I've had the Ti-86 for a year now. I convinced my mom to buy me one because, "My friend, Eric, says it helped him out alot last year and I'll be needing one in a few years anyway." Those reasons were valid, but the real reason I wanted one was because I knew you could play games, like Tetris and Pong, on it.

This calculator is perfect for the high-school student. It does or helps with almost everything you need to do in high-school math and if the calculator itself can't help you can download a program from the internet that will help. The program library for the Ti-86 is quite big. I have on my calculator right now: eight games, eight math programs, the periodic table of the elements, and some notes and formulas I stored into the memory. There is even a program that lets you hear very short, low-quality WAVs through a pair of headphones connected to the I/O port. There is about 128k of memory to store programs and such. The Ti-86 is also durable and has a long battery life.

The Ti-86 also has just the right amount of power. Many teachers don't allow you to uses any higher models because they do too much. You also can't use higher models such as the Ti-89 or Ti-92 on college admission tests such as the SAT or ACT.

It will take some time to learn how to learn how to use it well. It took me about a month to get most of the features down but I am above average. Most people I know that have one just use it for the graphing and arithmetic without using or finding many of the other features like the equation solver or conversion tools. You should read the instruction manual and carry it around with you for a few weeks in school to get yourself acquainted with the more advanced features. But I don't think anyone knows what all the functions do.

If you're in college or need a calculator for work you may want to spring for one of the more advanced calculators, like the Ti-89, but if you're in high-school there is no better calculator out there.


For archives and reviews of programs for all Ti calculators go to: http://www.ticalc.org/

Recommended: Yes

Purchase Price: 89