Not as bad as I would've expected. Also, apparently it includes a very simple Python environment? https://education.ti.com/en/product-resources/eguides/eguide...
TI has always gouged their captive market. It is just increasingly ridiculous when those students also have smartphones.
FWIW I think these graphing calculators are quite good for 2026 students! It is nice to have a computer which is actually comprehensible. They just need to be more like $50. $160 is just evil.
My lightbulb has more calculating power than that.
However.
The entire year, your textbooks, your teacher, your in-class practice, was walking you through the specific commands you need to select to actually do the things, like graphing and solving.
If little Timmy is unable to read the manual about how to do math he doesn't yet know with whatever his specific calculator is, he is at a severe disadvantage, and the teacher basically cannot help him.
A friend in high school bucked the trend and used a casio in our TI based education, and did just fine for himself, but he was apparently a smart kid.
You previously acknowledged it's a "very captive market" that you "would've expected Texas Instruments to try gouging" :) "$160 is what the very captive market will bear until the state-sanctioned gouging backfires" is a less compelling argument.
"Shrug" is kind of gross. Seems like you're being reflexively cynical.
Edit: to be clear the problem here is really local school boards being antidemocratic and unaccountable, not TI being greedy.
There are plenty of things in the world for me to spend my limited supply of outrage on. Calculator pricing doesn't make it into the top 100.
I will buy one anyway because calculators remain a modest luxury that I want to indulge.
EDIT: oops, conflated with HP-35, from a decade earlier. 10c was programmable. HP-35 was not.