Casio fx-CG500 Graphing Calculator – Touchscreen with Stylus | CAS Functionality, Drag-and-Drop | Ideal for Advanced Math, Calculus & Engineering

Its pretty good. I only need it for classes where phones are still a nono in the big 25. Sucks, but this calculator has made quick work of my problems so that i may understand them faster and uncover my mistakes. Its speed, copy paste works awesome. Im still learning how to use it. Battery life has been nice, no issues, outlives my t84 twice and still full charger. Screen is awesome. Would be awesome if certain keyboard keys triggered the alternative options that seems to be exclusive to the touch keyboard. Oh well, win some lose some

Excellent calculator. I'm well into my career and reviewing my college math and bringing those hard won skills up to date. Specifically calculus, linear algebra, and statistics. To add some fun, I decided to try out all the latest graphing calculators from Ti Casio and hp. So far, this one is coming out on top. Works great, easy to use. Though the pencil is a little awkward, it's functions are straight forward and accessible and it has a nice big screen. I like being able to replace the batteries instead of having to recharge it. And it has lots and lots of functionality and helpful built in memory cues. Somebody put a lot of love into making this machine and it really shows. With that said, I don't like not being able to make the font smaller so I can fit more stuff on the screen. Maybe that's a software thing they'll fix some day. Who knows. And, the use manual is kind of quirky having the examples cross referenced in a separate PDF (though, to be fair, they're really good). But, these are pretty minor complaints compared to the utility and ease of use. Great calculator Casio. Way to go.

Good Calculator. One of the better devices. Four AAA batteries required. Received in good condition from the US to India.

Casio, Texas Instrument, and HP each have a CAS (Computer Algebra System) graphing calculator model. I've used all three in calculus classes. My experience is as follows: 1) HP Prime - algorithms produced wrong results in calc II class. Notified HP and sold the calculator. 2) TI Nspire CX II CAS - I will admit up front that I am not a fan of the document-centric features of the Nspire series. The latest model is faster but eats up battery charge twice as fast, and has 10mb less user memory available. 3) Casio fx-CG500 - radically different user interface using a much larger screen. However, what really matters is the functionality. If you are taking calculus classes or above, you pretty much need a CAS graphing calculator. Here, the Casio fx-CG500 is a clear winner. It has more capability and features for higher math, and the user interface allows for much faster user input and all around ease of use. If you are a TI-Nspire fan, go to YouTube and search on Charlie Watson. You'll find a complete "course" on using the Casio (he uses the classpad 400 which is the same). His videos are just of couple of minutes each, and you will see for yourself in the first dozen or so videos just how much easier it is to do math on the Casio than the TI. If you keep watching, you also will see what the Casio can do that TI and HP cannot. Just so you know - I teach elementary and intermediate algebra at my local community college. I've used TI calculators since the very early 70's when they were red LEDs and used a 9-volt battery. I still have a TI-83 Plus Silver Edition, TI-84 Plus CE, TI-92 Plus, TI-Voyage 200, TI-89 Titanium, and TI-Nspire CX II CAS. As you can see, I am not a TI Nay-sayer, but in side by side comparisons with competing Casio models, Casio keeps coming out on top. I am not so sure that is surprising, since TI seems to have changed its focus from the end user to the education administrative policy makers.

Disclaimer: I am by no means a wiz at math and I can totally appreciate that in the right/gifted hands, this calculator could be played like a violin by a virtuoso and do miraculous stuff. :) That said, for mere mortals looking to get a graphing calculator, if you're interested in the fx-CG500, I'd suggest either waiting for a sale, getting it used, or if possible, holding out for the next generation. After all, this device has been out for many years now, and as far as I can tell, Casio has made nary a tweak to the firmware. I didn't investigate, but a new one be just around the corner. What don't I like? So far, several little things. First, yes, that big screen is sweet, but it sacrifices a comfortable physical button pad. I initially though the cursor button on my unit was defective, but I've found that you really have to hit it right to navigate with it, especially when pushing in the "down" direction. It's sluggish, and it's easy to hit the Variable keys directly below it. Second, I know this probably isn't a big deal to a lot of people, but entering a mixed number on this thing is way clunkier than it needs to be! Heck, most budget high school calculators now have a dedicated mixed number template button. The fx-CG500 has several tabs worth of soft keyboard shortcuts/templates for just about any kind of numeric expression you need to enter, and yeah, there's a fraction soft key template, but NO mixed number template. And if you figure you could simply enter a whole number followed immediately by a fraction, you'd be wrong! This was driving me nuts until I watched a YouTube video by Charlie Watson on "simple calculations" on the the Casio ClassPad II (which is basically the same device as the CG500). Eureka! Which brings me to the next point. There's a 300+ page downloadable manual for this device on Casio's website, but Casio's own support videos are pretty poorly produced. There's good information there, but the lady narrating the videos sounds like she was walking back and forth from where the microphone was, and sometimes what she's saying is indecipherable. Again, thank goodness for Charlie Watson (whoever he is!). If you do get this calculator, you'll most likely find his videos (on the ClassPad II) a godsend. Lastly, as far as I can tell, while you CAN rotate the screen (for many but not all operations), you CAN'T resize the text/font size for the data line displays on this device, which is a real shame, 'cos I'd love to be able to bump up the display size on equations! I'm keeping mine because it is outstanding in many ways, and I did get it at a great price, but had I paid typical retail on this, it would probably be going back... :)

Casio deserves a lot of credit for creating a truly innovative product that isn't constrained by outdated design conventions. Many manufacturers are still making calculators with interfaces that are decades old and don't take advantage of modern touchscreen technology. Casio started with a blank slate and designed something optimized for mathematics. The result is a machine that is a joy to use. I've owned many calculators in my life from the 1980s to the present, including classics like the HP 41-CX and HP 50G as well as various TI, Sharp and Casio scientific and engineering models. This is the first time I've used a calculator that did not require me to translate between the calculator's proprietary notation and what you would find in a math textbook or scientific paper. This is a wonderful thing! This machine is a very powerful tool for exploring and learning mathematics and, of course, calculating. The interface for entering equations and making graphs is intuitive and efficient. The display is large enough to view functions side-by-side with their graphs. The touch screen and stylus are precise and sensitive. You can buy calculators with faster processors but, in many cases, the time you might gain in calculation speed you will lose while trying to navigate their frustrating, quirky interfaces. If you love math, you owe it to yourself to get one of these. Well done Casio!

When I first bought this calculator I wasn't sure I'd like it. I typically like having at least the most common functions available on real keys. But after using it awhile it's grown on me. The interface is, IMO, very neatly designed. I discovered that I can have a button at the top of the screen that's always there that will open the financial application with just one touch instead of having to go through 2-4 menus as with other calculators. The split screen feature is nice, allowing me to open an app for a quick computation while still having my main calculation page showing in the other half of the window. It has a pretty large set of functions and I occasionally surprised at some of the things they added in there. However, while using the stylus to click things makes using the UI more precise, I do worry about the prospect of possibly losing the stylus. The stylus is stored in the calculator and seems to stay put really well so far; thus my main worry is that I might forget at some point to put it back in and then end up leaving it behind. I would not be disappointed to have this as my only calculator. I also have a HP Prime and a TI Nspire and I like the Prime a bit better. I has more real function keys, which I like, in the classic HP button style and I use my finger to select things in the UI instead of a stylus. It also has a rich set of features, but some seem to be a bit more buried to find than on the Casio. It also has a RPN mode, which I'd prefer if it was implemented a little better. The TI inspire I'd rank third. The touch pad to move the cursor around is sometimes frustrating to use and takes me more time to simply select the thing I want. If it had a touch screen as good as either the Prime or Casio it'd be a better contender. TI has designed its calculator with a heavy emphasis in the education market, which it dominates. It has a special press to test mode that allows instructors to lock out features that the instructor does not want the student to access in class or while taking a test, and has a blinking light that makes it easy for the instructor to see that each student has the press to test enabled. Students in that environment may have to use the Nspire as a result. It's not bad really, just not as nice as the Prime or the Casio, IMO.

The UI design of this calculator was just the best fit for me. I could not find a better calculator that fits what I wanted as the UI. To list some: 1) Pressing Shift with On works as Off. 2) The previous calculations remain printed on the screen, so as you continue doing different calculations, you can go back and see what you have done, or check if your input was right. 3) If you want to input something close to your previous input, you can go back with the cursor, recycle and modify it. 4) You can set variables with the name of your like and save them in folders. 5) The Exp key to input the index part of a scientific notation is located within the ten-key (actually twelve-key) block, allowing very natural input. 6) There is a ^ key for calculating power, placed on a par with the four arithmetic operators. 7) Parentheses keys are also included among the basic keys. ... These are just perfect. A significant drawback is that it takes a few seconds to turn On or Off, and the calculation is not as fast as the fastest HP model. That is a bit annoying, but given all the supreme UI interface, I could not think of choosing any other calculator than this. Very satisfied. I like the machine very much.