Sharp EL-506WBBK Scientific Calculator

• Advanced Direct Algebraic Logic Series scientific calculator
• Ideal for high school students, college students, and professionals
• 440 functions including differential and integral calculus
• Large 12-digit, 2-line display, multi-line playback
• Convenient solar and battery power supplies

nice:
this scientific calculator is top of the line. it has solar and battery power (very convenient feature). this things does everything you should expect from a scientific calculator and is at good value price. if you think you need more, get a graphing calculator.

Great for non-symbolics:
My favorite calculator ever - I broke one (dropped it) and had to get another. Has every function I ever want with a minimum of keystrokes, and logically laid out. The ability to save formulas to memory is key. Twin power (battery/solar) means never having to worry about batteries, ever. The only thing I miss from my old, old Sharp (the predecessor to this model) is the auto-loading of variables for the formulas. No graphing here, and the calculus, matrix, and internal physical constants are pretty awkward to remember how to use. But I'm not looking for that - just high-end calculation.

Great Calculator:
I bought this scientific calculator for my husband. He's a teacher at a technical college and his old calculator (actually mine from when I studied physics - made straight "A's" by the way!) began to malfunction. I don't use the Sharp EL-506WBBK but I chose it purely based on the previous Amazon reviews - thanks everyone! I read many reviews for various calculators and finally decided that this was the one I felt would be best. My husband was very pleased when I gave it to him (a birthday present) and since I have not heard him complain about it I am assuming he is still pleased with it. If it gives him the least bit of grief I will hear about it! I don't think he will be using even half of the functions so it was probably way overkill for him as far as a calculator goes, but I tend to like scientific things and was searching for the best I could find under $20.00. And I knew he would not be needing a graphing function so that made my choice easier. It's nice that it is solar powered as well as battery powered.

Excellent calculator, especially for the price:
This is an excellent calculator, particularly for engineering functions that require polar-rectangular conversions, where it solidly trounces even the TI-89 Titanium for convenience. Its two-line display is not as nice as the TI's larger screen, of course, but works really well, allowing you to enter complex calculations and edit them as needed, even remembering your previous calculations. The calculator has solar cell, so power is not an issue. With its plastic cover, it has been very durable over the last year and a half of being tossed into a backpack and used in all sorts of locations and situations. And at around $15 it's truly a bargain. It was recommended to the class by an engineering professor and I've used it college classes ever since; I bought another for my teen-ager to use in high-school math classes. The only thing close to a downside is that the "manual" consists of a fold-out poster of small-print explanations for various functions -- not comprehensive and occasionally incomprehensible. However, most of the calculator's functions are quite straight-forward, so this is a fairly trivial issue. I highly recommend this little gem of a calculator. What it does, it does well, and gives minimal fuss during the process.

Add good functionality, delete some of handy ones:
This is a marvelous instrument. However, having gotten used to the model one step down (the EL -531W), I sure do miss the direct square root and direct Pi button. Now I have to use the 2nd function key to access these continuously use functions. Surely they could have sacrificed direct access to DRG or hyp instead.