HP 33S Scientific Calculator (F2216A)

by HP

Product Details

Product Manual [2.66mb PDF]

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Data Sheet [605kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.6 x 3 inches ; 2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000DK6G9
• Item model number: F2216A
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (162 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #32 in Electronics > Office Electronics > Calculators > Scientific
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 29, 2003

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Pocket-sized and full-featured, the HP 33s Scientific Calculator is designed for engineers, surveyors, college students, scientists, and medical professionals. Its two-line display is easy to read, and at only 4.2 ounces, the unit slips easily into your pocket for travel.

Boasting both Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) and intuitive algebraic data entry modes, as well as 32 KB memory with 27 memory storage and recall functions, the 33s is ideal for solving a variety of science and engineering problems.

Functions include trigonometric, percentage, conversion, coordinate, time, angle, probability, factorial, gamma, fractions, and a variety of statistical operations. The calculator can solve equations, integrate, work with complex numbers, and is programmable. The 386-page manual thoroughly reviews the calculator's many features. When purchased new, the unit is backed by HP's one-year limited warranty.

What's in the Box
Calculator, two 3-volt lithium coin batteries (CR2032), instruction manual

Product Description

Powerful/advanced pocket-size programmable scientific calculator. 32K user memory. Letter+4 program line labels. Cursor keys to navigate menus. Works in both RPN and algebraic modes. Features: keystroke programming, solve function, stats one and two variable, base-n function, 27 independent memories, trig, polar-rectang.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

140 of 142 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best scientific calculator made today (with caveats), July 22, 2004

By 

David Simpson (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: HP 33S Scientific Calculator (F2216A) (Office Product)

There has long been a real need for a high-quality scientific calculator for serious scientific and engineering professional, so I was glad to see HP back in the market with the HP-33S, a replacement for their popular HP-32SII (of which I own three!). With some caveats (see below), I've found this to be a very good scientific calculator, and probably the best one being manufactured today. I guess HP finally noticed that people are willing to pay over $300 for a used HP-32SII, and took the hint.

First, some general comments. I judged the overall quality of the calculator to be quite good. The keys have a good solid feel, like traditional HP calculators. It has about 80 times the memory of the HP-32SII, and I found it to run about 2.5 times faster. The manual is excellent -- clear and very well written, and similar to the HP-32SII manual.

The HP-33S has a few new features that weren't on the HP-32SII:

- Both RPN and algebraic entry modes. (The default is RPN.) I use RPN exclusively myself.
- Several new functions: cube, cube root, integer divide, remainder, greatest integer, and signum.
- A menu with 40 built-in physical constants (speed of light, electron charge, etc.). This is a great feature; I was constantly having to look up physical constants and store them in registers; now the constants are built in.
- A feature to shift the exponent of a number in engineering mode by factors of 1000.
- Four-way cursor keys (as you would find on a PDA or graphing calculator).
- Two-line display (to show both the X and Y registers).

The HP-33S does have a couple of drawbacks:

- Most importantly, as others have noted, the decimal point (and comma) are WAY too small. The decimal point can be difficult to see, especially when it comes after a digit 2.

- The rather bizarre V-shaped keyboard is a bit strange, but not really a problem. It just tends to give the keyboard a bit of a cluttered look. I'd rather see a traditional HP rectangular layout with blue and gold function keys on a dark background.

If you are a science or engineering professional or serious student, I would recommend this calculator as the best one being made today. Hopefully HP will come out with an HP-33SII that corrects the design problems -- then they'll have a five-star calculator.

72 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good HP-32SII replacement, but why isn't it better?, September 19, 2004

By 

Joel Kolstad "Zimbo" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: HP 33S Scientific Calculator (F2216A) (Office Product)

I have an HP-32SII that's started to behave a little flaky so I bought this as as replacement. Compared to the HP-32SII, this has a couple of improvements that I find useful:

-- The 'eng' key to display the current result in engineering mode is a nice way to avoid always having your calculator in 'eng mode'; sometimes handy.
-- I like the constants library.

There are only a couple of items where I think the result is _worse_ than the HP-32SII:

-- The overly small decimal point. I still find it completely usable but this clearly a faux pau for HP.
-- On the '32, all the menu screens fit onto a single line, even though doing so caused some functions to only be given two characters. On the 33, they chose more characters but sometimes you have to scroll the menu line. Example: For Sums->(sum of x*y). The '32 just lists 'xy' whereas the '33 you have to scroll to '(sigma)xy'. More readable, yes. Better, no... especially since they had two lines but only ever use the first one!

...and then there's a LONG list of items that I think HP could have done that they didn't. The HP-32SII was released something like a decade ago, and it's poor that this new model doesn't reflect a little more work over that decade. Examples:

-- Still only single character variables names. With so much (31K) memory vs. the '32 (some hundreds of bytes), why?
-- Editing equations can still only be done via backspacing, not true left/right cursor key movement. Sheesh.
-- Complex numbers still take up two levels of the stack and therefore require you to use two keystrokes to manipulate them. This one I can sort of understand in that changing it would imply each level of the stack could be a lot more than just 'a decimal number,' but still, I believe the old HP-42 does this, so why not?
-- It would be very nice to be able to display an arbitrary string on the first line and the X level of the stack on the second; this would give you the same utility as '->Tag' on the HP-48 series that I've found quite useful.
-- Only 4 stack levels. Again, with so much memory, why!?

So... I'm satisfied with my purchase, I'm just disappointed in HP. It does seem that the old HP is gone and not coming back. Although I'm sure the folks working on the calculators are hard working and dedicated, I think the culture of HP today is so different than that of the old calculator design group in Corvallis, Oregon, USA that the overall result is mediocre.

I would love to see, e.g., the HP-33SII that incorporates many of the possible improvements listed above!

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice resurrection by HP but user interface needs improvement, June 17, 2004

By 

Sunny (Orange County, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: HP 33S Scientific Calculator (F2216A) (Office Product)

Well, the tiny decimal & comma display is just unfortunate. But it does have an excellent fraction display mode. It has the ability to approximate fractions and indicate the +-5% error with an up or down flag on the display. I am tempted to use fraction mode all the time as I am getting eye strain trying to squint and find the decimal point. The other solution is to always FIX the decimal places so you know where the decimal point is. The new ALL display mode keeps us guessing on the location of the decimal point.

In contrast, the unusual keyboard design is actually quite effective. The angled key layout forms a "V" shape. The appex of the V shaped rows helps visually partition the keyoard into two symmetrical halves and seems to make locating functions easier. Eventually, you begin to associate one of three key shapes with the key function (ignoring the silver keys) in addition to the row and column of the respective key.

RPN mode is great but having algebraic mode that shows the entire calculation sequence as an equation is a great addition. This is handy if you are making impromptu calculations without paper and a pencil to write down equations first. I have been a great fan of RPN for decades but it is easy to loose track of a long, multi-level calculation series. Even if you write down a long equation on paper and begin punching it into an RPN calculator, you could get side tracked and you forget what part of the equation you need to resume entering. This is where I see the benefits of Algebriac mode that has the ability to show in real time, the history of your entries. Try it in this calculator and you'll see what I mean (you have to enable it with the ALG key). The algebraic sequence is displayed on the top line as you enter each number and function (it is displayed as an equation but with constants). However, such functionality has been implemented in calculators from Sharp and others in the past but with edit and reuse capability. For instance, the HP33s does not allow the recently entered series (after pressing ENTER) to be recalled, edited and re-executed.

If you think you are going to reuse a series, you have to enable equation mode and type it in as a formal equation. These equations can be re-executed multiple times with different values for any embedded variables. The big down side to the equation editor is that its "edit capability" is limited to backspacing/deleting each entry from the right. You cannot modify an entry in the middle of the equation without deleting all enteries to the right of the desired entry and then retyping all of them. I've seen decade old calculators from Sharp with true edit capabilities; surprising that HP does not offer this capability. However, where the HP really delivers is its extensive function library and problem solving capabilities. Its just that its user interface is quite disappointing. I had hoped that the the HP33s would be a pocketable version of the HP48 (which I also own) but with one-key STO and RCL functions (as opposed to the overly complicated version in the HP48 that requires manual garbage collection on a trail of variables through a heirarchy of directories - you can always program your way out of such a mess but why should we?).

As for programming, the number of variables is limited to the letters of the alphabet (and a few more) - essentially, the variables are named with a single character. All labels in programs have one character names. Therefore, you can have a max of around 34 programs. Programming is not as flexible as the HP41CX. However, the HP33s has a lot more built in functions including impressive support for integration (i.e. takes any expression you write and integrates it with the limits specified in the X and Y registers and choose the integration variable - its that simple). There are no I/O options - no infrared, or any serial interface to the outside world except through the keyboard and its LCD with a tiny decimal and comma seperators.

Oh, by the way, it is very thin but we can't take advantage of it for stuffing it into a shirt pocket without ripping it out since the calculator is just too wide. Did HP layoff all its human factors design team? Come on, it is advertised for Engineers and other geeks. It has to fit into a shirt pocket to keep our hands free to carry all the tools, machinery and other stuff when we are not calculating!