Differences among TI-83s and TI-84s

Summary: Texas Instruments’ popular line of TI-83 and TI-84 calculators includes eight models, of which four are listed on TI’s Web site. What do you get by choosing one model over another?

Quick Overview of Current Models

The TI-84 Plus CE Python is listed on TI’s Web site, announced for “Fall 2021”. I don’t have anything to say about it on this page.

From Black&White TI-84s to Color TI-84s

The TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition (TI84+CSE for short) was released in 2013. It adds color and higher screen resolution to the TI-84 Plus. Part of that screen resolution goes for a two-line bar at the top: the first row shows selected mode settings and battery charge; the second row sometimes shows context-sensitive help. All the math and statistical functions and graphs carry forward from the black&white TI-84 Plus, and there are some enhancements.

The TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition is no longer available from Texas Instruments, though googling for it (as of November 2021) quickly turns up retailers that still have it for sale. Though the TI-84 Plus CE (next paragraph) is a better buy, I’m keeping the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition on this page. Those things are built like tanks, and you may be able to get one used and save some money.

The TI-84 Plus CE (TI84+CE for short), introduced in 2015, is about half the thickness of all the earlier TI-83s and TI-84s, a bit more rectangular, and 30% lighter (201 g versus 287 g). It has almost exactly the same menus as the TI84+CSE, but a new processor and memory-mapped LCD make it much faster — up to 300% faster, according to the review at Cemetech.net. It’s got more than six times the RAM of the TI84+CSE, which means greater capacity for programs and data.

I can’t see any reason to buy a new TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition. Despite lacking the “Silver” moniker, the TI-84 Plus CE is faster and cheaper than the TI84+CSE, and it has much more capacity too.

See also: TLM’s Buyers guide to the TI-84 Plus family

Documentation for Color TI-84s

Since I last updated this page, Texas Instrments has released the TI-84 Plus CE Reference Guide. It’s less than half the size of the older Guidebooks, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you use manuals, if you use them at all.

Although the TI84+CSE is no longer sold by Texas Instruments, the Guidebook is still available, and it’s more than double the size of the Guidebook for the TI-84 Plus CE. Since the two models have nearly identical functions, you may want to download the larger guidebook to get more information.

Where Is Color Used?

• The [Y=] menu sets colors for function graphs.
• The [2nd Y= makes stat plot] screen lets you set colors for statistical graphs.
• [DRAW] menu commands let you set color for the grid, the axes, and the border. You can also turn the picture background on or off.
• The [2nd zoom makes format] screen lets you specify grid color.

Menu Changes from Black&White TI-84s

TI84+CSE	TI84+CE	Feature
	✔	Keys and labels are in lower case, a nice change that improves readability in my opinion.
✔	✔	Catalog Help is available on all menus: press [+] for help on the selected menu item.
✔	✔	[MODE] screen: For function plots, CONNECTED has become THICK, DOT has become DOT-THICK, and THIN and DOT-THIN are new. (It’s possible to set those other modes for individual equations in black&white TI-84s, on the [Y=] screen.)
✔		[MODE] screen: select fractional answers. (The CSE has only automatic and decimal, but you can always press [math] [1] [enter] to convert an answer to a fraction.)
✔		[MODE] screen: go to graph format screen. This is a useless feature in my opinion, since [2nd zoom makes format] works on every TI-83/84 model.
✔	✔	[2nd ZOOM makes FORMAT] screen: grid lines. The black&white models have only GridOn and GridOff; the color models give you a three-way choice of GridOff, GridDot (equivalent to the old GridOn), and GridLine. There’s also a new GridColor choice, with 15 options.
✔	✔	[2nd ZOOM makes FORMAT] screen: Detect Asymptotes does a much better job with some graphs. Compare these two graphs of (x−11)/[(x−7)(x+2)]. Detect Asymptotes definitely slows down the graphing, but it’s worth it to have accurate graphs.
✔	✔	The [MATH] menu has a new sub-menu, FRAC, that duplicates the last four items of the [MATH] NUM sub-menu.
✔	✔	[STAT] CALC menu: QuickPlot&Fit-EQ is new: drop points on a graph screen and do a regression on the fly.
✔	✔	The [WINDOW] screen lets you set TraceStep explicitly.
✔	✔	The [VARS] menu has a new sub-menu, COLOR.

Other Changes from Black&White TI-84s

• The screen dims after 90 seconds of inactivity, and the calculator turns off after about five minutes of inactivity. (Screen dimming is new because the older calculators didn’t have backlit screens.)
• A short description now follows most error messages.

From TI-83 to TI-84

The black&white TI-84 Plus and TI-84 Plus Silver Edition were released in 2004; there was no “original TI-84”.

TI upgraded the firmware on shipped models in 2010 and again in 2011, without changing the model names. If yours was manufactured before 2012, you can check the firmware version and download new firmware if necessary.

When I checked in November 2021, the black&white black&white TI-84 Plus was still being sold, but TI no longer has a page for the black&white TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition.

Besides color, what does a TI-84 Plus get you over a TI-83 Plus?

Display

Both the TI-84 Plus CE and the TI-84 Plus C Silver now come with these features:

• Added in 2.55MP: With Mathprint, fractions and many equations now show up in a more naturalistic way.
• Added in 2.55MP: Answers can be displayed always as fractions, always as decimals, or in “Auto”, where the calculator tries to match the form of the input.
• Added in 2.55MP: Fractions greater than 1 can be displayed in mixed form: 15/2 or 7_1/2.
• Results screens now have a title in reverse video. This can’t be controlled by [MODE], as far as I know.
• Screens written by programs now display DONE and then a blank line when the program exits, so effectively programs are now limited to six-line output. I don’t know of any fix for this annoying change.

You can control these features (except as indicated) by pressing [MODE] [▲].

Keyboard

The keyboards are identical in labeling, but the 84’s design is curved, and all keys except the numeric keypad are smaller.

Added in 2.55MP: On the home screen, you can just press [▲] repeatedly to recall past calculations. When you find the one you want, press [ENTER]. It’s pasted to the screen where you can edit it if you wish before pressing [ENTER] again to execute it. ([2nd ENTER makes ENTRY] still works.

Menus

The 84 has a clock, which you can view or set by pressing [MODE].

Added in 2.55MP: Four new “shortcut menus” claim to offer faster access to existing functions; press [ALPHA F1 makes FRAC], [ALPHA F2 makes FUNC], [ALPHA F3 makes MTRX], [ALPHA F4 makes YVAR]. Of these, [ALPHA F3 makes MTRX] really does seem to make it easier to enter matrices.

There are a few goodies for statistics students:

• Added in 2.55MP: Stat Wizards prompt you for arguments to the statistical functions in the [STAT] CALC menu, the [2nd VARS makes DISTR] menu, and possibly others I haven’t noticed. You can turn the wizards on or off by pressing [MODE] [▲] [▲].

• The [STAT] CALC menu has a new item, D:Manual-Fit.

• The [STAT] TESTS menu has two new entries, D:χ²GOF-Test and G:LinRegTInt. The 83 screen is shown at left and the 84 screen at right:

     

  However, χ²GOF-Test makes you compute the expected values on your own, so it’s not as useful as it could be. (See MATH200A Program part 6 for a downloadable program that does the whole job.)

• The [2nd VARS makes DISTR] menu has a new entry, 4:InvT, for finding inverse Student’s t. The 83’s selections 4–E become 5–F on the 84.

Catalog Functions

The following catalog functions are in the 84 but not the 83:

• χ²GOF-Test
• checkTmr
• ClockOff and ClockOn
• dayOfWk
• ExecLib
• getDate, getDtFmt, getDtStr, getTime, getTmFmt, getTmStr
• invT
• isClockOn
• LinRegTInt
• Manual-Fit
• OpenLib
• setDate, setDtFmt, setTime, setTmFmt
• startTmr
• timeCnv

The included Catalog Help application doesn’t describe these. Consult the pared-down TI84+CE Reference Guide.

TI-84 Plus versus TI-84 Plus Silver Edition

Functionally these are almost identical. I know of only these differences between the plain TI-84 Plus and the Silver Edition:

• The Polynomial Root Finder and Simultaneous Equation Solver application, PlySmlt2, isn’t preloaded on the plain TI-84 Plus, though you can download it from TI’s site. download it from TI’s site. The Pie Chart application isn’t preloaded on the plain TI-84 Plus, and I couldn’t find a download.
• The Silver Edition has 1.5 MB of flash ROM compared to the Plus’s 480 KB.
• The Silver Edition has swappable faceplates. (Whoop-de-do.)

Upgrading TI-84 Plus and Silver

The black&white TI-84 models go back to 2004, but some firmware upgrades added features:

• OS version 2.53MP, released in February 2010 according to Wikipedia, added MathPrint and some other features. See 83Plus:OS:OS 2.53MP Changes at WikiTI.
• OS version 2.55MP, released in January 2011 according to Wikipedia, added more new features. See “New in 2.55MP” many places in this article.
• There have been further OS upgrades, and as of November 2020 the latest firmware revision is 5.6. TI has posted very brief release notes, with a link to get the upgrade.

  If you program your TI-84 in C or in z80 Assembler, or if you use third-party programs written in those languages, you may want to think twice before upgrading the OS. Cemetech announced in May 2020 that OS release 5.5.1 for the French TI-83 Premium CE inhibits C and assembler programs from running, and also prevents you from reverting to an older OS version. A few days later, Cemetech reported that the same changes would apply in release 5.6 for the TI-84 Plus CE.

If you have a black&white TI-84, press [2nd + makes MEM] [1] to check the firmware version. If it’s older than 2.55MP, you can download new firmware from this page to get MathPrint and other features.

The TI-83 Models

The original TI-83 was released in 1996, the TI-83 Plus in 1999, and the TI-83 Plus Silver Edition in 2001, according to Wikipedia.

Keyboard differences are few. The TI-83 Plus replaced the original TI-83’s dedicated [MATRX] key with an [APPS] key, moving matrix functions to [2nd x-1 makes MATRX]. The finance functions from [2nd x-1 makes FINANCE] on the original TI-83 were moved to a FINANCE app. All the later TI-83/84 models have the same keyboard as the TI-83 Plus, though the shapes of the keys have changed.

Programming differs a bit between the original TI-83 on the one hand, and all other TI-83/84s on the other. The TI-83 uses 83P program files; the others can run 83P files but natively use 8XP files, which the original TI-83 cannot run. 8XP files added new features, such as letting programs display lower-case letters.

The original TI-83 and TI-83 Silver are no longer listed on TI’s Web site, but the TI-83 Plus is. I don’t see any reason to buy a new TI-83 Plus, because the TI-84 Plus is about the same price and has more speed, more memory, and more features. However, a used TI-83 Plus can be a good buy; just spend a little time to make sure that the character and graph displays are working correctly.

Confusingly, there is a TI-83 Premium CE calculator, released in 2015 as the French version of the TI-84 Plus CE.