calculator to be used on school exams. A computer-like color screen calculator with a symbolic CAS. Good for some high school students and for college students.

The HP Prime is also a very powerful CAS calculator, albeit with a few growing pains. It offers a multitouch screen, a very powerful arbitrary graphing features, and CAS features similar to those on the TI-Nspire CX CAS. When it was first released, the Prime's OS was buggy, but has been improved in the interim. Certain promised hardware and software has yet to appear, but with a beautiful design, powerful hardware, and an extremely fast BASIC programming language, the HP Prime promises to continue to improve into a great tool for college students and professional engineers. A sleek, powerful, improving touch-screen calculator with a symbolic CAS for college students and professionals.

:: Programming: This year we are recommending the TI-84 Plus CE for programming as well as for high school math and science. In the past, we have recommended the Casio Prizm as our top pick for programming: it offers a BASIC language and can be programmed in C. However, C, ez80 ASM, and TI-BASIC are all now possible on the TI-84 Plus CE, with its 48MHz ez80 processor and 154KB of RAM. While we can't create Apps on the TI-84 Plus CE, and the current tools for the calculator are less complete than the tools for the Casio Prizm, we expect the community to continue rapidly creating new programs and toolchains for the TI-84 Plus CE.

The Final Verdict:
Now that the three major graphing calculator companeis all offer color-screen calculators, the quiet disappearance of the battery-conserving black-and-white graphing calculator seems inevitable to us here at Cemetech. We therefore are no longer recommending the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition and the TI-89 Titanium, as much as we respect those erstwhile models. Of course, if you already have a TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus (or Silver Edition) or a TI-89, you don't need to upgrade to a color calculator yet. If you need a new calculator, here's what you should consider:

• If you (or your child) are an elementary or high school student, your teachers may recommend a TI-84 Plus CE or a TI-Nspire CX, in which case you should follow their advice. Remember, all models mentioned herein are accepted on the SAT, and most on the ACT, so none win or lose big on that count. For high school students getting a new calculator, the TI-84 Plus CE is our favorite choice.
  
• If you're looking to take college classes in higher math, science, or engineering, the TI-Nspire CX CAS or the HP Prime are the calculator for you.
  
• If you're a programmer, or you want to encourage your student to be a programmer, the TI-84 Plus CE is the best options. It allow BASIC, ez80 ASM, and C programming. The HP Prime also has a very fast BASIC language, and the Casio Prizm was the original C-programmable calculator.

Good luck with the hectic rush that is Back to School, and I hope this guide helped make at least one decision easier. If you need help picking a calculator, getting games and educational programs for your calculator and onto the device, or you want to learn to program, just stop by Cemetech and chat with us. We're always happy to help.

Thanks for the comparison

I suggest that this be worded along the lines of "the Prime's OS was very buggy, but has been improved in the interim, though it's far from perfect yet".
It's a fact that the Prime's OS's reliability was indeed improved quite a bit since the first version, but another fact that there are still multiple significant known bugs
For instance, try dealing with large (megabyte-sized) HP PPL programs: this can trigger all kinds of variable incorrect behaviour during transfer, after transfer, during execution.

Thanks for pointing out the mistake in the quoted memory on the TI-84 Plus CE.

Thanks for that suggestion. I've actually been unable to load the latest OS versions onto my own HP Prime, as mentioned in another topic (I haven't yet tried the helpful suggestions people posted), so I'm afraid I remain slightly uneducated about the current stability of the Prime OS.

Might I suggest that the Nspire be recommend for aspiring programmers? Lua is a really easy language to learn, and runs much faster and is more functional in non-math programming than TI-Basic does on the TI-83+ series.

But... but no Doors CE!

That, and the ability to write in C/C++ with Ndless and pretty much any language with linux.

While that is possible (and I do that, myself), I'm fairly certain Ndless is not something KermM would endorse in a calculator review.

It isn't indeed, but not just for the reasons you think. One of the biggest selling points for programming on the TI-84 Plus family is that you can pull it out of the packaging, turn it on, and immediately start programming. If students don't have access to their own computer, can't spend a lot of time on a computer every day, don't have internet access, or can't install software on their/their school's computers, then programming that requires a computer is really not that helpful to them. As nice as Lua is, it requires a lot of reference, and you at least have to download an editor onto your calculator, if not write your programs on a computer. In addition, I don't feel that Lua is a good beginning language compared to TI-BASIC. I feel like Lua has too much Lua-specific syntax you need to learn. Of course, I'm still grateful that TI opened up some kind of programming on the calculator.

Not yet. I've been expending a lot of effort this summer pursuing avenues that will bring the best possible version of Doors C[S]E to the TI-84 Plus CE, while still fitting within what TI wants teachers to experience using their calculators. I'll post more information about this as soon as I'm able.

Yeah, for a beginning programmer, BASIC on the TI-84+ ((C)SE) is a much better starting point than the Nspire.

What no Casio on the list?

In the past, we've recommended the Casio Prizm for its C programmability, but now that the TI-84 Plus CE has C programmability as well, the Prizm has started to show its age. It definitely still has niche value for its CAS, fast processor, and so on, but Casio has shown little interest in supporting or promoting the Prizm or the Classpad fx-CP400, so we can't in all good faith recommend those as the best options.

*bump* Although our 2016 Back to School guide is coming soon, if you want to learn to put programs and games on your TI-84 Plus CE, we have updated our tutorial video with new information about LibLoad: Put Games on Your TI-84 Plus CE (2016 Update).