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Dave Gershgorn is a writer covering monitors, laptops, and tablets. He is a certified display calibrator through the Imaging Science Foundation. lost foam casting process video
We’ve updated this guide with a new top pick, the Bambu Lab A1 Mini.
The big sibling to our top pick, this printer adds an enclosed print space, a tougher nozzle, and other features for printing engineering-grade materials.
This is the best printer for larger or taller printing jobs, such as cosplay or art pieces, thanks to its oversize print bed.
Whether you’re a tinkerer interested in prototyping or a tabletop-gaming enthusiast seeking to expand your arsenal of tiles and terrain, a 3D printer might be just the manufacturing tool you need.
This 3D printer makes great prints with no manual calibration, and in our tests it took only a short time to set up.
The Bambu Lab A1 Mini stood out from the other 3D printers we tested as the easiest model to use, while maintaining competitive print quality and speed. Its guided setup process doesn’t require fiddling with any settings, and Bambu Lab offers both a mobile app (to help set up the printer and monitor print progress) and desktop software (to prepare and send files to the printer). The A1 Mini has software similar to that of its more expensive siblings in the P1 and X1 lines, and it’s lacking only in upgrades meant for printing the trickier materials ABS and carbon fiber. If you need that functionality, check out our upgrade pick, the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon.
The big sibling to our top pick, this printer adds an enclosed print space, a tougher nozzle, and other features for printing engineering-grade materials.
If you’re planning to print a sci-fi helmet or custom shelving brackets, a larger printer allows you to make the entire part in one shot rather than splitting it into smaller components and gluing them together. Measuring 300 by 300 by 400 mm, the print bed of the Artillery Sidewinder X2 gives you more room for bigger jobs. This model also offers easy setup and an intuitive menu, and in our tests it produced fantastic prints.
The range of possibilities is even wider if you’re familiar with CAD (computer-aided design) software. An easy-to-use starting point is Tinkercad, free online 3D-modeling software from Autodesk. The same company also makes more advanced modeling software, called Fusion 360, which is free for hobbyists (and what we use personally).
Be warned: No 3D printer is unbreakable. A day will come when you’ll need to replace a part or get your hands dirty in some other way.
Prospective buyers should also be aware that the 3D-printing industry is in a constant state of upheaval. MakerBot, which was long considered the front-runner among home 3D printers, stopped marketing to hobbyists and home users several years ago in order to focus on commercial and educational institutions. We thought Prusa made the best 3D printers for hobbyists for a few years, and now we recommend printers from the startup Bambu Lab.
In addition, a 3D printer brings health and environmental concerns. When a printer melts plastic as part of the extrusion process, it releases volatile organic compounds and other particulates. The CDC recommends (PDF) using printers in a “negatively pressured area with a dedicated ventilation system,” which is not a feature found in your average home. Before buying a 3D printer, it’s a good idea to weigh how comfortable you are with exposure to some fumes.
Though many manufacturers produce recycled filament, it’s difficult to find any that accept filament scraps from hobbyists. The few recycling programs we’ve found are either expensive, such as this nearly $200 recycling box from Terracycle, or vague.
Filament-recycling machines, which would allow you to recycle your own filament, also exist. But they either cost thousands of dollars or need to be built painstakingly from scratch.
Many 3D-printing hobbyists turn to repurposing or minimizing plastic scraps themselves. I collect my PLA scraps in a bread-loaf pan and then place them in the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit until they melt into a brick. At the very least, this minimizes the tiny shards of plastic I’m throwing away.
No matter what price range you’re considering, we’ve concluded that the best 3D printers offer the following features:
To test each printer, we time how long it takes to pull the machine out of the box and set it up on our desk, and we jot down notes on the initial software installation and navigation process. Then, we get to printing.
Printers usually come with several models preloaded; we always start by printing one of those because they’re carefully optimized for the printer. Errors in such prints typically indicate a problem on the hardware end that we need to address. After the first successful print, we move on to designs we’ve found on Thingiverse.
For our 2024 testing, we chose the following standardized test prints:
These models had a range of detail, overhangs, and scale that would give us an impression of the printers’ strengths.
We also print all sorts of other models with each printer, including current popular models in libraries such as Printables and Thingiverse. Printing a variety of objects, some with tons of detail and others with plain, sloping sides, gives us a good idea of how a printer is likely to perform in the real world.
We also note how many times we have to repair a printer, how often each machine needs its print bed leveled, and how difficult it is to remove completed models from the print bed.
This 3D printer makes great prints with no manual calibration, and in our tests it took only a short time to set up.
The ease of setting up the Bambu Lab A1 Mini is unparalleled in the 3D-printing world, and it’s largely why we think Bambu Lab printers are especially great for people who are just starting with 3D printing. We also found daily-operation tasks such as sending prints and changing filament to be painless, and we saw consistently high-quality prints from this machine. It’s small enough to fit on most desks without looming over everything else, as its larger siblings, the Bambu Lab P1P and X1-Carbon tend to do, but it prints just as quickly as those bulkier, more expensive models.
Setting it up and getting started is easy. The A1 Mini requires little assembly and has a guided setup process that requires a smartphone or other device that can read a QR code. After you make a Bambu Lab account and scan a code displayed on the A1 Mini’s screen, the printer appears in your account and becomes accessible through the Bambu Handy app or the Bambu Studio slicer software. The printer also does a full self-calibration, requiring no input or tinkering on your part.
An optional upgrade makes multicolor printing simple. Bambu Lab introduced the A1 Mini alongside an automatic material-switching machine called the AMS Lite. That add-on costs $200 in a bundle with the A1 Mini or $250 by itself. (Note, however, that it works only with the Bambu Lab A1 series of printers.) Multicolor, or multi-material, printing is usually an add-on feature exclusive to higher-end machines that cost hundreds more than the A1 Mini, such as the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon and Prusa MK4. You can load up to four different filaments onto the AMS Lite, and if they’re Bambu Lab filaments, the printer automatically scans the RFID tags inside and recognizes the material; the Bambu Studio software also recognizes the material and lists it as an option for multicolor printing.
You can do the same thing with any filament and just manually set the filament type and color on the printer. We found, however, that while Bambu Lab filament spools fit well on the AMS Lite’s spool holder, other spools from companies like Prusa were too tight. Some spools, such as cardboard spools from Creality and Overture, fit okay, but others, like the plastic spool for NinjaFlex TPU, were a tight squeeze and wouldn’t fit on the holder.
It’s also important to note that multicolor printing uses a large amount of filament, specifically purging a lot of plastic to ensure that the colors don’t mix in the nozzle; in one test print, we ended up with nearly twice as much waste as printed plastic. Plan the colors on your prints carefully.
It has a smaller print bed than some other printers, but it can fit on a desk. The A1 Mini’s print bed measures 180 by 180 by 180 mm, or about a 7-inch cube. This isn’t the best size for making large props, but you can fit a surprising amount into a 7-inch cube, and the size of the bed didn’t seem limiting during our testing.
It’s best for simple materials such as PLA and PETG. Most hobbyists don’t need plastics with superior tensile strength or increased chemical resistance, so even though this printer is limited to the basics like PLA and PETG, we think that’s reasonable.
Tasks such as switching filament are easy to do and well explained. The A1 Mini’s small touchscreen serves as the main way for you to interact with the printer. You can load models from an SD card, move the print head around, swap filaments, and have the printer perform self-checks.
All of these options are intuitively arranged in menus, and the printer clearly tells you the steps it’s performing during any task: For instance, when you’re switching to new filament, the printer has a checklist of tasks that you can watch it run through, and it prompts you to make sure that the old filament has been completely purged from the nozzle. If not, it gives you the option to push a bit more new filament out, which you can repeat until all the old filament is gone. Though this process might seem relatively simple, Bambu Lab does a good job of guiding nontechnical people through these somewhat involved procedures for maintaining a machine.
It reminds you when maintenance is due. Unlike many other 3D printers, the A1 Mini runs diagnostics often, and it delivers pop-up messages when a belt needs tightening or a part requires lubrication. Accompanying these messages are QR codes that you can scan for documentation on how to perform the maintenance. The previous standard of home 3D-printer maintenance was hoping that someone on YouTube had made a video about the problem you’re having, so these built-in reminders are pretty nice.
It’s repairable—as long as Bambu Lab continues to sell the parts. Though you can’t print your own parts, as you can with a Prusa machine, Bambu Lab does clear a high bar when it comes to repairability. In addition to upgrades, the company sells replacement parts on its website, and it offers guides with pictures and videos for the installation of new parts, as well as periodic maintenance.
The Bambu Lab X1-Carbon doesn’t make faster or higher-quality prints than our top pick, but it does have a larger and enclosed print bed for people who print with specialty plastics such as ABS or those infused with carbon fiber. It also includes reliability upgrades, such as a lidar scanner that works alongside other sensors to automatically level the bed, as well as automated maintenance reminders.
It’s a high-quality, reliable printer. We printed with the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon over the course of six months and found it to be an easy, reliable printer to work with. Its prints, from small tabletop miniatures to larger custom-designed pieces that needed to hold weight, turned out consistently well. The X1-Carbon is also much faster at printing than competitors—twice as fast as the Prusa MK3S+, our previous upgrade pick—yet it maintains the same print quality.
Bambu Lab’s software makes wireless printing easy. Though Bambu Lab has clearly built its slicer using Prusa’s open-source PrusaSlicer, it has added many of its own features. Most important of those is an automatic process for connecting your printer and setting up wireless printing. It’s a delight to see the X1-Carbon automatically connect to the slicer. Other printers, such as the Prusa MK4, require navigating wireless settings and API keys, and cheaper printers don’t have a wireless connection at all, instead requiring a DIY Raspberry Pi print server called OctoPrint for remote or online printing.
It automatically calibrates itself. Most 3D printers still require some form of manual calibration, whether that’s setting the z-height of the nozzle or leveling the bed. The X1-Carbon levels its own bed using a lidar sensor and force sensors in the bed, and in our experience this feature resulted in a long series of great prints.
Prints still failed from time to time, naturally, but those were slicing errors where pieces needed more contact with the build plate, rather than errors with the first layer.
It also issues maintenance reminders. We liked that after a few months, we got a pop-up on the X1-Carbon’s screen reminding us to clean the machine’s carbon rods, which the print head uses to glide across the x-axis. A little while later, the printer reminded us to clean the z-axis lead screws.
Each reminder on the X1-Carbon’s screen appeared along with a QR code to scan with a phone; the link showed us how to perform that particular maintenance. The display of these QR codes is the best use we saw of the X1-Carbon’s 5-inch, 720p touchscreen, which you otherwise use for normal printing tasks.
You can order new parts, as long as Bambu Lab sells them. Bambu Lab sells a wide array of replacement parts on its website, but they are parts that only Bambu Lab can make. Though restricting parts to proprietary designs is a standard business practice in consumer electronics, it’s a departure from the open-source, DIY mentality promoted by many pioneers of 3D printing and to which 3D printing owes much of its current development. Prusa and its practices are a great example of that open-source mentality.
It’s capable of printing with many engineering-grade materials. Whereas the A1 Mini is mainly intended for printing with plastics such as PLA, PETG, and TPU, which are cheap and strong enough for most hobbyist purposes, the X1-Carbon can print with a much wider variety of filament. Its enclosed print space and heat bed, which can reach 150 degrees Celsius, allow it to print with ABS filament, and its direct-drive extruder and hardened-steel nozzle allow for flexible material and carbon-fiber-infused plastics.
It’s fully enclosed. Unlike the A1 Mini, the X1-Carbon is fully enclosed, which helps regulate the temperature of the print area. This makes printing with material such as ABS far easier, since it prevents cooler, ambient air from causing the plastic to curl and warp before it sets fully. The enclosure also reduces the noise of the fans, as well as the clanking noise that the printer makes whenever it cleans the nozzle.
This is the best printer for larger or taller printing jobs, such as cosplay or art pieces, thanks to its oversize print bed.
For larger prints, the Artillery Sidewinder X2 offers a great balance of size, ease of use, and premium features, typically for about the same price as our top pick. Its print bed, which measures 300 by 300 by 400 mm, offers more than twice the print volume of the Bambu Lab A1 Mini, so you have lots of space for 3D-printing cosplay helmets or lampshades, for example. Its direct-drive extruder makes it great for flexible filament, as well.
It needs to be assembled and calibrated, but the process isn’t laborious. The Sidewinder X2 has a more involved setup process than our top pick, similar to that of many other partially assembled 3D printers. You simply need to mount the printer’s gantry, the tall part of the printer that moves the extruder around, to the base; doing so requires inserting four screws to secure the gantry to the base and then plugging in a few well-labeled cables.
However, the manual that accompanies the Sidewinder X2 is not translated perfectly and can be a bit confusing. And unlike the Bambu Lab A1 Mini and X1-Carbon, this Artillery printer requires you to manually level the bed. A leveling menu makes that process easier and puts the extruder in the correct place for each step of the calibration.
It can run long print jobs for bigger projects. The Sidewinder X2 produced excellent test prints and did especially well on taller prints that were larger than anything we could print using our other picks. For instance, we scaled this honeycomb vase test model up to 10.5 inches tall, and the resulting print had equally smooth surfaces from bottom to top. Prints that took an especially long time to complete, such as a 34-hour print we ran for a colleague’s cosplay outfit, ran without issue or incident and produced nearly perfect results.
However, while long-term testing this printer, one Wirecutter writer found pausing and resuming a print when swapping filament to be unexpectedly difficult. (We didn’t test for this scenario originally, where we generally printed parts without interruption.) So this model might not be the printer for you if you live in an area with frequent power outages, or if you like to swap between filaments mid-print.
It requires a dedicated printing space. You need a workspace that’s at least 24 inches deep, 18 inches wide, and 36 inches tall to accommodate the Sidewinder X2. This especially large printer could be a tough sell for people who live in small apartments or don’t have a dedicated office or studio.
If you want a cheaper option, especially for kids: The Monoprice MP Cadet is a great choice for printing smaller models, and it’s a perfect intro to the hobby. In our testing, this $200 printer’s output looked just as good as the results from printers that cost twice as much, and its small size makes it especially desk friendly.
Its removable, unheated bed is small at 100 by 105 by 100 mm, but it’s also more suitable for little fingers, and it releases finished prints with ease (though it puts your prints at risk of warping). However, this machine is slower than more expensive printers such as the Bambu Labs A1 Mini and X1-Carbon, and its wireless connectivity is a bit more annoying to set up.
If you’re a tinkerer or an open-source contributor: The Prusa MK4 is a worthy successor to the MK3S+, as it adds faster printing, a new extruder and hotend design, and fully automated calibration. It makes prints nearly identical to those of competitors, and it’s quieter while doing so.
However, it’s the fourth iteration of Prusa’s design, which was built for engineers and the DIY-minded, while the Bambu Lab A1 Mini and X1-Carbon represent the first generation of a more user-friendly printer.
If you’re knowledgeable about computers and inclined to support a company dedicated to open source, or if you’re experienced in 3D printing and in need of a reliable workhorse that doesn’t need to connect to the internet, the MK4 has a lot of modern features and a familiar design. For most people, who are likely to want a printer that works right out of the box and are not concerned about how it’s made, either Bambu Lab printer is a better option.
If you need an even larger print bed than on the Artillery Sidewinder X2: With dimensions of 400 by 400 by 400 mm, the build plate of the Anycubic Kobra Max is 4 inches longer and wider than that of our also-great pick, the Artillery Sidewinder X2. That build plate is removable, too.
However, this printer’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. It’s about 2.5 feet wide and long, so it can’t fit on most desks, and even if you can fit it on yours, it’s likely to dominate that workspace. As a result, this printer is best for those who have a dedicated workshop or large workspace.
Bambu Lab has also released another 3D printer since we last updated this guide: the midsize Bambu Lab A1. As we were testing it, however, Bambu Lab issued a recall, so we’re holding further testing on that model until the company finds a permanent fix.
3D printers can be finicky, and performing basic maintenance can go a long way toward preventing breakdowns and print flaws. Here’s what you can do to keep your printer running reliably:
Finally, if you’re running into issues with prints sticking to your print bed, and adjusting print temperatures doesn’t help, there could be another solution.
Many printers now come with removable, flexible print beds. If your printer has one, remove the bed and carefully bend it to release your model. Don’t force it, or you’ll risk damaging the bed’s finish. If the print is still stuck, heat the bed back up to its printing temperature and see if the model pops off easier. Next, use a scraper to carefully unstick the edges of the print and then move in a sawing motion toward the center.
If you’re still stumped, another trick you can try is to remove the print bed and stick it in the freezer for an hour. This should shrink the print a little and make it easier to remove.
If you read 3D-printing forums and subreddits, you’ll see many experienced 3D-printing enthusiasts recommending the Creality Ender-3, Ender-3 V2, or Ender-3 Pro as a first printer. The Ender-3 V2 is often available on sale at Microcenter for just $100, and it’s a better printer than our former budget pick, the Monoprice MP Cadet, on nearly every metric. You’ll also find an avid community of Ender-3 owners who post DIY upgrades and guides on how to use the machine, a crucial aspect of learning to operate the printer and troubleshooting when things go wrong.
So why don’t we recommend an Ender-3 model as a top pick or even a budget pick? In our experience, we’ve found that the Ender-3 line requires more setup and more maintenance, and in comparison with our picks it poses a much more difficult learning curve for those who are just getting into 3D printing. As an example, crucial tasks such as leveling the print bed on the Ender-3 require using separate calibration files that might have to be run multiple times or manually moving the print head across the bed, in contrast to Bambu Lab’s and Monoprice’s easier, more automatic workflows. This manual work adds many minutes of preprint setup for a 3D-printing newcomer versus seconds for our top picks, and in turn it leads to a higher chance of the machine sitting in the corner gathering dust. These processes become rote after time and are made easier by optional upgrades, but initially they require some dedication to learn.
Bambu Lab earned its top-pick and upgrade-pick status for its printers by prioritizing the user experience when building its machines and software. The Bambu Lab printers we recommend are especially easy to set up, and they print reliably without the need for any manual calibration.
That doesn’t mean we don’t like the Ender-3 line. They’re great machines for those who are already mechanically adept or who don’t get easily frustrated while learning a new, complex hobby. However, they’re not the best 3D printers for most people.
This is not a comprehensive list of all the 3D printers we have tested. We have removed any models that have been discontinued or that no longer meet our requirements.
The AnkerMake M5 is an interesting printer that’s well built, easy to set up, and capable of producing fast, high-quality prints. What impressed us most was its speed, as it printed test models nearly twice as quickly as our former upgrade pick, the Prusa MK3S+. (The Bambu Lab X1-Carbon is still faster, though.) Further iterations of this machine might be picks in the future, but this first version was particularly loud in our tests, and the slicer software has not been officially released, as it’s currently listed as being in beta; that beta software lacks many features found in PrusaSlicer and UltiMaker Cura. In our testing, we had some issues with layer adhesion for small details, likely due to the machine’s blistering print speeds, and we also struggled with bed adhesion for smaller parts. Finally, the M5 costs $800, which is expensive considering its shortcomings.
The Anycubic Kobra Go is a budget printer that’s regularly on sale for less than $200. But in our testing, we found that assembly would be difficult for an absolute beginner; even with our intermediate experience level, the process took about an hour and a half. The instructions are not entirely clear, especially if you’ve never built a 3D printer before, and some of the calibration aspects are a bit slapdash. Once we set the printer up, it was much louder than any of our current picks, and its menus were more cumbersome to navigate than those of either Bambu Lab printer we recommend. One last annoyance: Setting the z-height for the extruder is left to trial and error, rather than performed through a built-in tool as on some other printers.
The Creality Ender-2 Pro, a $170 competitor to the Prusa Mini+, seems built to look nearly identical to that model. However, in our tests its menus were confusing and made the printer more difficult to operate than any of our picks. Its fans were also drastically louder than those of any other printer we tested.
The Creality Ender-3 S1 Plus is an addition to the Ender-3 line with a high-resolution display and a larger print volume. We found it to be louder, more complicated to set up, and more difficult to level in comparison with the Artillery Sidewinder X2.
The Creality K1 is the company’s new flagship printer, and its design seems to be heavily based on, if not copied from, the Bambu Labs X1-Carbon. We found its print quality to be consistently worse, and although we could monitor the printer from Creality’s app, the software was crammed full of things to buy and ads for Creality’s subscription service.
The Prusa Mini+ was a previous top pick in this guide and remains a great printer. However, for about $200 less, Bambu Lab has made a printer with a similar design that’s easier to use and requires less calibration. Prusa recently updated the Mini+ to print just as quickly as the Bambu Lab A1 Mini or Prusa MK4, but the A1 Mini’s price difference and ease of use still have us favoring the Bambu Lab machine here.
This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.
Dave Gershgorn is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter. He’s been covering consumer and enterprise technology since 2015, and he just can’t stop buying computers. If this weren’t his job, it would likely be a problem.
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