TI-Nspire CX II CAS Calculator Review

A review of Texas Instrument's flagship graphing calculator.

In the video I talk mostly about the CX II's hardware and document-centricity. I show an example of a document about the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus as well as an exploration of the Collatz conjecture. I also compare the CX II briefly to the HP Prime.

[Mythologos]

I never learned math so I'm calculator dependent, I love accumulating and using them. This is one of my favorite channels!

[hdofu]

I'm taken aback they actually finally got it back into an attractive form factor, no offense to fans of the earlier Inspires but I always thought they looked like a portable label printer, the concept of changing keypads so it can turn into a ti 84 plus also seemed silly, what ACT really needs to do is come up with some way to get it so one model satisfies the ACT restrictions without making the student choose between 2 fairly expensive calculators (a restricted calculator that only serves the purpose of satisfying one testing companies extreme paronoia and inability to use the technology to restrict it in the ways classrooms can). The Document system is odd, yet somehow feels simillar to the older catalog based model of the ti 85 with a few specialized independent screens for the inputs... it further seems to borrow from the 92 /89 with use of function style commands which you put on the line to output to pretty print, overall fascinating calc

[martinhawrylkiewicz]

I still have my old TI 83 Plus from HS when I took AP Calc...and it's still great to use.

[Celeron_]

Older versions of the Ti-Nspire had a completely different keypad that lacked the touchpad, dubbed the "Clickpad". The mouse cursor was disabled unless the app or function required it, then the arrow keys would operate like a trackpoint on a laptop, similar to a ThinkPad or Dell Latitude. I wish they kept that design and just updated the rest of the keypad. movement was fully variable depending on where you pressed on the direction key.

[jaytc]

There is plenty of information out there about TI’s lobbying to make their calculators mandatory in math courses and standardized tests. When I was going through tech school in the Air Force, we had to use a TI-30. Overall, it did what it was supposed to do. But later, as a more seasoned adult, when I saw TI calculators showing up in textbooks, I instantly thought, “Hey, wait a minute. TI is doing some slimy stuff here.” They basically made it mandatory for kids to buy their products even if there were better alternatives available.

[trumpisgod]

If you’re allowed only 1 calc for calculus class for a 5 question exam and you’re given 30 minutes to hour to solve the 5 problems is this the best calc to get you the answers. From my understanding this is pretty much capable of doing all the work for you?

[Yakubi]

To you guys complaining about the keyboard, keep in mind Texas Instruments tries to make sure all their calculators can be used in all if not most exams. The keyboard is garbage because exams have a rule against computers (not calculators), and having a QWERTY keyboard is much more akin to that of a computer. It's a really dumb rule and very outdated imo yeah, but that's kind of the gist

[aickoyvesschumann]

Thank for the review, it helped me not to waste money on this. The key layout is absolutely terrible. The amount of keys one has to press for a simple calculation is not acceptable. I acknowledge the capability of the device, but calculating a simple sin must simply not require pressing multiple keys or any menu navigation. Put the menus on top of a traditional calculator and you have a great device. By the time students have found the correct submenu the class has moved on!

[Q-Bits]

ah i had the old n-spire cas in school almost 10 years ago. funny times with playing mario and pokemon on that calculator. why does this new one have these ugly stripes on the side though? Old one looked so much better, this looks cheap. Which one do you consider the best calculator on the market right now?

[Thunder_Light]

Excellent and interesting review and history, thanks a lot 👍

[EdouardTavinor]

i have a TI-Nspire CX and it's a very mixed bag. some of the negatives are:
I really don't get on with the keyboard
i updated the firmware a year ago before i knew that ndless exists, and no one has yet found a jailbreak for the new firmware.
Programming in lua is a hassle: you write the program on your computer and then transfer it to the calculator. If you're not using a proprietary operating system this requires ingenuity.
Lua programs run in another event loop to the normal calculator. this means that you can't call lua programs from the calculator and you can't share data with them or get the return values from them (or at least, if you can, i haven't found out how).
In general i find the lua documentation to be rather curt and i haven't found many programming examples.
I've found it really difficult to find a lot of functionality.

in general i compare it fairly negatively to the casio 7000g i had at school. yes, it can do a lot more but i find the functionality difficult to find and sometimes doesn't interoperate. i found it much easier to do things like plot a graph on the casio 7000g. on the ti-nspire cx i could not work out how to modify a graph once it had been drawn.

btw. i've just ordered a swissmicros DM42 :) hopefully i'll be happier with that.

[gabrielcamarinha]

Hey, nice video!
One question. What's the difference between
the texas cas professor version and the
normal one (student)?

[BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Strange you don't have a video on ti-92. That thing was a beast...

[ryanexx]

Do I need this for AP stats and AP physics or could I just use a ti 84

[FrancescoM-]

do you recommend this or the HP prime for purely math?

[abigailpenelope]

any calculator recommendations for AP BC?

[edwardbutka]

I recently purchased this calculator for my nephew to take the SAT test. Do you also provide tutor instruction or can you provide the contact information for a good tutor for this calculator? Thank you so much in advance.

[dadsview]

How does it compare to the original nspire cx cas? Speed, storage, etc?

[traditionalsalmon]

I loved the review! To be honest, I'm probably just gonna stick to an rpn calculator and wolfram alpha for rn. Saves me money and typing stress. Idk, it seems cool that it has all those built in features though. I'm just a simpleton ig lol

[informationtransmitter]

I have owned a NSpire CX CAS II for a year. I will be going to the HP Prime G2 as the NSpire has a poor build quality, the keyboard is terrible, and the document centric software is fustrating. I am an engineer and spent years using the ti-89 before switching to the NSpire. Seems like a huge step backwards for Texas Instruments. :(