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3D printers · Elegoo Neptune

Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro

3owners with an opinion
67%of verdicts positive
2/1positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and value; criticized for reliability.

What people wrote

Likes it
Bambu's marketing (handing them out like candy to every YouTuber) has propagated a lie that there's "Easy and locked down Bambu" and "Yucky hard to use custom printers". I have an Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro. It was like $220. I have put approximately $30 into it for the Raspberry Pi I installed Octoprint on, and even that's a stretch since I already owned the Pi. It prints just fine. Sits for months. Fires up every time. First layers perfect every time. The "printer being the hobby" is only true if you let it. Even cheap no name open source printers are really good these days, and in the high end there are plenty that are competitive with Bambu on print quality, out of the box experience, and features, often exceeding them. I dunno, I guess I just don't think having to let a printer talk to some fucking cloud service in China so I can start an STL print from my phone is all that important of a feature.
Doesn’t like it
I also found my printer (Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro) to be flawless for about a month until it started needing more conscious levelling and bed cleaning between prints, started getting fussier about temperatures (ended up replacing a possibly faulty thermistor that was making my bed temp fluctuate), and dealing with waterlogged filament and needing to solve that with filament driers etc. I'm not saying it /can't/ be smooth, but I contrast it to my dishwasher, which I expect to wash dishes, correctly and successfully, about 99/100 dishes (assuming I rinse them well), and then when it starts to decline in 3-5 years, that it's time for a new one. 3D printers are not to that level of reliability yet, nor are their support systems around slicing/supporting/etc.
Likes it
Bambu is surely the best option if you have the money to spend, but I wanted a budget option, so I got a used Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro for 150€ and I'm extremely happy with it. I'm shocked by how well the prints come out and how little fiddling it requires. I've set it up with Klipper now with an old mini PC I had around and a Playstation 3 Eye camera, feels nice to put old hardware to use and controlling / monitoring prints remotely is neat.