TI 36X Pro vs Casio 991EX

With the rising number of engineering students and professional that may include you who are currently looking for a scientific calculator. There are so many options available in the market like TI 36X pro vs Casio 991EX to pick. Both of them are regular engineering calculators with many similar capabilities, so go check our article below to see which item will be the best option or give you the kind of features you preferred and available in the price range you are willing to spend.

In this article, we are going to give you information about:

• Do you need a Scientific Calculator
• What are TI 36X Pro and Casio 991EX
• What TI 36X Pro and Casio 991EX Look Like
• What TI 36X Pro and Casio 991EX can offer to you
• TI 36X Pro vs Casio 991EX

Scientific Calculator
Calculator seems to be a necessity for many students in their learning process whether to calculate problems when we are learning science, engineering and mathematics. The main purpose of these type of calculator beside for calculating those aforementioned problems is to replace the need for student to use slide rules in modern days as opposed in traditional applications that are used to use by both students and professionals. For those in higher education and need a more powerful unit, graphing calculators will be able to provide more capabilities such as TI 84 Plus and TI Nspire CX.

Different from graphing calculators with more complex functions and capabilities as well as feature-rich, scientific calculators are commonly simpler and looks like the one we can see in many offices because they are initially used to calculate simpler numbers as well.

As you may already know, scientific calculators are widely used when users need a quick access to certain mathematical functions such as those that will need looking up into the mathematical tables like trigonometric functions or logarithms. We also can use these calculators in some parts of physics, chemistry and astronomy, so it is not unusual that students will almost always have scientific calculators as long as it is allowed by the teachers from junior high school until college.

Unlike the also popular graphing calculators which are commonly very expensive for a school tool, scientific ones are not and most of them are very affordable that we can wouldn’t mind to change to a new model every year if there will be another features-rich calculators. However, just like many things, the capability or additional feature in each one of them may differ from brand and model which is why it is good to look up about their information first before committing to one unit.

About TI 36X Pro
There are so many brands out there offering many models that you can pick based on your preference and when talking about calculator in general, especially when you are living in the US, the name Texas Instruments will most likely be mentioned by anyone when we ask what the best calculators in the current market are. We are sure that most of you already use one of the brand’s unit before because how well-known their name is supported by a huge number of other users, making their brand the choice of many other people as well.

They are coming with their own specialties depend on the model, but if you are looking for scientific ones, one of the best option will be the TI 36X Pro. This model is what you will need to check if you need the one with higher level math and science functionality or where graphing is not permitted.

This model is based on the TI 36 series which is the upgrade or the current highest level of TI 30 by the brand and all of the calculators in the line are scientific as well. The original model was released back then in 1986 as another variants or option for those who are interested in TI 35 Plus with solar cells. When they first available, besides added with solar cells, there are several additions featured on the new model to increase the usefulness of TI 36 calculator.

Those additional features are base like decimal, hexadecimal, octal and binary calculations; complex values; and statistics into the already available such as trigonometric functions, exponents, logarithm, and intelligent order of operations that also found in other Texas Instruments’ scientific calculators.

TI 36X Pro Design
Looking at TI 36X Pro we will know that this one is released recently because of the modern design that separates it from many other calculators in the line. This handheld calculator is quite thin but not as thin as Nspire CX with an upgrade display that incorporates the multi-line dot matrix display which is already used by TI 30 and 34 MultiView series. The pad layout is still the same like many other TI calculators while the button is very comfortable to press.

TI 36X Pro Features

This unit is even can reach maximum expression length to 80 characters which is actually reduced while registers were increased to 8 for memory and 1 for formulas as well as can store up to 3 list of formulas in which limited up to 42 characters or items.

TI 36X Pro is coming with three solvers for polynomial, numeric equations and system of linear equations. The unit thus, should be able to perform operations on derivatives for calculus and definite integrals while also include numeric derivatives and integral for real functions.

This kind of capability is good when dealing with things like square roots, fractions, pi and many more. Additionally, it also have one and two variable statistics including result in trend line analysis as well as linear regression. Besides those benefits we can get from TI 36X Pro, the calculator also have some issues which is on the programming errors because as we know, this model is the upgrade version of the shortly taken off the market after release 30X Pro Multiview because of the same reason.

However, it is also unfortunate that the unit somehow also coming with some issues such as the display involved mixed numbers that use “π” incorrectly. There are also several other bugs on the unit which making it quite annoying when used and it also depends on the unit we are purchasing, there is still no information whether they officially fixed this problem but as products that users bought dated as 2013, the bugs still exist on these scientific calculator.

About Casio 991EX
It is always good to have another option and just like everything else, when looking for a calculator, we need to compare them on the benefit side because even though most of them are capable of helping students and professional in their calculation, not all of them are coming with the exact same capabilities and if you love the TI 36X Pro, then you may want to check its other rival, the Casio 991EX because according to many people including teachers, this one is among the best we can get out there.

The Casio 991EX is marketed or aimed for students and carefully featured to make sure those who need the calculator can depend on it while still being within the parameters of public examination guidelines which means this is the unit students from year 7 to 13 further mathematics need. Depend on what kind of calculators they need, if they are not allowed to use graphing calculator, then this one will be a great option.

Another good thing is if you don’t have much to spend on graphing calculator but currently in math classes from Pre-Algebra to Algebra 2, you may able to use this calculator to help you in class, but still, if a graphing calculator is what you need, then we don’t highly recommend this for you.

Casio 991EX Design
Looking at Casio 991EX at the first time, we thought that this one is very modern and doesn’t look like a calculator that has been long in the market at all. The screen specifically, is in high resolution as a scientific calculator while the buttons layout itself is very easy to use and get used to as well. One thing that we love the most from its display is we can get the answers we need in the same format like we see in textbook.

Casio 991EX Features
Let’s talk about the benefit we can get from this calculator. As it has been mentioned above, this one will be able to view your answer in the exact form and this is one of our favorite capabilities in the unit, this mean that if we type an expression with fractions or radicals or the mix of both in the display, we won’t just get the decimal approximation but we will get the exact answer in a simplest form.

The benefit of having this capability is then we don’t have to remember how to simplify radicals o reduce fraction by hand manually. Additionally, many people seems to still use the calculator even after moving passed forward to graphing calculator because not all of them can simplify radicals like Casio 991EX. The next feature we would like to talk is the aforementioned apps which we can access from the Menu button from almost any screen and it will show us the 12 different useful apps.

The first app called “calculate” and this is used to simplifying and evaluating expression; there is an app to do calculation with complex numbers; Base-n app for calculating decimal, binary, hexadecimal and octal values; the next is for data analysis but only if you need to do the less complex one because if you plan to do a lot, then the calculator will be insufficient; there is a spreadsheet app here and it is quite unusual to have but can be useful.

We can enter values for columns A through E and rows 1 to 45 followed by simple functions to specific cells in the spreadsheet; the next is table which probably will be used more than other apps in the unit because when we enter two functions at once, we can see them on the same table. Next is what Casio 991EX brag the most because as it can give you an additional capabilities to graph even though not in the calculator itself.

This capability is in table app and here we can ask the calculator to generate a QR code after we enter the function onto the table, so when we scan the barcode with smartphone, the phone will take us to Casio’s website and showed us the graph. However, as it has been mentioned earlier, this function is indeed helpful but still, we can’t use it on tests.

Comparison
Now, let’s compare TI 36X Pro with Casio 991EX. In speed and display quality, the Casio 991EX is like an upgraded calculator from what we can get in TI 36X Pro, but there is one issue that made Casio a bit annoying which is the inability to remember what you are doing when the screen goes to sleep while the features like app is definitely richer in 991EX.

TI 36X Pro vs Casio 991EX

Conclusion
All in all, both of them are comparable scientific calculators and equally have minus as well as highly beneficial features. However, we prefer Casio 991EX better because of better display, faster operation, and a set of useful apps added with the ability to help generating graph though can’t be displayed on the unit itself.