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Is the Casio FX-CG50 worth it for A-Level

Hi all,
Next year will be my A-level year and I'll be doing:
-Physics
-Biology
-Chemistry
-Psychology
in order to advance onto a degree in medicine. I've been going strong through GCSE maths/further maths/science with an FX-991ex which has lasted me well, but likely need replacing anyway due to it being pretty beat up after being owned by my older cousin and I. My birthday is over summer (Aug) anyway so I could ask for a new calculator as a gift, and I was wondering for the four subjects I'm doing is the FX-CG50 worth it? It's £100 roughly compared to £30ish for the new FX-991cw but I have the money to chip in due to work and saving and in all honestly it just looks really cool.

On the one hand, I see it more bought by maths/further maths students however it's a graphing calculator and all subjects have a lot of data analysis, plus half of the physics battle is basically applied algebra as I like to think of it. It'd be cool and make me happy (just from the style alone) but on the other hand if it offers no advantage at all besides looks then there's no point.

I know little to nothing about calculators so I'm just hoping a calculator nerd could help me out, explain what a scientific vs graphing calculator means, and if the CG50 can carry out normal scientific calculator functions etc. Thanks for any help :smile:

(edited 6 months ago)

Reply 1

Jam.123

Original post by Flòraidh

To be honest, not worth it as it's quite heavy, a bit trickier to use and for graphing you could just use Desmos instead. Slightly useful if you do Maths/FM A level in stuff like vectors compared to fx-991EX.

However, I'd also recommend against the fx-991CW compared to the fx-991EX. Despite being newly relased, QoL is a bit worse as buttons are a bit harder to press, stuff like integration has buttons harder to find and it has been overcomplicated in my opinion (in terms of finding functions). The random number feature also isn't too useful as you could just as easily use a random number table from the 1970s instead.

I feel like fx-991EX is the one to go for if you want a new calculator for those subjects.