Texas Instruments BA II Plus Financial Calculator

Was recently at an auto dealership helping my girlfriend buy a car and saved lots of $ and frustration by having this little jewel along. The finance mgr started quoting some strange monthly pmts and I was able to sit him down with the BA II and show him that his numbers made no sense based on our agreed purchase price. After a few rounds of this he gave up the tricks and started dealing straight. Yes I could have probably done the same thing with the 12c but in a situation with real $ at stake I reverted to thinking in Algebraic io RPN: Its very easy to get confused with several salespeople pressuring you to sign on the dotted line.

While the 12C will always be a classic compared to the BA I appreciate the BAs straightforward design.

Cons: Construction is a little weak, reverts to 2 decimal places after power is turned off

Pros: Excellent manual, menus for cash flow calcs, no need to learn RPN, faster than 12c


Great Value for the Price!!   March 17, 2004
23 out of 24 found this review helpful

This BA II Plus is my third BA calculator in 14 years and my second BA II Plus. They are an awsome value for the money, costing only a third of the HP 12C and can be used with little training right away by anyone, which is absolutely NOT the case for the HP financial calcualtors using reverse polish input (it has that name for a reason and certainly feels "reverse" to me too). The BA II Plus is definitly more intuitive and easier to learn for the general layman user than the reverse polish input HP calculators. The BA II is loaded with functions to calculate anything a personal household or some small business analyst will want to do.

The reason I cannot give this calculator a "5" is the fact that TI has cheapened it up quite a bit over time. My first BA in 1990 was by far the best built and lasted the longest. I exchanged it for the BA II in 1997 only because the letters wore off the buttons. The calculator in all aspects has become more flimsy with each new revision. So with intensive daily use, figure it will last about two to four years. After that time the buttons start to malfunction and it is time for a new one. Even my previous BA II Plus from 1997 was better in quality than this one. It had a tilted display for better readability, rubber stoppers on the bottom for working one-handed on slick surfaces and a small battery door. All of these features of the older model are not installed in this newest model. This newest version is also again lighter than the old one. I would pay subsantially more if TI would make this calculator in a better (metal!) housing with better buttons and more longevity, but price on these items obviously sells first and foremost in our society. Another issue I have with all BA II Plus calculators (the older one too) is the fact that the display is apparently supposed to be read from a 45 degree angle lookin from the bottom of the calculator. If you look straight down on the display, the numbers almost vanish. The contrast of the LCD display is in general not the best. It's annoying and I have never figured out why TI designed it that way.

Don't be worried about this "quality issue" too much since with occasional use this calculator will last forever. Don't be distracted by some of the reveiwers here giving the BA II Plus a bad review. It looks to me they have been individuals using the HP 12C or similar reverse polish input HP calculators for a long time and can't hack the TI BA II Plus. The HP financial series and the TI BA II are very different beasts from a user interface and people used to the HP will not (or never) warm up to the BA II Plus easily. Besides, I learned for our company's finance dept. (all HP users) that HP 12C users are quite the snobs about their "classic" financial calculators.

The BA II Plus calculator is definitly worth every penny it costs and will do more than the average consumer will need to do with it.

It is especially recommended for personal households or individuals who want to calculate loans, mortgages, interst spendings and savings annuities for personal financial planning. Even if you have never held a financial calculator in your hands before, you will calculate amortizations, loans, savings annuities, interest cost and any other so called "Time-Value" calculation easily and within minutes. The manual is easy to read and well organized for the layman to get going right away.

Bottom line: this calculator is geared towards the student and personal household user. There is no other financial calculator anywhere on the market today that will provide you with this amount of functionality and utility for this low price. PERIOD.


Good value and performance   January 21, 2002
21 out of 22 found this review helpful

I highly recommend this calculator. It is very easy to use, packed with features, and FAST. The only negative is that is lightweight, and doesn't have the sticky keys that the HPs have. HP diehards will say that it looks "cheap." The battery compartment is a joke, and you need to be careful when changing batteries on this one. Very poor engineering, you might say, but then if you go to Office Depot, most HPs don't even work because the battery door is broke or gone... So in a way, TI really wanted people to not mess with the battery too much... Now the fact is that nobody is using the 12C anymore, and the TI BAII Plus is now the standard among real estate and business students. Furthermore, TI is the only game in town, since HP has stopped all calculator development and is preparing to exit the calculator business!


Great for the money. Comparison with HP17BII+   November 9, 2003
20 out of 20 found this review helpful

It's hard for me to give anything 5 stars, but for about $30 this calculator is such a great bargain. If it was more expensive, I would give it 4 stars. The other calculator I tried was the HP17BII+. My HP stopped working after 3 weeks. I will probably stick with the BAII+, but I did like the HP's ability to store functions.

Pros
- Lots of built-in functions. Seems like as many or more built-in financial functions than the HP17BII+.
- Better statistics functionality than the HP17BII+. Statistics is very important for business classes. The HP suprisingly lacks some basic functions, like population standard deviation.
- Has some trig functions. It can actually be a decent scientific calculator. Overall it's more versatile than any of the HP business calculators.
- Better build quality than the new HP's.
- Can be used for many standardized tests. You will not be accused of storing functions because you can't.

Cons
- In my opinion, not as user-friendly as the more menu-driven HP17BII+. The BAII+ usually requires more keystrokes and is not as intuitive. However, it's not so difficult that a good student can't learn it.
- Cannot store functions. Of course, if it did it would cost more and could be banned from certain tests.
- If you're one of the few out there that like RPN, it is not an option. The new HP's let you choose between Algebraic and RPN.

One thing that suprised me about the HP was how much their quality has gone down. They used to be the best built calculators. Now they are the worst. Look at the reviews of the new HP's. It's true! If HP doesn't get their act together, I think they will be out of the calculator market.
It would be nice if TI had a business calculator that could store user-defined functions like the HP17BII+ and have a more menu driven interface. The solver function would justify the price of the HP17BII+ if only the build quality was up to par. The quality of the newest BAII+ is not quite as good as the older ones, but it is much better than the quality of the new HP's.


A superb financial calculator   September 13, 2001
william (Dallas, TX)
17 out of 18 found this review helpful

I am currently a second-year MBA student, and I have owned a BAII Plus for about six years. I use my calculator almost every day. I can state that it is easy to use (the HP 12C is much less intuitive) and contains all the features you need in a financial calculator. The time value of money functions are very well laid out and simple, as are the cash flow, NPV, and IRR worksheets. There is an easy to use function for pricing bonds, and many other handy features. Although financial calculators are limited in their usefullness (serious financial modeling is done with spreadsheets), this calculator can handle any finance problem that's appropriate for a calculator.