Texas Instruments BA II Plus Professional Financial Calculator
by Texas Instruments
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List Price: Our Price: $42.99 You Save: $7.00 (14%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $30.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
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for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Texas Instruments BA II Plus Professional Financial Calculator
Customer Review: Not worth the extra 10 bucks
Summary: 3 Stars
As a science educated researcher, I have always been accustom to scientific or graphing calculators. But my Finance class called for this puppy, and I willingly obliged. I have used the calculator for about a month now, and do find the financial shortcuts pretty great but I have three complaints about the unit overall. 1) There is no Pi button!! But I guess this is forgivable since you don't need Pi for most financial calculations. 2) The buttons are difficult and annoying to press. They lack that nice feel that my TI 83+ gave me, but more than that they are difficult to press. By no means are they impossible to press but you have to really strike each key in order to press the button. 3) No hard cover. The cover that comes with the unit is an imitation leather. I would rather a hard plastic case, that slides on the back of the calculator. If I could do it all over again I would have purchased the Texas Instruments BA II Plus Financial Calculator (the non professional edition). It can do all of the calculations the professional can, and it comes with a hard case, and easy to press buttons. Save your money and don't buy the professional edition, even my professor said he bought it just because it was the newest, "And the school paid for it."Customer Review: TI BAII Plus Professional
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best calculator I have owned, bar none. I have always used TI calculators, with the exception of a Casio scientific graphing calculator and an HP business model. I purchased this item in May 2006 for $32.88 (that's what Amazon was charging at the time), and have carried it into every finance and economics exam. It has never let me down. Key strokes are easily registered, albeit a little stiff and the machine is fast, taking no more than a second or two for FV and PV calculations. If you are into finance, real estate, economics, this is the machine for you; it can even handle some statistics.
Pros:
Fast
Keys provide the right amount of feedback
Keys are slanted
Expansive memory
CFA certified
Intuitive design
Very useful manual
Nice heft to it, does not feel like it's cheap plastic
Cons:
Crappy case
Summary
This is a well designed product that will provide years of service. I believe that the $13 increase in price on Amazon in the past 11 months since I have owned mine reflects the value of this machine! Spend a little extra on this from the BAII. You will not be disappointed with the additional abilities and design of this calculator.
Customer Review: Really solid calculator; satisfied with the purchase
Summary: 5 Stars
I'd been using the TI-83 in my finance course and was just finding the TI-83 too cumbersome (thought not impossible) when calculating cash flows, NPV, IRR, amortization, and the like. One of my buddies that is a pretty sophisticated financial analyst purchased this and recommended I get it as well. After having used it for a bit I'm really happy with the purchase and can't believe I'd been using the TI-83 for longer than I needed to.
Calculations are intuitive or at least easily learned. You can see the display at any angle. The build feels solid enough, and is a lot less bulky then the picture would lead one to believe. I'm happy that the battery can be easily changed as I'd seen that some other financial calculators were troublesome. The leather(ish) case is fine, and the manual, also available in pdf, is helpful. I've been going through some tutorials on [...] and feel like I'm getting the feel for this quickly.
The only problem I've had so far has been well documented by other reviewers. The keys sometimes don't enter properly when you go fast. I figure that it will only be a matter of time until I'm in sync with the speed I should use with this calculator so I'll over look it.
Highly recommended
Customer Review: Still Second Best
Summary: 3 Stars
I have had an HP-12C for a long, long time. When I recently wanted an extra calculator to supplement my HP-12C I decided to try something different. I had already picked up an HP-10B over the years (which I also loved), but I read on-line that the quality of that calculator had gone downhill, so I decided to save some money in comparison to the HP-12C and try an Texas Instruments BAII Plus. Bad idea. While it had good weight and a solid feel, I found I was constantly pressing numbers without them being entered unless I really concentrated (not that my particular calculator was defective, just the way the keys operate). Since accurate data entry is an absolute precondition to everything else, that flaw in the BAII Plus was fatal as far as I was concerned. Also, the interface on common functions was enough different from the HP-12C to require an substantial adjustment. So I went back to the HP-12C, this time the Platinum edition. The Platimum edition HP12-C had far improved speed from my old 12C, a backspace key and the ability to (if I were inclined) to change to algebraic number entry -- a different feel from old 12C but still solid keys and no data entry errors. So the BAII has been retired.
Customer Review: Frustrating
Summary: 2 Stars
After using the HP 12c (and the 12c 25th Anniv edition), this calculator was insanely frustrating to use. The keys didn't always respond, even with the "click" which requires me to keep a vigilant eye on the display when inputting numbers (this is most common in repeating digits, such as 10,000 which will frequently drop a zero or two). Also, the lack of an RPN option is a glaring flaw considering the prevalence of the 12c over the past 25 years.
On the plus side, the one-key delete is a huge plus, though I suppose it's a requirement given the spotty input. And it does its job - and fast - it's about 50% faster than the 12c 25th Anniv edition (and about 15 times faster than the '81 model), but the difference between modern calculators is fairly negligible, looking at the difference of a split second for difficult interest calculations or such.
Other than that, it does everything that a 12c or other financial calculator can, with one exception. It can do trig and a handful of other non-financial functions. Maybe there's a reason for this, but I don't see it.
Unfortunately, the 12c is not allowed in SOA exams. If they were, you can bet I'd sell this one ASAP.