I had the Kobra S1 with the ACE Pro and I couldn't get rid of the thing fast enough, probably the worst electronic device I have ever owned in my entire life. In 8 months with it I completed one multi-colour print, and that was only with ~30 filament changes - to be fair to Anycubic, their support has been excellent and they kept shipping me more and more parts to replace, none of which would solve the fundamental issue of the ACE being generally unfit for the job. In the end if was just a fancy £300 filament dryer, and I decided that you know what, even my Ender 5 was giving me fewer issues than this whole thing. I got an H2D with 2 AMSes and yes, they cost a fortune but they just work. I finished a 9 colour print with 800 filament changes the other day and it just worked fine, not a single problem. I will always admit that maybe I was just unlucky with my S1 but both the printer and the ACE was horrendous experiences and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone based on my problems with them.
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My wife and I bought a Bambu P1S and I think the machine has had a duty cycle of 30% (excluding when we weren’t in town). It’s great fun. The majority of the models are ones we get from the Internet, it’s true. But my wife used some base open source components to design a block that goes into the bits of a playpen that we used to have and transform it into something that docks with the wall instead of only with itself[0]. And I have designed with Claude a few small things like card holders for the board game power grid[1]. I wish there were better AI tools for interacting with modeling software. As it stands I use OpenSCAD with Claude and that seems as good as it can be. There are Solidworks AI startups but they’re like for professionals. The Bambu P1S I have is quite low friction to set up. And I have an AMS2 Pro on top of it that feeds different kinds of filament (material and color) into the printer. I have just the one but now I wish I had more AMS hooked up. 0: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-01-15/Modeling_Wit... 1: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2026-01-11/Modeling_Wit...
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Bambu AMS is useful even if you're doing single color prints - you don't have to worry about filament running out, it'll just continue on the next roll if it has the same filament loaded on two slots. It can also print multiple (small) objects in the same job with only one filament change per object.
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Forum comments have been the best resource for me. (Followed by joining the printer’s users’ Facebook group to see what sort of issues are most common). The top SEO’d buyers guide websites are pretty useless in my experience. That said, having owned a dozen different printers for my own business’s prototyping work, the Bambu labs are truly fantastic. I retired 3 ultimaker S7s for 2 X1 Carbons and haven’t looked back. The Bambu labs legitimately print 3-4x faster and have as good if not better surface finish. AMS system is ingenious. Only thing I did was x-y squareness/skew compensation so both printers make the same sized parts (the printers aren’t perfectly square from the factory). There are guides on how to use M1005 gcode command.
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I heartily recommend the Bambu printers. I started with a Creality CR10, then an Anycubic Photon, then added an Ender 3 Pro. About a year ago I picked up a Bambu P1S and I was blown away. It's way more than just a step up from an Ender. Auto leveling, way, way faster, etc. I also ended up adding the AMS, which is super handy. Over time my conclusion with 3D printers is that the capital cost of the printer is (within reason) largely irrelevant. Unless you're on an extremely tight budget and are going to print in just one color, the cost of filament pretty quickly dominates. Especially with the inexpensive printers. $20-30 a pop adds up in a hurry.
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Prusa are clearly tools: you can fix it, modify it, and still have warranty apply. You can get after-sales parts, and service. Bambu are appliances. They can work great out of the box, but appliances do not have upgrade paths. You do not upgrade a microwave, you throw it out and get a new one. Or maybe it's more like a fridge, you can limitedly repair some bits, but you cannot wholesale upgrade from V1 to V2. Anyways bought the core one a few months ago, on kit, and did the whole assembly. The assembly was fun, and the resulting printer has been great. The print fails I had were all easily understandable, entirely due to adhesion issues to a dirty print plate. I also ordered the indx and am looking forward to capabilities that are not possible with the AMS system. I'm more of an artist though, so I'm looking for interesting and cool ways to make things, not just 3D printing figurines or sculptures etc.
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Two real paths: --- Option #1: Just buy the X1C. It's the best printer at your size range and price category (I own this, a Prusa Core One, and several creality machines). Frankly - spend the extra 100 dollars and get the Combo with the AMS 2. Even if you don't want to do multi-color prints, it saves more than enough time switching filaments quickly to make it worth it if you're printing with any regularity. This will let you use a 3d printer like it's a tool, and as someone who is printing CAD designed structural parts - it excels at just popping out decent parts, in all of the materials you want for structural parts. Lock it into LAN mode. Despite claims to the contrary it's quite repairable (ex - I just replaced the hotbed on mine because a lightning strike damaged the torque sensors [side note - it fucking finished the print on resume when my power came back up - even without working torque sensors on the z axis]). Parts are available, they aren't outrageously priced, and the instructions are plenty clear. Personally - I would strongly recommend this path. Understand what "good" looks like in the space before branching out into other requirements. --- Option #2: Build a Voron Kit. It's going to take you several days of full time assembly, It'll cost more for the same quality, it's going to have some maddening "dial it in" moments. But you get a machine that you fully understand. You'll need to be very comfortable with both hardware and software for the assembly.…
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> I am ok assembling the machine and learning how to dial it in. Get a Prusa Core One kit, or build a Voron. Bambulab should be off the table for their bait and switch behaviour. AMS is not particularly impressive and very wasteful. Get a Bondtech INDX down the road if you want true multi material printing.
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Case in point, the AMS. The Bambu system is so clean. It sits on top of the printer even if you don't have an enclosure. The Prusa system requires you to lay the spools out on runners on the table, taking up a ton of desk space.
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My 2-cents on this - as someone that runs a very small business that pretty heavily relies on a Bambu X1C - is that this isn't really going to push me to purchase the H2D any time soon, it is cool that it has laser-cutting ability and two nozzles to reduce waste, but I don't need that. What I really need is fast multi-color printing and I need to scale that up when needed. To me, the best offering they have right now is the A1-Mini with the AMS-Lite. And that is what I'll be ordering as the next purchase. The AMS-Lite is a completely different design from the AMS sold on the larger printers, and in my opinion, is a much better design. The AMS-Lite holds the filament reels from the center instead of the outer rim (which causes all sorts of issues with non-standard reels with the Original AMS) and it has a very simple filament path directly to the nozzle. This is going to save me a ton of time and wasted filament. At $389 for the combo of the AMS-Lite and the A1-Mini - I can scale this up as needed without a ton of concern for my bank account. It is cool that they are incorporating other features into their printers - but I hope they don't stagnate on their core 3d printing features, because it's what's set them apart from others by a long shot and their singularly focused products have become a staple for many small businesses i think.
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Frankly, the only advantage I see from a spec list for the Core One is a chamber exhaust (not heater, just exhaust). Compared to a P1P it’s missing a camera. Compared to the X1C it’s missing a camera, the LiDAR, and carbon rods. Also, the AMS solution on Bambu printers is much better than the MMU by Prusa.