I mean a laptop running windows can use the old power toy calculator or something like speed crunch to do graphing and I'm sure Linux has countless others, with Chromebooks probably having more for free online as well, I can only assume.

casio can do graphs on device for under $40

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Casio-FX-9750Glll-Graphing-Calcul...

The reason you can get used ti's for $30 is because that's how much they're actually worth.

You can get a catiga if you really want for like $17: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809054964211.html

... or you can go with TI for $160 ...

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My Casio FX-260 Solar IIs [1][2] (I recently bought 3 more of them) cost me $5 CAD a piece on clearance at Walmart. No battery, a modern solar panel that works great even in dimly lit rooms, and a modern SOC with all the standard scientific calculations, scientific notation, engineering notation, significant figures, and all the basic stats calculations too (sum, mean, pop stddev, sample stddev, permutations, combinations, factorials).

It’s my favourite calculator and the one I always reach for, despite having a bunch of more complicated 2-line calculators etc. It’s just so easy to use and very fast to do anything I’d want with a calculator. If I need graphing I’ll reach for Desmos. If I need algebra I’ll use Sage. I haven’t used Sage since my undergrad, however.

[1] https://www.casio.com/content/dam/casio/product-info/locales...

[2] https://www.casio.com/ca-en/scientific-calculators/product.F...

The basic $12 Casio scientific has stats like mean, standard deviation, regression... Stats is a huge field, we're talking highschool level. I think it probably covers it

HL or SL? (It's been a while for me, but I know I needed PDF/CDF functions... and I don't know about the optional modules/Further.)

There is no graphing problem that you'll be asked to solve before university that can't be plotted to a 'good enough for high school' level by hand in seconds.

Four data points is sufficient to give you a 'good enough' shape and position of a second-degree polynomial. Five or six for a third-degree one. (And you barely see them, and don't learn how to algebraically solve for their roots in high school anyways, because the cubic factoring formula is a pig.)

If you can't tell what a function's plotted shape is going to be at a glance, you haven't learned the material to the degree expected of an attentive child.

Ironically builtin smartphone calculators are really bad, and one of the best ones you can download might be Graph 89 (a TI-89 emulator).

Rant/Aside: Smartphones (or at least Android) are just generally really bad at being... smart, especially out of the box. No dictionary? No thesaurus? To say nothing of built-in encyclopedia (e.g. Wikipedia). Calculator worse than the $1 scientific ones? It's astounding how obvious it is that they're meant to dumb people down and just sell you crap when you look at the complete absence of basic functionality anyone from 50+ years ago might expect them to have.

>kids have smartphones, what's the point of a graphing calculator?

Many tests will not allow you to use a smartphone. My son couldn't even use the school issued chromebook on his PSAT, he had to get a loaner Windows laptop or use an approved hard calculator.

I'm with you. Some open source app is all they need.

However to answer your question: phone rules in classrooms vary enormously and the dedicated calculator is faster to interface when you're drilling problems in a homework setting

I finished highschool in the (gasp) 20th century so the modern classroom is certainly something I've had to learn