Recently asked if there is a better alternative to the P1S for printfarm use. In the end I didn’t find one and got another P1S combo.
Why? My humble opinion:
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Most companies go 95% of the way Bambu went. The last 5% is the magic of those printers. Result is that there are a lot of good printer but none of them offers the same experience.
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Most of the competition release new printer models instead of focusing on what they have. Improving the existing product and customer isn’t in their company DNA. Meaning if a printer is half backed at launch it likley will stay incomplete.
Why did those alternatives fall short?
Prusa
They have burned a lot of good will. Releasing products that aren’t ready and then trying to fix it once released. They were leaders and had the “it just works” status. These days they are expensive and no longer technological leaders.
Breakdown of the Prusa product stack:
Prusa MMU? The most impressive failure (so far). Prusa released the first MMU1 in 2017. Bambu Lab released their MMU, the AMS.
Even with 5 years of headstart the Prusa product was so much worse that Bambu Lab was able to take the crown and brought the MMU/AMS to the point where it is a mainstream commodity.
3 years later? Nothing. Prusa still sells this clusterfuck of MMU while every other company has a nice, easy-to-deploy AMS on the market. A few weeks ago, they finally teased an improvement, but even if it would launch in Fall 2025, they are 3 years (!) behind the market.
Prusa XL? This printer is a complete disaster: Plastic parts deforming, heatbed tile issues, missing grease on coupler, …, support unable to service/diagnose those devices, and all of this after years of delays.
Prusa MK4? Fixed with the MK4s. What was the timeframe between MK4 and MK4s? A few months. How long did the Mk3s to Mk4 take? Years. Another product that was released half-baked, instead of taking the time to get it right.
Prusa mini (+): Can’t remember when it launched, but it might have stayed unchanged for more than a decade. By now you would have expected them at least to upgrade it to the Nextruder. Price is also pretty bad at 490€ when a Bambu Lab A1 mini is 200€. The mini+ was also the printer that got them kicked out. Releasing 1 year worth of stable firmware with a known bug that caused the printer to not start/boot when the SD-card is inserted. The straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Prusa core one? That’s the one that has hope but sadly, it is still not feasible. A Core one with camera and AMS/MMU runs 2000€, while the last P1S combo bought was 650€. Even if I dropped 2000€ on the table, I would still need to build my own MMU enclosure/box since Prusa does not have one.
Qidi
A company that doesn’t care about product safety with a bad track record. This will take years to recover from, as once the reputation is lost, they need to prove themselves again.
Qidi X plus 4: Catching fire. SSR is burning, but there are also reports of burning printers with the replacement SSR.
Qidi Q1 pro: Exposed mains voltage and QIDI not considering this a safety hazard.
Anycubic
Anycubic S1: So close, but they screwed up the details. Months later, the only first-party nozzle option is still a 0.4mm brass. This is a pretty good representation of all the issues: Go 95% of the way, release it, work on the next printer. Rinse and repeat.
What I would like to see is them following up with new nozzle options, releasing filament/print profiles, and so on. At least patching/updating their way to the BambuLab experience. Having experienced this market for a decade, I would expect an S2 soon that brings some improvements, but then stays once again untouched till the S3 releases.
Creality
K2 combo: Priced at 1300€ it isn’t competition for the P1S.
K1: Not talking about this since there is now the K1C, but at least they worked on their product and improved it.
K1C combo: At 709€ it is a direct competitor. For me, it boils down to why I should switch? I am in the Bambu ecosystem (multiple Bambu printers that will stay), Bambu printer just works. The K1C isn’t lower cost or has killer features that I would want. In the end of the day the small annoyances Bambu has would likely be replaced with different annoyances from Creality.
Introducing a mixed ecosystem consisting of Bambu AND Creality will create friction, meaning there needs to be a benefit with Creality or an issue with Bambu that is big enough to make the hassle worth it.
Considering the Creality app disaster (as far as I know still not fully fixed), the perception of half-backed products to get burned on if bought (e.g. Ender 7), and being late to market, they are fighting an uphill battle.
Flashforge
Adventure 5M pro: no AMS
Adventure AD5X: no enclosure. If they release an AD5x pro I would take a look at it.
One issue you have glossed over is the closed ecosystem of Bambu Labs. Maybe this won’t come back to bite owners in the future, but it’s a risk you take on when you buy a Bambu printer. There were recent concerns that they are moving in this direction. And that you may end up with a very expensive paperweight, if you don’t pay a subscription fee. Most of the other systems are far more open, and don’t put you behind that eight ball. That may not be a risk you care about, but it’s one of the reasons Bambu wasn’t even in the running when I bought a new printer recently. I’ve seen too much enshitification of good products to want to run that risk.
Maybe this won’t come back to bite owners in the future, but it’s a risk you take on when you buy a Bambu printer.
I’ve seen too much enshitification of good products
It will. When? Don’t know.
Right now, it is all safe. You could stockpile replacement parts, disconnect it from the internet, and keep it running as is. If Bambu starts attacking the offline capabilities, I am done. As long as they keep it (even though I am using them with their server/app at the moment), I am fine with buying more.
Others obviously feel differently because Bambu is popular, but there’s no way I’d ever consider their printers with what I’ve heard about them paving the way for enshittification. Just no interest in supporting those kinds of business practices. Non starter.
They took so much work that prusa put into the 3d printing world, and are then trying to lock it behind closed doors. I don’t want to buy from a company who only exists from stifling innovation.
I have an X1C and a Prusa XL. The XL is far from a disaster and it runs circles around the X1C. Zero waste and way faster runtimes. I thought Bambu would blow the XL out of the water with the H2D but that thing is lackluster compared to the XL.
At launch the XL was a complete disaster. You either got lucky or bought one after Prusa charged a bunch of people thousands of dollars to beta test it.
Is it now fixed?
Assuming you still have it.
The XL has been good for a long time. I bought mine last June and have never had an issue. If it was “shit” it was maybe for a few months after release. And calling it shit is an exaggeration, it had some bugs that were worked out quick.
K2 combo: Priced at 1300€ it isn’t competition for the P1S.
I’m a P1S owner.
You’ve made a bullshit comparison here, given the superior print volume of the K2.
The cheaper product simply cannot produce pieces that the K2 can.
We’ve had nothing but problems with our K2. We spent $1500 for a unit that works half the time, and their support is hit or miss. Right now it is throwing seemingly random error codes and their support is stumped and not offering help.
We should have gone with the Bambu.
You have 80x80mm parts.
A 256x256mm buildplate, depending on the number of copies, takes up to 16 hours.
Can you make use of the larger volume? No.
Does it make sense to pay for the larger volume? No.
Does a larger printer consume more power? Yes. That’s makes them worse in this use case.
Is a bigger printer larger? Yes. That’s also bad.
Maybe a larger volume is not important for you, but to others maybe it is.
But his point is what you are basically saying that a bike is more expensive than a bicycle looking only at the price tag.
I don’t have / can’t afford one, but the prusa XL is one of the more beloved printers in existence. I don’t think many would agree it’s a disaster. Bambu is absolutely ripe for enshitification. It’s commercial fodder to the max, we all know where this story ends. They are the HP of the 3d printer world. My only hope is that they help push prusa to an increasingly open source model, but that’s probably wishful thinking.
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/20/with-core-one-prusas-open-source-hardware-dream-quietly-dies/
It seems that this is explicitly pushing prusa out of the open source model. Bambu is free to steal their innovations then add their own behind locked doors. The existence of companies like Bambu weighs us all down.
