I was in the same boat a few years ago. I ended up paying the premium and got a prusa mini. I don't regret it at all, the thing prints and prints and prints. The few times my prints failed were just because I was getting a little crazy with the settings.

A relative of mine was also looking to get a printer and I helped with the research. He ended up settling on an elegoo and so far has had a great experience with it.

Creality printers generally have the reputation of a tinkerer's printer, so if you don't want to spend a lot of time meticulously dialing in your print settings I would probably steer away from them.

My advice is to buy based on the availability of replacement parts. A red flag to me is a brand where there are no third party nozzles or hot end components. Because inevitably something is going to go wrong and you’re gonna have to fix something. Some printers make it really hard to get at the hot end components which will make it really intimidating to troubleshoot for the first time.

Depends on your budget and how deep you want to dive.

I bought Ender 3v2 as my first 3D printer, and it traumatised me to the point I've not printed anything in a year. 3D printing has it's learning curves, but Creality gives you no ropes here. Which is great and ultra frustrating at the same time. You will learn a lot about 3D printing, even stuff that you don't really need. But it will take you a long time and loads of sweat and tears for your first successful 3D print (unless you are lucky and your printer will be good to go from the box).

Yeah, it’s pretty overwhelming when you’re first starting out. Aside from budget constraints and the type of printing material used, you need to ask yourself, do I want to tinker with the hardware AND have the time to do so. That will steer you in the right direction.

Personally, I don’t, which is why I bought a Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro several months ago. It’s very similar to the S1 Pro in many ways. I’d recommend taking a look at that one since it’s been well reviewed and also has been working like a champ for me. It’s not perfect, but it’s got the best bang for your budget, especially when first starting out, and it works right out of the box.

Creality’s been a popular brand for years due to the low price point of their printers and its modding community. However, their base printers use cheaper parts, plus their QA isn’t always that great, so I would hesitate recommending them for your first printer.

Overall, nearly anything from Prusa will print with beautiful results, and if you run into a snag, they’ve got robust support to back you up, justifying why they’re more expensive than other printers.

Other companies like Bambu Labs and Flashforge make easy to use 3d printers, with the former getting a lot of deserved hype for how fast their models can print. While they both offer great products, keep in mind that they use closed source designs and require you to buy replacement parts from them, which can hurt you in the long term if something’s discontinued and/or if the company folds. If all that doesn’t jive with you, look elsewhere.

TL;DR: Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro over the S1 Pro since Creality can ship lemons; Prusa = quality + support + $$$; closed sourced printers offer simplicity now with potential drawbacks later.

I have an S1 Pro and I hate it. Creality support is terrible and I've constantly had issues.

Replaced multiple parts and cables. When I can tolerate it, I'm going to try a TH3D mainboard in it and see if that gets it anywhere near reliable.

My next printer will probably be an Elegoo on the cheap end or a Prusa if I can afford it.

Keep in mind that you are buying into a hobby, not buying a tool.

Hi! I was just going through the same dilemma, so you might find comments under my post helpful. Be warned though, as you lean towards S1 Pro, I was also biased, albeit towards Prusa MINI+.

If you are looking for minimal fussing about, get a prusa or a bambu. You will spend more money that route though, and the bambu is a closed system so you buy official parts from bambu when something breaks. Personally I am a fan of sovol and elegoo printers over reality, if you are looking for a bed slinger design. (creality is the name everyone recognizes so they have market share, but really they aren't making anything better than (or in many cases even as-good as) anyone else.)

I'm also a big fan of flsun deltas, but don't think I'd go for the v400... Super racer is a great machine and the q5 is a fantastic starter printer and cheap to start, if a bit limited in build area. But if I had the money to spend on a v400 I'd likely buy a bambu (or build a rat rig or voron, actually) instead.

Depends how hands on or off you want it to be. I wanted complete ownership so I went with an open source one and did Klipper and other mods and after all that its maintenance free but certainly not a short road. Know it inside out though so no relying on anyone else to fix it which was important to me.

If you want good support and relatively hands off Id do Prusa or Bambu

Thanks for this question: I’m also looking at starting this as a new hobby, and I’m also an adult who would prefer to pay a little more to avoid constant fussing. I haven’t gone very far into looking into it though, except goi g to my local shop and saying “cool! But I wonder what’s different about different machines”

If you look how cheap creality printers are, they are amazing. I never owned one, but I like S1 Pro much more than ender 3. It has all metal hotend, direct drive extruder, cr touch, filament sensor, magnetic pei sheet so actually it has what most people buy for cheap machines. Even tho they both are cheap, I dislike wheels instead of proper rods or rails, 4 point bed leveling and bed slinger design. Ive seen loads of perfect prints coming from ender, but Im sure you need some luck and loads of skill and patience for that. If you are prepared to recieve faulty parts and fix whats broken you can enjoy this hoby with creality. Dont expect much support from creality, but there is loads of people that can help on lemmy im sure. I heared good about sovol sv06 (prusa clone) so check that out, its same price range.

Better one but much more expensive is prusa, same kind of machine but better support and build quality.

Other than that most people recommend bamboolab p1p but thats not open source and also more expensive.

Whatever you buy have fun

I have the S1 (non pro version). I purchased it around a month ago and have been loving it! Sure, it requires a little bit of tinkering, but ultimately if I have the z-offset correct for the first layer, it prints great. I imagine there are quicker printers out there, and ones that have more features. But for an entry printer, I cant complain. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out!

I got an Ender 3 for Christmas, it was great - but it's limited if you don't get a bunch of upgrades. But I did learn a lot about how 3D printing works.

I recently got a Prusa Mk4, and I'm very happy with it. Prints like a dream, is much faster than the Ender 3, and is much quieter as well. Time will tell if long term reliability is as good as I've heard, but short term it's been very reliable.

I've heard a lot of people suggest Bambu for the same price - but honestly I'm pretty skeptical of how they run their business. For some reason, they encrypt log files. Their support staff gave Grant of 3D Musketeers a terrible support experience when he had problems with his printer. Recently they had a cloud outage that resulted in printers starting up unexpectedly and starting to print automatically, which in some cases resulted in physical damage to the printer when there was a previous print on the bed. I would wait at least a year for them to sort out their business.

I'd recommend a Bambu printer. Cost to benefit is pretty good, and they're very easy to use. Someone touched on their recent misfortune with the cloudstorage thing, which is a fair criticism, but I don't think it should ice you out from them. I've had X1 Carbon, with AMS, for a while now and it has been nothing but an absolute breeze for me to use. Also to note, my printer wasn't affected at all by their recent issue. I switch my printer off which I think may have removed me from the situation.

Can anyone comment on integration with Home Assistant, for whatever printer you’re recommending?

While I haven’t yet done homework on printing, I did like that Home Assistant has an OctoPrint integration so you can see or notify on printer status. It looks like the Prusa models, at least, are proprietary

A big important question is do you want your hobby to be 3d printing or 3d printers? If it's 3d printing, save up and pay the premium for one of the more appliance-like ones that just works out of the box like the Bambu X1 Carbon. If it's 3d printers, the skies the limit because you'll probably end up replacing almost every part over time to upgrade/tweak everything