If I waited until printers were completely fool-proof, I would never have gotten one. Instead I jumped in 6yrs ago and I’ve printed so many useful things and a lot of toys. Most rooms in my house have at least one printed item in them because of how useful it is.

Yes I’ve had my share of failures and have had to rebuild a printer a ton of times while learning how it worked, but I also learned a lot of new skills.

• Soldering used to be scary and now it’s no big deal.
• I can de-pin connectors and build new adapters instead of spending $8-10 for someone to ship me one from Amazon.
• With TinkerCAD I can knock out roughly designed parts that are ready to go in a few hours instead of waiting days/weeks

From learning all of those skills I’ve swapped the motherboard and rewired my first printer to have bed levelling and be whisper quiet, 3d printed an RC car, designed parts for my vehicles, completely overhauled my sim racing setup, the list goes on.

If you want to get in to it and have the money to get started, go for it. I started with something like an Ender 3 and still use it today. You don’t need an expensive machine if you want to learn how to maintain it. It all depends on what your goal is with 3d printing.

3D printers are far from bleeding edge anymore.

If you have a need for a printer, then just get one. It’s really that simple.

I think it comes down to whether you mind waiting a year or not to print your first print. I’d personally just jump in and buy something even if it’s not exactly what you want.

Much like computers, printers are always advancing and waiting a year might mean you wind up seeing some other new feature on the horizon a year from now and then have to wait an additional year.

We’ve been getting by without proprietary hardware or multifilament printers for years, so it’s not as if either of these printers are the only way to get into the hobby.

Are you the kind of person who enjoys tinkering with things and learning? Or does that frustrate you and you want something that “just works”?

If you are in the first category, just buy something like an ender 3 or a sovol sv06. They are cheap, open platforms, capable of great prints, and are a fantastic learning platform. If you buy one of the cheaper options to get your feet wet, then you can always spend more on a high end machine later if you decide you need it. The more locked-down systems like the Bambu might be nice for the “just work” crowd, but personally I have no interest in closed ecosystems and vendor lock-in.

I do not expect that the Mk4 will have caught up to the Bambu in 1 year since it’s missing physical hardware that seems necessary to do so. Here are some examples:

Input shaping calibration for a specific machine benefits from having an accelerometer. The Mk4 needs a module that can attach to the extruder and the bed. The current beta firmware with input shaping only allows for Prusa’s universal preset setting instead of allowing you to measure the frequency responses of your own machine. Critical reviews of the current input shaping implementation show subpar performance with excessive smoothing and high frequency artifacts. I expect that comes down to inability to calibrate your specific machine and environment.

When you print with a new filament, especially a new manufacturer, you usually need to tune a filament profile to get better printing results. With the Mk4 this is a manual process, and this is where many new to 3d printing quickly get frustrated with failed or poor quality prints. The lidar system on the X1 has been fantastic for automatic pressure advance and flow calibration right out of the box and I’ve found I largely do not need to maintain custom filament profiles for the Bambu.

Webcam support and failed print detection are absent from the Mk4. The closest feature the Nextruder assembly supports is crash detection via its load cell sensor and I’m not entirely sure if the Mk4 even has that enabled. If you attach a webcam to the frame and run octoprint / something else standalone, you’ve again thrown off the preset input shaping calibration.

It’s an i3 style printer or “bed slinger,” which is fine on it’s own, but it will never reach the same speeds as core-xy because it’s physically moving the mass of your printed object sitting on the bed. Printing speeds aside, you’ll potentially run into taller objects wobbling slightly as they are moved.

I really like Prusa’s open source commitment, and I’m still in line to purchase a multitool Prusa XL, but I cannot recommend waiting for the Mk4 to improve and reach parity with the Bambu if that’s your expectation. If it doesn’t do what you want it to do today, I’m not sure it ever will.

As for cloud connectivity on the Bambu, you’ll really have to consider just how important that is to you given the significant tradeoffs. Minimally you can print from the sd card or use lan mode. It looks like you currently lose the camera and mobile app connectivity with lan mode, but I haven’t tried this myself and these are at least software aspects that could easily improve.

Years ago I was discussing a 3d printer with my best friend. His suggestion was to start making a list. A list of 10 things that I wanted to create with the 3d printer that also were not things just downloaded from the internet. When I got to 10 then it was ok to make a purchase. So I made the list, and slowly it got to the 10th item. Once I got to 10, I went ahead and bought a printer. It was then that I realized one thing. I should have bought the damn thing when I got to number 2… If you have things you want to print out, jump in there. You are never going to find a ‘perfect’ printer, and will most likely have to do some tinkering, but that’s part of the fun. I have printed so many cool things with my printer and years later I am still happy that I got it when I did.

The good old fashioned PC building quandary meets 3D printers.

“Should I buy x or wait a couple years?” waits a couple years “Should I buy x or wait a couple years” “Just wait a couple more years man something better will be out” *waits a couple years” “Should I buy-“

Rinse repeat forever.

I have Prusa I3 MK3S+s at work that are great, but I just bought a Sovol SV06 for home use. I got it for $229. It was $200 during prime days. Auto bed-leveling. Prints well out of the box after short, easy assembly. Far, far less troubleshooting than my old Ender 3 V2. It comes with a branded Cura slicer, but I use Prusaslicer instead. I’m recommending the SV06 to the makers that come into my makerspace if they want to get into 3D printing at a low price point and not have the headaches of older machines that lack the more modern features.

Can you model stuff in 3D?

If not. Hold off and learn 3D modelling first.

If so, jump in now. Nothing is coming down the pipeline in the next year or two that will be game-changing on the 3D Printing side of things.

Don’t buy any printer that’s not a CoreXY style, everything else is sub-optimal. At least FDM printers that is.

Decide what you want from a machine, and if all of your needs are met…buy. It’s getting much harder to recommend the Prusa as the baseline for quality has changed substantially. With many machines adopting input shaping and higher-end parts, you get a lot of bang for your buck.

I don’t own one, simply because I build most of my machines from scratch…but it would be hard to recommend anything other than a P1P for someone with the money in their budget for it. If I were building a new printer factory of 50 machines running 24/7 then MAYBE I would consider the serviceability of a Prusa to be a time investment. Outside of those conditions, Bambu is the clear choice in the price bracket.

FYI At that new $599 price, even the P1P can print from sdcard, so from a “cloud” perspective, I don’t think that’s an issue. The cloud connection is for sending files remotely, and I also believe it has a local network mode(unsure). $599 P1P vs minimum $799 for a MK4 kit, I would go P1P in a heartbeat. I understand that the AMS is also significantly easier to use than the Prusa MMU. The P1S is an attractive replacement for my HEAVILY Frankensteined old Flashforge Creator Pro, which I only used for parts requiring high-temp enclosed printing. I will add one to my environment at some point in the future, as it’s the only thing to come along in years that looks worthy.

Mate I dont own any of them, but open source is easy life. Prusa uses marlin afaik which is awesome and you can always change to klipper which is even better imo. Im in this hoby for 10+ years and prusa was always recommended by users. Bamboo looks amazing, but I wouldnt go for baby company with properary crap over big and famous prusa, the inventor of this kind of printers.

Also dont wait, just buy one. They didnt change that much hardware wise after adding heated bed. In my opinnion 3D printers are much better now compared to 10y ago, but 90% because of the community. Hardware is better, software is much much better, but community is what makes it rly good for new people. It means you can buy any popular device and you will get better support than any company can even imagine. Even better if you go open source route.

Whatever you chosey there are plenty of resources online including Lemmy, arm yourself with patience and enjoy the ride

I’m not sure what amazing feature you can’t live without that the MK4 doesn’t have.

Repairability is kinda a big deal, because 3D printer break a lot due to having so many mechanical parts. I have access to a MK2.5 in a shared space, and it’s down about once a month due to needing repairs and/or recalibration.

I still use a virtually antique ultimaker 2, it does most things a modern printer does, just a bit slower.

If you get an open source printer[0] like voron, jubilee, or ender 3 then they can always be upgraded if/when new stuff comes out anyway.

[0] the prusa i3 mk3 is open source, but I think the i3 Mk4 is closed source unfortunately.

I just have a heavily upgraded ender 3. Prints at 100mms with the latest firmware update I did.

What features are locked behind the cloud for the X1? We have several at work and they’ve been fantastic. Repairs are easy enough, they have decent documentation. While the parts are proprietary, they are pretty affordable.