TI-84 Plus CE Review
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Overview
Want to know what version of the TI-84 is right for you? Click <here> for an explanation of the differences.
The TI-84 Plus CE is the newest of Texas Instruments’ TI-84 calculator line. It has a very similar user interface to the other TI-84, and 83, calculators. These calculators have been around for a while but their technology is still great. Even though this calculator is using pretty old technology, and isn’t the most capable, it is still one of my favorite calculators.
The TI-84 will probably be pretty familiar to anyone who has been in the public school system sometime in the last 15 years. Variations of this calculator have been the most common calculators in schools across the U.S. for almost as long as they have been around. This calculator can provide you with all the basic graphing calculator functions and much more. The TI MATHPRINT makes entering long expressions easy. The graphing, and calculation systems are relatively easy to use. This calculator, or a variation of it, is most likely the calculator that your teacher will use to teach math.
Features and Capabilities
Usability
One of the main reasons that the TI-84 Plus CE is such a big success is that it is easy to use. Most calculators can do a lot of really useful things, but their features never get used because the user can never find them. The TI-84 keeps it very simple and has minimal confusing menus. This is especially true with the graphing interface. All of the important buttons are in a row at the top and you can easily toggle through doing things like entering equations and viewing the graph.
The screen has its downsides when it comes to the calculator’s speed, but I feel the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. The TI-84 Plus CE’s screen is 360 pixels wide and 240 pixels tall. This isn’t really HD quality (it’s a calculator) but it definitely gets the job done. You can fit a total of 10 lines of numbers down, and 26 characters across.
Color may seem like something that is unnecessary for a calculator, but it is super nice if you have multiple lines on the same graph. One of the more useless features that comes with a color screen is the ability to store and view pictures.
TI-84 Plus CE Screen
Classic TI-84/83 Screen
Apps and Features
The TI-84 Plus CE has all the functions of a graphing calculator that you would expect like graphing, tables, lists, and matrices. It also has a whole bunch of other apps that you may not have expected. There are a ton of different useful applications that your math teacher may neglect to tell you about. These can be found by pressing the [apps] button.
Once you’re there, you will find apps that can solve algebraic equations, graph conics, find roots and much more.
And of course, you will find lots of different modes to put your calculator in depending on what type of math you are doing. You can change from degrees to radians, or change the number of digits generated up to 9, or change whether or not you want to calculate real or nonreal numbers and more.
Graphing
Graphing a line is pretty easy to figure out how to do. Each line you graph will be in a different color, making the graph much easier to read.
Once you have graphed a line or lines, you can zoom in and out on the graph, change tick mark frequency, or calculate an intersect and much more. There is also, of course, a table function that you can either scroll through or jump to a specific X value on. The biggest drawback of graphing on this calculator is that it’s pretty slow to draw the lines. Creating graph above took around 20 seconds.
MATHPRINT
This is a feature that is on most TI calculators these days but it is a function that is still worth pointing out. MATHPRINT is the name for the calculator’s ability to print expressions as they may appear written out by hand or in a math textbook. This feature makes reading the expressions on the screen much easier to read and type in. The two screenshots below show an example of the difference. Note that these are the same two expressions the first one with is the classic mode and the second one is with MATHPRINT turned on.
Unfortunately, unlike a lot of other calculators today, the TI-84 Plus can’t simplify radicals. This is becoming a more and more common feature and it is somewhat disappointing that it isn’t seen on the TI-84 Plus CE. It can simplify some fractions but not by default and not if the fractions include any complex operations.
Programming
Our favorite feature on the TI-84 Plus CE and other TI-84/83 calculators is their ability to be programmed. You can create and use some pretty advanced programs directly from this calculator. You can use the programs easily at any time from the home screen. Programming on this device is much easier than it could be but if you don’t feel like learning how to program in TI-BASIC, feel free to use some of our programs by clicking <here>.
Processing Speed
Although the TI-84 Plus CE’s processor is the fastest of all TI-84’s, it may not always seem like it. This is because this calculator’s screen has many more pixels than most of the other TI-84 models (and it’s in color). So if you ask it to perform a task that requires internal computing it will be faster than other TI-84’s. But when you tell it to do a task that involves printing something on the screen (like graphing) it will be slower for those sorts of tasks. This isn’t too big of a deal. You’re still going to be able to get your line graphed in a matter of seconds. But for something like the SAT were every second counts it might make a different. It can be frustrating to watch your line slowly be dragged out across the screen in a situation like this.
Hardware
Power
The TI-84 Plus CE uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. This is a very nice feature because it means that you won’t have to spend any extra money on one-time-use batteries.
Build
Because the TI-84 Plus uses a rechargeable battery, TI was able to make it much slimmer. The TI-84 plus CE came out 11 years after the original TI-84 Plus but it was the first major redesign of the calculator. As you can see the TI-84 Plus CE has a much more sleek design compared to it’s predecessors.
Screen
I briefly touched on this subject in the graphing section of the review. The screen is the biggest difference between this the original TI-84 Plus and the TI-84 Plus CE. The hi-rez (for a calculator) 320 X 240 color screen is great for graphing, menus, and other places where a lot of information is displayed on the screen at once.
Conclusion
The TI-84 has been the industry standard for many years and for good reason. They’re easy to use and simply do their job. If you don’t need any super fancy features like a computer algebra system, something you might find on the TI-nspire CX CAS or on the HP Prime, this calculator is your best choice. It’s most common in schools but no matter what, if you are buying a graphing calculator, you really can’t go wrong with the newest TI-84 model: the TI-84 Plus CE.
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Usable On…
- PSAT*
- SAT*
- ACT*
- Math AP* Exams
- IB*
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