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A lot can change in two years in the tech world, and the 3D printer space is particularly volatile, with improvements being made on a near-constant basis.
Way back in 2022, we were in love with the Creality Ender-3, but in the last year or so, a couple of GRM staff members have made the switch to the new hotness in the form of machines from Bambu Labs.
[3D printing: What you need to know to get started]
The Bambu Labs X1 and P1 series sit at the top of their consumer-focused range of printers and are part of a complete ecosystem of components and filaments from Bambu. They make producing extremely high-quality 3D prints no harder than printing a recipe from your inkjet printer.
The $699 P1S and the $1600 X1C share essentially the same guts and functionality, but the X1 adds hardened-steel drive gears and extruder nozzle, a touchscreen control panel, and lidar sensors that can shut down printing automatically when things go awry.
Upgrading a P1S to the hardened bits is only around a $50 proposition, however, and the reality is you’re probably never going to actually use the control panel on the printer itself since you’ll primarily be interfacing through your computer. If you can live without lidar (and trust me, you can), the P1S plus some upgrades is a screaming good deal for an excellent printer.
Photograph by J.G. Pasterjak
The big breakthrough that Bambu Labs seems to have managed with this lineup is the streamlining of the workflow. Once you have your art designed and an .stl file produced, you’ll be printing entirely within the Bambu Labs ecosystem.
The Bambu Studio app handles printer settings, slicing and print bed layout. RFID tags on the Bambu-branded filament even automatically populate and set their own specs in the app when used with the optional Automatic Material System, which holds and feeds up to four rolls of filament into your printer.
There’s a bit of a price premium for the Bambu filament, but catch it on sale and it’s comparable with other quality offerings out there. Plus, the added convenience of the RFID connection is kind of worth it. Of course, you can use any filament in your Bambu printer, but you’ll have to set specs manually, and who’s got time for that?
If you’re already an experienced 3D printer enthusiast, there’s probably not a ton of value in entering the Bambu ecosystem over what you’re used to, but for a novice looking to enter the world, or even an experienced user looking to streamline their workflow, these machines have worked very well for us–at least until the next best thing comes around.
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The P1S is excellent. I say this as a part cools in one maybe 5 feet away from me, and I have 2 more parts I just printed via P1S on the desk in front of me.
However, Bambu’s “walled garden” approach to software has turned me off somewhat. From what I understand they’ve walked back their position a fair bit, but damage has still been done. This puts me at a point of conflict: I’d like to buy a fully-kitted-out H2D, but I’m just not sure that I can trust Bambu these days.
That’s a shame because the P1S does great prints and generally does so very easily (AMS bugs notwithstanding), which has made 3D printing MUCH more accessible.
I swapped out my Ender 3 for a P1P a couple of years ago, and the difference is night and day. The Ender required constant attention and fiddling, the Bambu printer Just Works(tm). I have since upgraded it to a P1S using the kit from Bambu, and I’m able to print ASA with no problem. The “walled garden” thing isn’t great, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to mess with this thing, I just want to print stuff, and the P1S is great for that, plus their default slicer has always worked fine for me.
“Entirely within the Bambu Laps ecosystem” also means you’re exposed to the company deciding to change their minds about how you can use your hardware and what consumables you can use. You know, like the way HP behaves with their paper printers. If I were buying another 3D printer, it would likely be a Prusa.
Personally, I think the Ender 3 is the GRM printer. Maybe not the best out of the box, but cheap and open to a whole bunch of DIY improvements. Mine was quite reliable other than the auto-leveling add-on failing occasionally. I had a remote interface on it using a Pi that let me start and monitor prints from my laptop and it needed no cloud services to work.
Is this a sponsored article?
Keith Tanner said:
“Entirely within the Bambu Laps ecosystem” also means you’re exposed to the company deciding to change their minds about how you can use your hardware and what consumables you can use. You know, like the way HP behaves with their paper printers. If I were buying another 3D printer, it would likely be a Prusa.
Personally, I think the Ender 3 is the GRM printer. Maybe not the best out of the box, but cheap and open to a whole bunch of DIY improvements. Mine was quite reliable other than the auto-leveling add-on failing occasionally. I had a remote interface on it using a Pi that let me start and monitor prints from my laptop and it needed no cloud services to work.
Agree with Keith, if you’re willing to be beholden to the companys whims later down the road.. Bambu is fine.
but I will continue to be a fierce advocate for PRUSA and the open source ecosystem they’ve built for consumers… in a world where more and more companies tell users how they can use the products they buy.. after they’ve purchased them.
Keith Tanner said:
Is this a sponsored article?
No, but JG and Tom have both purchased Bambu printers. Chris now has Tom’s old Ender 3.
In reply to spacecadet (Forum Supporter) :
Having used dozens of different printers from DIY wood kits up to HP Jet Fusion and currently learning a Caracol Heron, I’d have to say that the current best option for most consumers is going to be the Bambu. PRUSA is incredibly versatile and customizable, but it does take quite a bit of fiddling to get settings and environment dialed for your personal needs. We are in agreement on the benefits of the PRUSA ecosystem, and I wish I had the free time these days to dive back in and see what kind of new things are happening!
Keith Tanner said:
“Entirely within the Bambu Laps ecosystem” also means you’re exposed to the company deciding to change their minds about how you can use your hardware and what consumables you can use.
See also: Apple, Microsoft, Adobe.
Do I love that more and more tech companies are creating their own vertically integrated ecosystems that you can’t escape from? Not really. Do I accept it as a reality of the tech climate we exist in and acknowledge that it sometimes allows me to do stuff without becoming an expert in yet another thing just so I can do it? Yeah, sure. I just don’t have the emotional energy to fight all the battles against companies who will eventually win anyway.
And, no, not a sponsored article. I did get a bunch of Delta miles when I put the printer on my Amex card, though, so there was some form of kickback I suppose.
In reply to JG Pasterjak :
You don’t have to fight battles, but you are able to choose between hardware that is dependent on the company that sold it to you and hardware that isn’t – at least, you can in the 3D printer space from both Creality and Prusa. Heck, you can with Microsoft as well – I use a purchased version of Excel that isn’t a subscription and works offline and doesn’t use the cloud for anything. My old MacBook continues to work without relying on Apple servers. Heck, I buy my music on CD and don’t subscribe to Spotify.
Adobe…well, you can get alternatives for just about every one of their products but I’ll admit to having a Creative Cloud subscription that just saw a significant price increase due to new features I don’t want or need.
At the very least, you should acknowledge to yourself that you’re buying hardware that may or not still function in a few years or that may require monthly injections of cash for a subscription. If that’s what you want, cool. But make it a deliberate decision.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I mean, I’m a guy who built a couple Hackintoshes back in the day, so I fel like I have some street cred here and completely understand the desire to operate autonomously and actually own your own technology and the dangers of literally everything we rely on becoming basically a subscription model.
But I was also educated in the Florida public school system and have limited mental capacity, so I like to reserve what part of it I can for important stuff like obscure film facts and parrot care. I’ve been down the open-source 3D printer route as well. I have a cabinet full of stuff that barely works for my troubles. Sometimes I just gotta eat that Matrix steak and save my energy for other stuff.
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