I have noticed that a couple of their new calculators have switchable RPN addressablity. I beleive one of the 12c business versions and one of their scientific versions. I think some of their current graphing calculators are RPN but I do agree that their build quality for the new units isn’t what it was for the old ones.
I have an old 12c algebraic which I am used to. I have dropped it from my shirt pocket into water (I won’t say where or how I rinsed it off) and it still works after 18 years. Will use it till it dies.
I think the reason for the switchable RPN is twofold:
Firstly...they are trying to attract the customer base that doesn’t comprehend RPN
Secondly...as I understand it, the REAL purpose of RPN back in the beginning was NOT to help out engineers and others that can do long tedious calcs faster with RPN. The real purpose was that the memory and the CPU were used more efficiently with a system designed around RPN. Nowdays, there’s no reason to worry about conserving computing power and there’s no such thing as a scientific calculator designed around RPN. If the calculator has RPN at all, it’s actually an RPN emulator that hogs more computing resources than if the RPN is switched off.
Computing power is all a moot point when it comes to a handheld calculator.
For instance...the HP 50G that I just bought for $60 has a 203 megahertz 32 bit CPU that is factory underclocked(presumably because there’s no cooling system in a pocket calculator and the power supply is limited to 4 AAA batteries) to 75 MHz and 512 Kilobytes of RAM. And it will accept a 2gigabyte SD flash memory card.
Compare that to my first IBM compatible computer that came with a 4 point something megahertz 8088 CPU(8 bit, iirc) and I forget how much RAM but I think it was 128K. The hard drive was under 20 megabytes...I wanna say 16MB but I can’t remember for sure.
This is my understanding, I’m sure someone will correct me if I got something wrong.