Recommendations for Field Engineer

[Dave Britten]

I will be the heretic and suggest a Casio. Many of their scientific calculators have a dedicated DMS (° ' ") key right on the keyboard allowing you to enter values and calculate with them directly with no other conversion steps or special HMS+ functions required.

DMS calculations on the fx-991EX are far more convenient than on the TI-36X Pro, which requires you to dig into a menu to enter the DMS symbols. On a Casio, you can do something like entering 6°25°30°×9°21°18° using the [° ' "] key to denote degrees, minutes, and seconds, and get a result of 60.105875, then press the DMS key once more to convert to 60°6'21.15".

You might also consider getting the fx-5800P, though you'll have to import one if you're in the US. It's programmable, has 32 KB RAM, a dedicated DMS key, and Casio's engineering symbol display/entry mode.