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.
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.
The Camera livestream and even the ‘lan Mode’ seem to be locked behind cloud. I can not get this thing to work without internet access, tried it several times. Also the mobile app does not work in lan mode.
It is really frustrating to want to start a print on a 2k€ machine in lan mode without internet connection, when the slicer is unable to connect to the printer and you have to rely on a sdcard. I’ll absolutely sell my X1 carbon combo kickstarter version for a prusa xl, for the pure sake of cloud hate.