I’ve wanted to get into 3d printing for a while now and have been checking out the prusa mk4 and the bambu lab x1.
The bambu looks amazing in all aspects besides repairability and offline printing, with the latter one looking like a real deal breaker. It seems like all the more advanced features need a connection to the cloud, which I really don’t like.
On the other hand we have the prusa which seems to be running really rushed software still missing a lot of features that the hardware should be able to support and the price looks like way worse value compared to the stuff you get with the bambu. At least it’s repairable and no cloud bullshit.
Should I just come back in a year and hope that the mk4 software has gotten better or the bambu doesn’t require internet for all the cool stuff?
Edit: Just woke up and I want to thank everyone in this thread for the quality replies! I’ll look into 3d modeling first and if the prusa doesn’t anymore have janky alpha input shaping 2-3 months from now I’ll go with that, otherwise I’ll have to look for alternatives. Since I’d be running prints throughout the day while I’m not at home, I’d want something more reliable than an ender 3.
Edit 2: I just found out about the Bambu p1s, I might just get that one.
Replying to Edit2: the P1 is a great compromise! By the way there are some 3rd party companies making Bambu replacement parts. Also the slicer is open source and you can use OrcaSlicer instead of the default one to get more options out of it. @monerobull
I’ve also seen that bambu sells fairly priced replacement parts themselves and them offering upgrade kits for the P1P gives them some street cred as well. I was mostly worried because I heard that bambu printers upload all models into the cloud first and lose a ton of functionality without it (and the RFID spool thing could be used for DRM filament) but it looks like you can always print from SD card.