I think it comes down to whether you mind waiting a year or not to print your first print. I’d personally just jump in and buy something even if it’s not exactly what you want.

Much like computers, printers are always advancing and waiting a year might mean you wind up seeing some other new feature on the horizon a year from now and then have to wait an additional year.

We’ve been getting by without proprietary hardware or multifilament printers for years, so it’s not as if either of these printers are the only way to get into the hobby.

Years ago I was discussing a 3d printer with my best friend. His suggestion was to start making a list. A list of 10 things that I wanted to create with the 3d printer that also were not things just downloaded from the internet. When I got to 10 then it was ok to make a purchase. So I made the list, and slowly it got to the 10th item. Once I got to 10, I went ahead and bought a printer. It was then that I realized one thing. I should have bought the damn thing when I got to number 2… If you have things you want to print out, jump in there. You are never going to find a ‘perfect’ printer, and will most likely have to do some tinkering, but that’s part of the fun. I have printed so many cool things with my printer and years later I am still happy that I got it when I did.

I still use a virtually antique ultimaker 2, it does most things a modern printer does, just a bit slower.

If you get an open source printer[0] like voron, jubilee, or ender 3 then they can always be upgraded if/when new stuff comes out anyway.

[0] the prusa i3 mk3 is open source, but I think the i3 Mk4 is closed source unfortunately.

Mate I dont own any of them, but open source is easy life. Prusa uses marlin afaik which is awesome and you can always change to klipper which is even better imo. Im in this hoby for 10+ years and prusa was always recommended by users. Bamboo looks amazing, but I wouldnt go for baby company with properary crap over big and famous prusa, the inventor of this kind of printers.

Also dont wait, just buy one. They didnt change that much hardware wise after adding heated bed. In my opinnion 3D printers are much better now compared to 10y ago, but 90% because of the community. Hardware is better, software is much much better, but community is what makes it rly good for new people. It means you can buy any popular device and you will get better support than any company can even imagine. Even better if you go open source route.

Whatever you chosey there are plenty of resources online including Lemmy, arm yourself with patience and enjoy the ride

If I waited until printers were completely fool-proof, I would never have gotten one. Instead I jumped in 6yrs ago and I’ve printed so many useful things and a lot of toys. Most rooms in my house have at least one printed item in them because of how useful it is.

Yes I’ve had my share of failures and have had to rebuild a printer a ton of times while learning how it worked, but I also learned a lot of new skills.

• Soldering used to be scary and now it’s no big deal.
• I can de-pin connectors and build new adapters instead of spending $8-10 for someone to ship me one from Amazon.
• With TinkerCAD I can knock out roughly designed parts that are ready to go in a few hours instead of waiting days/weeks

From learning all of those skills I’ve swapped the motherboard and rewired my first printer to have bed levelling and be whisper quiet, 3d printed an RC car, designed parts for my vehicles, completely overhauled my sim racing setup, the list goes on.

If you want to get in to it and have the money to get started, go for it. I started with something like an Ender 3 and still use it today. You don’t need an expensive machine if you want to learn how to maintain it. It all depends on what your goal is with 3d printing.

Can you model stuff in 3D?

If not. Hold off and learn 3D modelling first.

If so, jump in now. Nothing is coming down the pipeline in the next year or two that will be game-changing on the 3D Printing side of things.

Don’t buy any printer that’s not a CoreXY style, everything else is sub-optimal. At least FDM printers that is.

What features are locked behind the cloud for the X1? We have several at work and they’ve been fantastic. Repairs are easy enough, they have decent documentation. While the parts are proprietary, they are pretty affordable.

I do not expect that the Mk4 will have caught up to the Bambu in 1 year since it’s missing physical hardware that seems necessary to do so. Here are some examples:

Input shaping calibration for a specific machine benefits from having an accelerometer. The Mk4 needs a module that can attach to the extruder and the bed. The current beta firmware with input shaping only allows for Prusa’s universal preset setting instead of allowing you to measure the frequency responses of your own machine. Critical reviews of the current input shaping implementation show subpar performance with excessive smoothing and high frequency artifacts. I expect that comes down to inability to calibrate your specific machine and environment.

When you print with a new filament, especially a new manufacturer, you usually need to tune a filament profile to get better printing results. With the Mk4 this is a manual process, and this is where many new to 3d printing quickly get frustrated with failed or poor quality prints. The lidar system on the X1 has been fantastic for automatic pressure advance and flow calibration right out of the box and I’ve found I largely do not need to maintain custom filament profiles for the Bambu.

Webcam support and failed print detection are absent from the Mk4. The closest feature the Nextruder assembly supports is crash detection via its load cell sensor and I’m not entirely sure if the Mk4 even has that enabled. If you attach a webcam to the frame and run octoprint / something else standalone, you’ve again thrown off the preset input shaping calibration.

It’s an i3 style printer or “bed slinger,” which is fine on it’s own, but it will never reach the same speeds as core-xy because it’s physically moving the mass of your printed object sitting on the bed. Printing speeds aside, you’ll potentially run into taller objects wobbling slightly as they are moved.

I really like Prusa’s open source commitment, and I’m still in line to purchase a multitool Prusa XL, but I cannot recommend waiting for the Mk4 to improve and reach parity with the Bambu if that’s your expectation. If it doesn’t do what you want it to do today, I’m not sure it ever will.

As for cloud connectivity on the Bambu, you’ll really have to consider just how important that is to you given the significant tradeoffs. Minimally you can print from the sd card or use lan mode. It looks like you currently lose the camera and mobile app connectivity with lan mode, but I haven’t tried this myself and these are at least software aspects that could easily improve.

Ive had this x1c for a grand total of 4 weeks and i have made a ton of prints already. However, i am starting to get clogging issues and it was much harder to diagnose/deal with than my older printers.

If you just want to get your feet wet, get the prusa.