TI nSpire CX Review

The TI nSpire series calculators are by far some of the best out on the market right now. With a sleek design, and a beautiful color display, the difference between them and the competition is very apparent. Also, with a new design comes a great new feature; a rechargable battery.

The screen is 320x240 pixels, and displays in 125dpi; 16 bit color. Not bad at all considering the screen is sitting in a calculator. As for the battery, its a very long life unit produced by TI. The CPU in the device runs at an impressive 150MHz ARM processor, and for system memory you get 64MB of ram, and an additional 100MB for storage.  On the top side of the device is a mini USB port to connect to the charger or a pc, and another port for attachments to the calculator. The device also comes with emulator software for a pc that allows you to better manage files, as well as load games, other applications and software onto your device.

In my time with the CX, it's been an overall great experience. Out of the box you will need to do some setting up such as setting the mode to degree instead of radians, and other very simple things. After you are done configuring the calculator to your liking, you will have a fully functioning device.

The operating system on the device is very simple to learn and use, but it will take some getting used to. Instead of hardware buttons for most functions, you instead get a menu button and expanding menus. Functions such as nCr has instead been moved under a 'probability' menu. It's easy to use, but you'll find yourself looking for buttons that aren't really there.

As for external build quality, it's pretty hard to beat Texas Instruments. The device feels solid, and has some weight to it. The buttons don't give a very satisfying click with good feedback unfortunately, but this is due to the new slim design. Most users would prefer a sleek device with mediocre buttons over a chunky device with great buttons anyways. The directional d-pad is located in a great area, and it's touch sensitivity is a great feature that allows navigating and editing long equations or browsing menus a breeze. The plastic of the touch pad is slick and doesn't attract finger prints at all, but I would have preferred a less sensitive setting, or to be abel to adjust the sensitivity of the cursor. The plastic protecting the screen isn't the best, and is my only real nag about the device. On the second day with the CX I managed to scratch the screen by accidental putting the plastic cover on the wrong way. I was surprised that the soft plastic case could cause such a big scratch going from the top of the device to the middle of the screen. Oh well, accidents happen, but I would recommend buying a screen cover for your calculator as soon as you get it.

Overall, I found the TI nSpire CX to be a great calculator for it's price, and to be a surprisingly capable device.