How Good Can a $185 3D Printer Be? (Bambu Lab A1 mini)

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I bought my first 3D printer today.

I can't believe how good the cheap entry level models are now. This is a Bambu Lab A1 mini and it cost a mere $250 Canadian (~$185 USD) retail for something with WiFi, a color touchscreen, camera etc. It even came with a 32GB SD card and a clock kit (quartz movement) to print your own clock. This is a random included DIY kit as other options include a mouse (the internals like the sensor, switches, scroll wheel etc you print your own shell) or a lamp. Seriously that's included with this $185 dollar printer!

It's fast, fairly quiet (runs a first time test suite to optimize motor noise and vibration), and is easy to use with auto bed leveling, filament loading, cutting etc. The only other 3D printer I've used before was a Creality Sermoon V1 Pro that cost maybe $650 IIRC when it came out apx 3.5 years ago. Granted that was enclosed BUT this thing destroys it otherwise. This is like 2x faster, maybe more(?) and I swear I can barely see the layer lines on the prints at all! That $650 unit didn't even have auto bed leveling you had to manually do it! I know that was 3.5 years ago and this is now but that's my point. This thing is printing higher quality, faster and is easier to use at a fraction of the cost.

With the app on my phone via WiFi I can literally just search a model I like, hit print and it starts right up and just does it. The Game Boy Color stand here was done this way. I literally just found one I liked searching in the app and hit print from my phone and this awesome stand existed only an hour and a half later! No skirt, no supports. Just a flawless print. The app also lets you view the print in progress via the built-in camera.

Seriously it can't get any easier than this at this point. They're totally here and ready for mainstream adoption. Many of you probably knew this already but I had no idea a $185 printer could make clean prints like this so quickly and so easily. I'm very impressed!