Two main methods have been used to calculate the transport properties of two-temperature (2-T) plasmas in local chemical equilibrium: the method of Devoto (method B), in which coupling between electrons and heavy species is neglected, and the method of Rat et al (method C), in which coupling is included at the cost of a considerable increase in complexity. A new method (method A) has recently been developed, based on the modified Chapman–Enskog solution of the species Boltzmann equations. This method retains coupling between electrons and heavy species by including the electron–heavy-species collision term in the heavy-species Boltzmann equation. In this paper, the properties of 2-T argon plasmas calculated using the three methods are compared. The viscosity, electrical conductivity and translational thermal conductivity obtained using all three methods are very similar. method B does not allow a complete set of species diffusion coefficient to be obtained. It is shown that such a set can be calculated using method A without any significant loss of accuracy. Finally, it is important to note that, by using the physical fact that the mass of heavy particles is much larger than that of electrons (i.e. m e m h), the complexity of calculations using method A is not increased compared with method B; that is to say, the calculation procedure is much simpler than with method C.