If it’s your first printer, the Bambu a1 will give you a ridiculous amount of bang for your buck. I’d highly recommend it

I’ve been eying 3d printers for years before I finally bought one. My main argument for not buying one was always the same: I am not prepared to start tinkering with a utility device. It needs to be on a similar level of a laser printer. I send a job to print to that device and it prints, that’s it. Not a 100% comparison of course but it does tell you what my mind set was.

Cue 1 year ago when I noticed the Bambu P1S. Looked at the specs, saw some youtube videos and decided that this might be the time, it is possibly close enough to being a simple usable device.
I bought one and boy, did that device deliver. Load the right filament you want to use, send job to printer and it just prints. The quality is (for me at least) quite bizarre. Some parts I have printed look like it was formed by molding, it is that good.

Nothing but praise and a firm recommendation from me on a Bambu printer.

Note: I have no experience with any other brand (as I avoided all because of stated reasons and not wanting to tinker) and I currently have zero interest in any other brand due to being so happy with my P1S

I’m a fan of the Bambu printers because they just simply work.

You want to print something, they print something, done.

If you want to fiddle, then they’re the wrong printers, but if you want to model shit and make things then they’re really hard to beat right now.

And, yes, I have reservations about the closed sourced nature, but honestly ask yourself: are you going to contribute to the code? Are you going to build your own firmware to run on your printer? If the answer is no, then that’s probably not really a concern that should be driving your decisions.

I’ve worked with 3D printers for the last 8 years. The bambus are the most reliable, easiest to use, fastest, and have some of the best print quality I’ve seen.

I wish they were more open but their replacement parts are cheap and the value of everything just working is terrific.

Honestly, bambu. I was real high and mighty about how much shilling/marketing of bambus there was when they were coming out and hated the non open source but I caved and bought one after a handful of my friends got theirs. In 4 years of owning an ender 3 I went through 6 spools of pla and a half spool of abs. After getting my p1s 3 months ago I’ve already gone through 13 spools of pla. Tinkering with the ender was fun but I’d only print things I absolutely needed like replacement parts I modeled, and while I still print those on the bambu, I find myself printing trinkets very often since I don’t have to spend ages maintaining and tinkering with it to get it to print well. I might sound like an ad but honestly I’d say stay away from ender, my personal experience was 3d printers became my hobby, rather than using 3d printing to assist in my other hobbies. I can’t speak to the sv06 and if it’s as hands off as Bambu, though, so that could be an option. But as a former ender lover ($100 printer was great) it’s just so nice to not have to worry about tinkering.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I think I’m gonna get the a1 mini, they do have a ice deal on and I don’t think I’ll be printing large items and it’ll be nice if I want to print multicolour items in the future with the AMS lite.

Thanks!

Look you’re going to get a bunch of people coming in here saying Bambu this and Bambu that. And yeah get a Bambu. I love my A1 Mini. And will probably get an A1 next year.