Sharp EL-738FB 10-Digit Financial Calculator

Come with a booklet of instruction, very usefull.

Awesome awesome calculator arrived early and no complaints

Other financial calculators do the same thing. The differences come down to the buttons, layout, and how easy it is to enter PMT/I/N/etc. entries for interest calculations and the added features.This Sharp Financial calculator is better than the weird RPN models on the market, better than the hard-to-push-those-buttons TIs, and, IMO, the best for the price vs. the HPs & TIs in this category.Owned the TI BA II Plus Pro, tried the HPs, gave up and bought this Sharp. Got all A's in business class, ranked #1, and never turned back =)1) Fat, low-pressure, high-visibility 10-key buttons. Your fingers fly over the Sharp keypad because the buttons require just a light press. Other calculators make you work hard at pressing their small number buttons, which only slows you down on homework and exams. BIG White on black keys are super-easy to read as well, and perfect for blind touch-typing! CANNOT stress how important BIG, easy-to-press buttons are!! Easily placed #1 finishing all my business exams with all A's due to this calculator! Being able to blind-type by feel alone is a huge benefit, too! Other, hard-to-press-the-smaller-button calculators will only put you behind.2) Easy to setup interest rate calculations. Some other calculators require you to press two keys to enter the basics (N/I/PV/PMT/FV) or require you to setup silly things like adjusting for the fact your payments are monthly/12 times a year, not just once a year by default. (Why on earth would you need to constantly adjust from 1 payment a year to 12 is beyond me. House, car, etc. on loan are all paid monthly, in general.)3) Lighter than the TI BA II Plus Pro.4) Bigger display of numbers than the TI BA II Plus Pro and HPs - thus easier to read.5) All the usual scientific calculator functions - thus, it's a business/financial/scientific calculator in one for the price. Take the Sharp from business to finance to physics and math without a problem. Got rid of my scientific calculator after buying this one.6) Fully editable 2nd line displays your entire function as entered thus far, and you can go back and adjust a number or add to it without reentering it all! You can easily re-do the same formula over and over with different key figures without retyping long formulas! No other business/scientific at this low price has this feature!7) Case is attached to the back and flips open! Never lose a case again =) Has a pocket to hold money, notes, business card, etc, too.

The calculator was better than I expected and very affordable price compared with other retail stores.

Note: I'm not a finance professional. I work in IT, but occasionally need to do some financial work here and there.The Sharp EL-738 is an excellent financial calculator (and I've tried out quite a few lately). In a nutshell, you could say this is like a TI BA II Plus, but without the horrible keyboard response and missed keystrokes. The keyboard is very light and responsive, yet still provides ample tactile feedback. The digit keys are large, and the 5 key has a raised bump in the center. Good two-key rollover means the Sharp won't miss keystrokes like the TI does if you're a fast typist.The Sharp, much like the TI, uses a "worksheet" system for many of the financial applications aside from simple TVMs and interest rate conversions. You use the up and down arrow keys to select a field, and either type a value and press ENT, or press COMP to compute that field based on the other fields. So for an amortization, you press AMRT to open that application, type values into the P1 and P2 fields to specify the range of periods to amortize, then scroll to the balance, interest, and principal fields to view the totals. This consistent interface makes it easy to get up to speed with other functions you don't use frequently, as they all behave mostly the same: enter values in the appropriate fields, view results in the remaining fields. The 12-character dot-matrix line on the LCD gives clear, unambiguous names of the fields. Calculation speed is good; a 360-period amortization takes about 2 seconds.In addition to the extensive financial features, they've managed to fit in a full set of scientific functions (trig, hyperbolics, logs, exponents, probability), as well as one- and two-variable statistics with 6 regression models, and the ability to enter, view, and correct up to 100 data points.So why do I say ALMOST perfect? There are a few minor nuisances to deal with:1. The display contrast is a bit dark when viewed from a low angle, such as a desktop. It's still a lot nicer than the faint, skinny digits of a TI BA II Plus, however (particularly the older model).2. Numeric accuracy is limited to 10 digits. Most of us probably won't have any practical need for 1-cent accuracy with financial calculations of that magnitude, however.3. You can't directly store or calculate with results obtained from computed-only fields of the financial applications such as amortization. HOWEVER, there is a reasonable workaround: when calculating a value, such as accumulated interest for an amortization, the displayed result value is automatically stored in ANS. This means you can amortize the periods, scroll to interest, principal, or balance, press ON/C to exit the application, and have that displayed value in ANS ready to store in a variable or calculate with. Note that if you re-enter the amortization application afterward, P1 and P2 will both be reset to 1.4. There's no direct memory storage arithmetic available, e.g. STO+ to add a value to a memory and store the value. There are M+ and M- functions for adding and subtracting directly into that one memory, but for the others, you'll have to calculate, e.g., 50+A, then store the result back in A. No loss of functionality overall, but a couple extra unnecessary steps.Overall, I find this to be an excellent financial calculator. The great keyboard and extensive functionality more than make up for those minor gripes. Indeed, I tend to have much more severe gripes with other models I've tried from various manufacturers.