Casio Graph 90+E (Amazon Listing)

This is a fantastic calculator. Does the job well and the price is superb.You can select the language you wish to use. We use the English language.

I picked one of these up a few weeks ago, but it took me a little bit of research to make up my mind that it was right for me. I had been in the market for a Casio fx-CG50, and in comparison the Graph 90+E seems to be available for a much better price - like nearly £35 less (including shipping, at the time of writing). Given that the Graph 90+E is functionally almost identical to the fx-CG50, this seems to be almost too good to be true, right?Read on.It depends on your circumstances.In terms of function, you can set up the Graph 90+E to display all of its menus and messages in English. This is easy - you just set the message language to English and the menu language to English when you first power up the calculator from new - or you can do it from the System menu. From that point on, the calculator interface is in English - easy! It'll do ALL of the cool stuff that you can do on the fx-CG50. The only other (slightly) non-English thing you might notice are the inverse trigonometric (Arcsin, Arccos, and Arctan) functions printed above the sin, cos, and tan keys on the keyboard. On the fx-CG50 these are printed sin-1, cos-1, and tan-1; on the Graph 90+E they are printed as Asn, Acs, and Atn. However, they display on the identiaclly screens of both calculators in the usual (conventional) way as sin-1, cos-1, tan-1.The paler background of the keyboard of the Graph 90+E does make the printed orange text of the "SHIFT" functions perhaps a little harder to read than on the black casing of the fx-CG50 in some lights, but I've not found it a big issue. The Graph 90+E also has a continental "7" (with a cross-stroke) on the keyboad - but it displays on the screen as a "normal" "7".The only "baked in" specifically French feature on the Graph 90+E I've found is in the QR codes generated by some of the commands in the "catalog" function. These QR codes link to respective Casio web-pages that explain the particular functions if you scan them with a mobile phone or tablet. On the Graph 90+E, the web-pages linked to are in French - the keystrokes shown on the web-page are (obviously) international, but the explanation will be in French. The easy fix is to use your device's browser to translate, and the translation is good enough for this to be a non-issue, in my view. I mention it so that you can be aware of it.The Graph 90+E appears to have a different range of exam modes compared to the fx-CG50 - it appears to be more limited - the the IB (International Baccalaureate) and the French exam board, rather than the range of exam boards (including UK exam boards) supported on the fx-CG50. The Graph 90+E does also have flashing LED light next to the USB port so it can readily be seen to be in exam mode (for the benefit of French exam invigilators, no doubt). Again, I think these differences are "baked in" at the production stage. The method of taking both calculators out of exam mode is exactly the same.The use of this calculator in exams is about the only point where the fact that this is the French version might be a serious issue. If you took it along to your UK A-Level exams, my guess is that it would not be on the list of approved calculators that you can take into the exam room (I don't know for sure - the last exam I sat where I took my calculator with me was at university back in 1987), but I really don't think you'd want to take the chance. You would want to be 100% certain that your calculator was on the approved list.For me, I'm using this calculator for fun, for my own personal curosity, and to get my head around some of the A-Level maths that I did over 40 years ago, and to learn a bit about programming (both Casio basic and MicroPython) - and it's absolutely brilliant for that. For me, there is really no reason to spend the £35 extra for the English-version fx-CG50. Similarly, if you will be using this calculator as a professional tool where you work and need to do some complex calculations, then it will serve you very well. However, and this is the big HOWEVER... if you intend to use it in an educational and exam context (particularly in the UK) then it may not be suitable for you because you probably won't be allowed to take it into exams.