Casio has unveiled its new fx-CG100 graphing calculator at a mathematics education conference in Chicago. The fx-CG100, now classified as part of its ClassWiz line of products, is the successor to the fx-CG10, fx-CG20, and fx-CG50 (or Casio Prizm) calculators.

In early 2011, Casio released the fx-CG10/fx-CG20, or Casio Prizm, graphing calculator. It was the first graphing calculator with a full-color screen, narrowly beating out TI announcing a color-screen refresh of its TI-Nspire calculator in February 2011. In fact, the announcement of those two calculators led to an impassioned article entitled "Casio Prizm: Why TI Calc Coders Should Abandon the Nspire CX" here on Cemetech, and over the following few years, Cemetech's hobbyists and programmers embraced the calculator for its easy programmability in C. In a rapid answer to the clichéd question "can it run Doom?", developer MPoupe announced a Doom port called CGDoom for the Casio Prizm in mid-2012.

The fx-CG50 was a faster version of the fx-CG10/fx-CG20, released in 2017, with a sleeker case but otherwise retaining the same operating system, AAA batteries for power, LCD, and user interface. We reviewed it here when it came out. Python arrived for the fx-CG50 in 2018, after TI announced Python support for its TI-84 Plus CE color-screen graphing calculator, but seemingly before the first TI-84 Plus CE Python Edition was available for purchase. Since then, the Casio Prizm remains a very popular calculator, especially among European students.

Casio has now announced the fx-CG100 (which will be known in France as the Graph Math+ Lycée) at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) conference in Chicago. They describe the new calculator:

From the photos that Casio has provided, including in a tweet, the calculator has a markedly different keyboard layout than its predecessors, round keys that remind us of prototypes of Zero Calculators' new calculator, and its manual shows that it still uses AAA batteries rather than a rechargeable Li-Poly pack (under an unusual round battery cover), and still has a USB port and a 2.5mm I/O port. Adriweb and Critor of TI-Planet have compiled the known technical and software specs of the calculator, as the Graph Math+ Lycée is already available for purchase. Spec-wise, it's very similar to the fx-CG50, but the software no longer permits Casio Basic programming or the addition of C addins. If true for the US market as well, this will render the calculator essentially irrelevant to the graphing calculator hobbyist community, and one fewer of a shrinking set of calculators that allow the curious STEM student to explore programming beyond a simple language like Python or TI-BASIC.

We look forward to bringing you an in-depth review as soon as we can get our hands on one of these calculators!

More Information
Casio fx-CG100 / Graph Math+ Lycée Product Page and Manuals (French)