It’s interesting to see just how well-integrated modern calculators are, yet quite remarkable how well earlier calculators were packed into a small box.
I’m sure there are much simpler calculators out there now, given that the 2019 model shown was Casio branded and not quite at the budget end of the market.
At the very low end, there are the calculators sold in supermarkets during “Back to School” season. A couple of years ago, I picked up a small scientific calculator for 65¢. It had all the features you’d need for high school, and would likely have got me most of the way through my engineering degree. A family friend who is very particular about his numerics (and yet also impossibly parsimonious) picked one up and ran a barrage of tests on it, expecting to be disappointed. To his surprise and delight the sub-$1 calculator handled difficult corner cases in an exactly predictable way.
Sadly, high school curriculum has been entirely captured by TI, and their current range of calculators approved for school use are absurdly expensive. Some of them are still powered by Z80 or 68k equivalent processors but sell for well over $100.
I’m surprised by the range of prices for scientific calculators, though at the high end I expect (hope) that they provide some programming features. I don’t know to what extent the school calculator market has been captured by certain corporations in the UK. Here in Norway, I can see Casio calculators that are marked as “approved” for school use, whatever that actually means.
