I got a P1S as a Christmas present for me and my wife. For now, my plan is to block its internet connection and stop using the Bambu app altogether. When/if it his stops working for me, what does the community recommend as a replacement for newbies like me, or future newbs who haven’t made this mistake?
Unfortunately an heir apparent isn’t readily… Apparent in my eyes. All have tradeoffs. To be fair, Bambu did too but hid it better from most consumers.
Qidi isn’t terrible, and they have a decent track record. Their use of klipper is a big plus as well. But multi material is still a promise with no release or reviews, and they have had some duds in their history.
Prusa is an obvious option, and previously wore the crown. They’re a good bit more expensive, but perhaps that’s the cost of a highly ethical company that is deeply invested in the community. MMU is well understood and works great, but isn’t integrated in their latest printers yet.
Voron is amazing but absolutely still not for beginners. Besides that they lack for absolutely nothing. Some kits are approaching the user friendliness of pre built, but care and feeding is generally a more technical endeavor.
Creality is a good place to start generally, but lacks for features.
Long story short, if a friend approached me and demanded a recommendation, I’d push a casual user to Qidi, a demanding user to a Prusa, and a tinkerer to a Creality with the understanding I’ll be printing voron parts in a year or two
I’ve been wanting to build a Voron for ages, I’ve modified an i3 clone from anycubic to such an extent it’s not reflective of it’s original quality at all. But I find the cost and technical challenge a little too high. Recently Sovol brought out an inspired by and using open source basis copy of the Voron 2.4. Sovol SV08. It’s looks quite reasonably priced, but it’s still a big chunk of what I would have spent on the Voron budget, and only needs reassembly out of the box not a full build. I’m just not hearing enough of how they run to be inspired yet. SV08