The Best 3D Printer

Dave Gershgorn is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter and an avid 3D-printing enthusiast. He has printed through dozens of rolls of filament, has owned multiple printers, and has designed custom 3D-printable models for home improvement, product testing, and cosplay. His current personal printers are the Prusa i3 MK3S+ and the Anycubic Photon Mono M5s.

People who need to quickly make prototypes or custom plastic parts can get the most mileage out of a 3D printer. These machines are also useful tools for anyone who likes tinkering or teaching children about STEM concepts.

Beyond those specific situations, it’s also just plain fun to have a machine to print files that you find online, especially if you like tabletop role-playing games or any activity where you use small tokens, counters, or pieces. You can find plenty of downloadable designs online at 3D-model libraries such as Printables and Thingiverse.

The range of possibilities is even wider if you’re familiar with CAD (computer-aided design) software. An easy-to-use starting point is Tinkercad, free online 3D-modeling software from Autodesk. The same company also makes more advanced modeling software, called Fusion 360, which is free for hobbyists (and what we use personally).

But anyone can work with a 3D printer: Most printers are easy enough to use that a child (with adult supervision) can print any of the endless variety of toy designs available.

Be warned: No 3D printer is unbreakable. A day will come when you’ll need to replace a part or get your hands dirty in some other way.

Replacement parts are available for Bambu Lab’s A1 Mini and X1-Carbon, but not all 3D printers are equally easy to fix. You might want to avoid 3D printing altogether if you aren’t confident that you’d be able to perform a minor repair on the equivalent of a household appliance.

Prospective buyers should also be aware that the 3D-printing industry is in a constant state of upheaval. MakerBot, which was long considered the front-runner among home 3D printers, stopped marketing to hobbyists and home users several years ago in order to focus on commercial and educational institutions. We thought Prusa made the best 3D printers for hobbyists for a few years, and now we recommend printers from the startup Bambu Lab.

Many of the printers we’ve tested have come and gone within a few years. So it’s possible that you might someday find yourself without much customer support—or that a new breakthrough will suddenly leave you with outdated technology.

In addition, a 3D printer brings health and environmental concerns. When a printer melts plastic as part of the extrusion process, it releases volatile organic compounds and other particulates. The CDC recommends (PDF) using printers in a “negatively pressured area with a dedicated ventilation system,” which is not a feature found in your average home. Before buying a 3D printer, it’s a good idea to weigh how comfortable you are with exposure to some fumes.

3D printing creates a lot of plastic waste. Between failed prints, test prints, support material, and excess material purged while you’re switching filaments, if you 3D-print often, you’ll be left with a nontrivial amount of plastic that you can’t recycle through traditional means.

Though many manufacturers produce recycled filament, it’s difficult to find any that accept filament scraps from hobbyists. The few national recycling programs we’ve found are either expensive, such as this nearly $200 recycling box from Terracycle, or vague.

Prominent 3D printer maker Prusa has created a world map with smaller, local recycling initiatives that take printed plastic. (The map also lets Prusa printer owners add themselves to offer tech support, provide printing services, or just show off their printer.)

Prusa has tried to find a solution for its own larger-scale plastic waste, testing 10 different recycling plants before eventually deciding to start recycling the waste into filament on its own. In the course of that research, Prusa’s head of sustainability Vladimír Víšek learned that larger recycling plants have issues with 3D-printed plastic since the waste usually comes in very small quantities, and because it’s not readily apparent what kind of plastic a material might be.

Home filament-recycling machines, which allow you to turn bits of shredded plastic back into usable spooled filament, also exist. But they either cost thousands of dollars or need to be built painstakingly from scratch.

Many 3D-printing hobbyists turn to repurposing or minimizing plastic scraps themselves. I collect my PLA scraps in a bread-loaf pan and then place them in the oven at 300 degrees Fahrenheit until they melt into a brick. At the very least, this minimizes the tiny shards of plastic I’m throwing away.

The best way to combat waste, at least according to Víšek, is to think ahead and create less of it. His advice for more sustainable printing: Consider what you actually need to print, make sure your slicer settings minimize the amount of support material you have to print, and be sure to use up the last few feet of filament on each roll.

No matter what price range you’re considering, we’ve concluded that the best 3D printers offer the following features:

• High-quality prints: Without too much tweaking, the printer should put out smooth-looking models with layers that are 0.1 mm thick at most and barely visible.
• Easy-to-use hardware: Even a complete beginner should be able to put the printer together, load filament, start a print, and remove the finished model from the print bed. The bed should also level itself or be simple to level manually, since a sloping print bed can cause printing errors.
• Ample connectivity options: Ideally, you should be able to start a print over Wi-Fi or transfer the file over a USB cable. Loading files onto an SD card that you plug into the printer is also okay. A design that requires you to keep a computer tethered to the printer at all times via USB is a serious flaw but not necessarily a dealbreaker.
• Intuitive software: Beginners should be able to jump right into using a printer’s software, including making adjustments to models before printing. The software should come preloaded with print settings but provide options for more experienced users to fine-tune. It’s a big plus if a printer has a preconfigured profile in PrusaSlicer or UltiMaker Cura, our favorite slicing software. Our picks from Bambu Lab use their own slicer, called Bambu Studio, but are broadly compatible.
• Large-enough print volume: It would be nice to have the ability to print objects as large as you want, but the reality is that most models found in libraries such as Thingiverse are designed for small 3D-printer beds, with workarounds for combining several printed pieces to create a larger object. As a result, beginners need only a print bed that’s large enough to print models about the size of a small tissue box.
• Hotend and heated bed: A hotend that goes up to 300 degrees Celsius allows you to print the most common filaments, including PLA, ABS, PETG, TPU, nylon, and polycarbonate filaments. A heated bed, which ideally goes up to 100 degrees Celsius, prevents prints from warping, helps models stick to the print bed, and allows you to print using a wider range of materials.
• Compatibility with any brand of filament: Some companies embed chips in the spools of plastic that feed into their 3D printers, requiring you to buy refills directly from the printer manufacturer. Proprietary filament is generally more expensive, and if the company that makes it goes out of business, you’ll be unable to use your printer.
• Suited to everyday life: The machine should look at home sitting on a desk. Ideally, it isn’t too big or heavy, and it should be relatively quiet so you can’t hear it from every corner of the house. Although some printers are marginally faster than others, large prints can take days, and even small prints take hours. A quiet printer is much easier to live with. Printers should also be able to print in polylactic acid, or PLA, plastic. While melting any type of plastic releases volatile organic compounds and other particulates into the air, the CDC considers PLA to be a safer option (PDF). PLA also has a sweet, inoffensive smell. Still, it’s best for both children and adults to use a 3D printer in a well-ventilated room.
• Enclosed printing chamber: Enclosing the print space keeps prints at a consistent temperature to prevent warping and other printing imperfections. It’s an especially good idea to have an enclosed chamber if you are printing with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS, one of the two most popular printing materials, which is more prone to warping because it shrinks when it cools. Although enclosed printing chambers are nice to have, they’re not essential, and they’re actually fairly rare among inexpensive 3D printers.

We also take into account the company making the printers. Many 3D printer manufacturers have gone out of business and left customers without hardware or software support, while others have tried to lock customers into their own ecosystems using tricks such as proprietary filament. We try to weed such companies out when we can while researching printers to test, but we also keep an eye on companies whose products we currently recommend.

To test each printer, we time how long it takes to pull the machine out of the box and set it up on our desk, and we jot down notes on the initial software installation and navigation process. Then, we get to printing.

In our test prints, we look for obvious flaws. Mediocre prints have readily visible layers or imperfections but still look like a completed model. Failure takes many forms—everything from broken filament string that causes the print to stop to wild spaghetti-like misprints due to software or hardware errors.

Printers usually come with several models preloaded; we always start by printing one of those because they’re carefully optimized for the printer. Errors in such prints typically indicate a problem on the hardware end that we need to address. After the first successful print, we move on to designs we’ve found on Thingiverse.

For our 2024 testing, we chose the following standardized test prints:

• “3DBenchy” by CreativeTools
• “Nano All In One 3D printer test” from Printables member Steeveeet
• “Low-Poly Bulbasaur” by Thingiverse member flowalistik
• “Low-Poly Charmander” by Thingiverse member flowalistik
• “Cute Stylized Dinosaur Toy” by Printables member BMoArtist

These models had a range of detail, overhangs, and scale that would give us an impression of the printers’ strengths.

We also print all sorts of other models with each printer, including current popular models in libraries such as Printables and Thingiverse. Printing a variety of objects, some with tons of detail and others with plain, sloping sides, gives us a good idea of how a printer is likely to perform in the real world.

Almost any 3D printer is capable of creating successful models—experienced users know, or can figure out, how to tweak settings and hardware to get such results. But beginners, or even intermediate users like us, aren’t as likely to know what to do or to care enough to spend time fine-tuning. For the purposes of our testing, we give the printers the basic care they need to function—adhering to the company-recommended setup and settings—but we don’t tweak the printer or software to get better prints unless something goes wrong.

We also note how many times we have to repair a printer, how often each machine needs its print bed leveled, and how difficult it is to remove completed models from the print bed.

The ease of setting up the Bambu Lab A1 Mini is unparalleled in the 3D-printing world, and it’s largely why we think Bambu Lab printers are especially great for people who are just starting with 3D printing. We also found daily-operation tasks such as sending prints and changing filament to be painless, and we saw consistently high-quality prints from this machine. It’s small enough to fit on most desks without looming over everything else, as its larger siblings, the Bambu Lab P1P and X1-Carbon tend to do, but it prints just as quickly as those bulkier, more expensive models.

Setting it up and getting started is easy. The A1 Mini requires little assembly and has a guided setup process that requires a smartphone or other device that can read a QR code. After you make a Bambu Lab account and scan a code displayed on the A1 Mini’s screen, the printer appears in your account and becomes accessible through the Bambu Handy app or the Bambu Studio slicer software. The printer also does a full self-calibration, requiring no input or tinkering on your part.

It prints quickly and with good precision. We printed with the A1 Mini for weeks, making functional parts, miniature models, and other popular designs found on 3D-printing sites like Printables. The A1 Mini printed models with precision and high resolution, turning out high-quality results regardless of the model’s size or layer height. This printer’s constant calibration also helped prints stick to the bed well, as it had typical adhesion issues only when parts became very small. With this machine, we never needed to use glue sticks, blue tape, hair spray, or any of the other bed-adhesion tricks that we’ve relied on in the past with other printers.

An optional upgrade makes multicolor printing simple. Bambu Lab introduced the A1 Mini alongside an automatic material-switching machine called the AMS Lite. That add-on costs $200 in a bundle with the A1 Mini or $250 by itself. (Note, however, that it works only with the Bambu Lab A1 series of printers.) Multicolor, or multi-material, printing is usually an add-on feature exclusive to higher-end machines that cost hundreds more than the A1 Mini, such as the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon and Prusa MK4. You can load up to four different filaments onto the AMS Lite, and if they’re Bambu Lab filaments, the printer automatically scans the RFID tags inside and recognizes the material; the Bambu Studio software also recognizes the material and lists it as an option for multicolor printing.

You can do the same thing with any filament and just manually set the filament type and color on the printer. We found, however, that while Bambu Lab filament spools fit well on the AMS Lite’s spool holder, other spools from companies like Prusa were too tight. Some spools, such as cardboard spools from Creality and Overture, fit okay, but others, like the plastic spool for NinjaFlex TPU, were a tight squeeze and wouldn’t fit on the holder.

It’s also important to note that multicolor printing uses a large amount of filament, specifically purging a lot of plastic to ensure that the colors don’t mix in the nozzle; in one test print, we ended up with nearly twice as much waste as printed plastic. Plan the colors on your prints carefully.

It has a smaller print bed than some other printers, but it can fit on a desk. The A1 Mini’s print bed measures 180 by 180 by 180 mm, or about a 7-inch cube. This isn’t the best size for making large props, but you can fit a surprising amount into a 7-inch cube, and the size of the bed didn’t seem limiting during our testing.

It’s best for simple materials such as PLA and PETG. Most hobbyists don’t need plastics with superior tensile strength or increased chemical resistance, so even though this printer is limited to the basics like PLA and PETG, we think that’s reasonable.

Tasks such as switching filament are easy to do and well explained. The A1 Mini’s small touchscreen serves as the main way for you to interact with the printer. You can load models from an SD card, move the print head around, swap filaments, and have the printer perform self-checks.

All of these options are intuitively arranged in menus, and the printer clearly tells you the steps it’s performing during any task: For instance, when you’re switching to new filament, the printer has a checklist of tasks that you can watch it run through, and it prompts you to make sure that the old filament has been completely purged from the nozzle. If not, it gives you the option to push a bit more new filament out, which you can repeat until all the old filament is gone. Though this process might seem relatively simple, Bambu Lab does a good job of guiding nontechnical people through these somewhat involved procedures for maintaining a machine.

It reminds you when maintenance is due. Unlike many other 3D printers, the A1 Mini runs diagnostics often, and it delivers pop-up messages when a belt needs tightening or a part requires lubrication. Accompanying these messages are QR codes that you can scan for documentation on how to perform the maintenance. The previous standard of home 3D-printer maintenance was hoping that someone on YouTube had made a video about the problem you’re having, so these built-in reminders are pretty nice.

It’s repairable—as long as Bambu Lab continues to sell the parts. Though you can’t print your own parts, as you can with a Prusa machine, Bambu Lab does clear a high bar when it comes to repairability. In addition to upgrades, the company sells replacement parts on its website, and it offers guides with pictures and videos for the installation of new parts, as well as periodic maintenance.

Bambu Lab says it will receive more updates. The company states that it will release bug fixes and feature updates for the A1 Mini until September 2028 and security updates until September 2030. But CEO Ye Tao told us that he expects to support printers beyond the dates listed online, which the company puts on the website for regulatory compliance.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

• The A1 Mini’s filament-spool holder hangs on the back of the printer. We found that when filament was pulled from the extruder, sometimes the spool would twist diagonally, jamming in place and causing print failures. This happened far less when we used Bambu Lab’s own filament spools, but you can quickly solve this problem by printing a better spool holder.
• The AMS Lite’s spool holder doesn’t accept every spool of filament, though it can hold a decent variety. Finding a brand of filament that you like and that fits on the AMS Lite may take some experimentation, especially if you were previously using Prusament or another company’s custom spool.
• In August 2023, some Bambu Lab printers started printing overnight in a terrifying display of seemingly sentient robotics. This turned out to be an error in Bambu Lab’s cloud, which the printers are connected to at all times unless they’re in LAN Mode. These reports were a disturbing thing to read as we prepared to make this recommendation, but we were satisfied by the company’s swift response and its communication with its customers after it learned more information. That response included a promise to fix all machines that were damaged, update the firmware of its machines, update its cloud infrastructure, and rework the LAN Mode.

The Bambu Lab X1-Carbon doesn’t make faster or higher-quality prints than our top pick, but it does have a larger and enclosed print bed for people who print with specialty plastics such as ABS or those infused with carbon fiber. It also includes reliability upgrades, such as a lidar scanner that works alongside other sensors to automatically level the bed, as well as automated maintenance reminders.

It’s a high-quality, reliable printer. We printed with the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon over the course of six months and found it to be an easy, reliable printer to work with. Its prints, from small tabletop miniatures to larger custom-designed pieces that needed to hold weight, turned out consistently well. The X1-Carbon is also much faster at printing than competitors—twice as fast as the Prusa MK3S+, our previous upgrade pick—yet it maintains the same print quality.

Bambu Lab’s software makes wireless printing easy. Though Bambu Lab has clearly built its slicer using Prusa’s open-source PrusaSlicer, it has added many of its own features. Most important of those is an automatic process for connecting your printer and setting up wireless printing. It’s a delight to see the X1-Carbon automatically connect to the slicer. Other printers, such as the Prusa MK4, require navigating wireless settings and API keys, and cheaper printers don’t have a wireless connection at all, instead requiring a DIY Raspberry Pi print server called OctoPrint for remote or online printing.

In addition, you can manage certain aspects of the printer when you confirm the print job, such as whether you want to perform various calibrations or record a time-lapse. The printer’s included 1080p camera is adequate for monitoring your print.

It automatically calibrates itself. Most 3D printers still require some form of manual calibration, whether that’s setting the z-height of the nozzle or leveling the bed. The X1-Carbon levels its own bed using a lidar sensor and force sensors in the bed, and in our experience this feature resulted in a long series of great prints.

Prints still failed from time to time, naturally, but those were slicing errors where pieces needed more contact with the build plate, rather than errors with the first layer.

It also issues maintenance reminders. We liked that after a few months, we got a pop-up on the X1-Carbon’s screen reminding us to clean the machine’s carbon rods, which the print head uses to glide across the x-axis. A little while later, the printer reminded us to clean the z-axis lead screws.

Each reminder on the X1-Carbon’s screen appeared along with a QR code to scan with a phone; the link showed us how to perform that particular maintenance. The display of these QR codes is the best use we saw of the X1-Carbon’s 5-inch, 720p touchscreen, which you otherwise use for normal printing tasks.

You can order new parts, as long as Bambu Lab sells them. Bambu Lab sells a wide array of replacement parts on its website, but they are parts that only Bambu Lab can make. Bambu Lab also provides detailed instructions and YouTube videos on its website regarding how to install and replace many parts of this 3D printer, a valuable resource for many owners.

Though restricting parts to proprietary designs is a standard business practice in consumer electronics, it’s a departure from the open-source, DIY mentality promoted by many pioneers of 3D printing and to which 3D printing owes much of its current development.

Bambu Lab guarantees years of updates. The company has committed to provide bug fixes and new features for the X1-Carbon until May 2027 and security patches until May 2029. As with the A1 Mini, CEO Ye Tao told us that he expects to support the X1-Carbon beyond those stated dates.

It’s capable of printing with many engineering-grade materials. Whereas the A1 Mini is mainly intended for printing with plastics such as PLA, PETG, and TPU, which are cheap and strong enough for most hobbyist purposes, the X1-Carbon can print with a much wider variety of filament. Its enclosed print space and heat bed, which can reach 150 degrees Celsius, allow it to print with ABS filament, and its direct-drive extruder and hardened-steel nozzle allow for flexible material and carbon-fiber-infused plastics.

It’s fully enclosed. Unlike the A1 Mini, the X1-Carbon is fully enclosed, which helps regulate the temperature of the print area. This makes printing with material such as ABS far easier, since it prevents cooler, ambient air from causing the plastic to curl and warp before it sets fully. The enclosure also reduces the noise of the fans, as well as the clanking noise that the printer makes whenever it cleans the nozzle.

On top of that, the enclosure makes the printer easier to use if you print only once in a while or go weeks or months between bursts of printing activity. Many other 3D printers aren’t enclosed, so they have delicate exposed parts or can get dusty in storage. In testing, we were able to power the X1-Carbon down, put it away, pull it back out after a week or two, plug it in, and run a self-calibration and get back to printing in minutes.

Bambu Lab allows tinkerers to install an alternate operating system. Bambu Lab’s tight software and hardware integration makes it easy for the company to lock down the printer, preventing the use of alternative software. However, the company has recently allowed a one-way path for X1-Carbon owners to gain root access and upload a more customizable operating system called X1Plus, as long as they’re comfortable with voiding their warranty.

This option might be appealing to only a small number of X1-Carbon owners, but it’s emblematic of the company’s willingness to work with third-party developers—and to listen to community backlash—in a way that makes us more confident recommending Bambu Lab printers.

If you want a larger print bed and Bambu Lab features but don’t want to break the bank: The Bambu Lab P1P was our previous top pick in this guide due to its great printing performance and, at the time, competitive price for the features. These days the Bambu Lab A1 Mini offers the vast majority of what hobbyists need in a 3D printer—mainly ease of use and quick, quality prints with basic materials—for much less and in a smaller package.

If you want a cheaper option, especially for kids: The Monoprice MP Cadet is a great choice for printing smaller models, and it’s a perfect intro to the hobby. In our testing, this $200 printer’s output looked just as good as the results from printers that cost twice as much, and its small size makes it especially desk friendly.

Its removable, unheated bed is small at 100 by 105 by 100 mm, but it’s also more suitable for little fingers, and it releases finished prints with ease (though it puts your prints at risk of warping). However, this machine is slower than more expensive printers such as the Bambu Labs A1 Mini and X1-Carbon, and its wireless connectivity is a bit more annoying to set up.

This printer is a few years old, and recently it has been going in and out of stock. But if you can find this machine, it’s a good budget option.

If you’re a tinkerer or an open-source contributor: The Prusa MK4 is a worthy successor to the MK3S+, as it adds faster printing, a new extruder and hotend design, built-in wireless connectivity, and fully automated calibration. It makes prints nearly identical to those of competitors, and it’s quieter while doing so.

However, it’s the fourth iteration of Prusa’s design, which was built for engineers and the DIY-minded, while the Bambu Lab A1 Mini and X1-Carbon represent the first generation of a more user-friendly printer.

If you’re knowledgeable about computers and inclined to support a company dedicated to open source, or if you’re experienced in 3D printing and in need of a reliable workhorse, the MK4 has a lot of modern features and a familiar design. And if you’re especially security-conscious, you may appreciate the fact that you have to choose to connect it to the internet, unlike our Bambu Lab picks that connect by default.

For most people, who are likely to want a printer that works right out of the box and are not concerned about how it’s made, either Bambu Lab printer is a better option.

We’re gearing up for our next round of 3D printer testing, in which we’ll focus on midsize and large printers. Among midsize printers, we’re most interested in testing the Anycubic Kobra 3, the Artillery Sidewinder X4 Pro, the Bambu Lab A1, and the Creality Ender 3 V3. These printers all have bed sizes around 250 mm and include features such as automatic bed leveling and wireless printing. Among larger printers, we’re looking to test the Creality K2 Plus, the Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus, and the Sovol SV08.

3D printers can be finicky, and performing basic maintenance can go a long way toward preventing breakdowns and print flaws. Here’s what you can do to keep your printer running reliably:

• If your printer doesn’t automatically level its print bed, periodically check the print bed and adjust it if necessary.
• Plastic remnants can build up over time on the print bed. A cloth and warm water are usually enough to remove them; more-stubborn grime should come away with a bit of rubbing alcohol that’s at least 90% isopropyl alcohol.
• If you’re having trouble with uneven layer lines on the sides of your print, keep in mind that this is often caused by loose axis belts, or a lack of lubrication on the screw that raises and lowers the z-axis. Many printers allow you to tune the tension of the belts, and you can clean the z-axis screw with 90% isopropyl alcohol and lubricate it with a dry-film PTFE lubricant.
• Be sure to follow each printer maker’s rules for heating up and cooling down the printer, which helps to prevent clogs.

Finally, if you’re running into issues with prints sticking to your print bed, and adjusting print temperatures doesn’t help, there could be another solution.

Many printers now come with removable, flexible print beds. If your printer has one, remove the bed and carefully bend it to release your model. Don’t force it, or you’ll risk damaging the bed’s finish. If the print is still stuck, heat the bed back up to its printing temperature and see if the model pops off easier. Next, use a scraper to carefully unstick the edges of the print and then move in a sawing motion toward the center.

If you’re still stumped, another trick you can try is to remove the print bed and stick it in the freezer for an hour. This should shrink the print a little and make it easier to remove.

If you read 3D-printing forums and subreddits, you’ll see many experienced 3D-printing enthusiasts recommending the Creality Ender-3, Ender-3 V2, or Ender-3 Pro as a first printer. The Ender-3 V2 is often available on sale at Microcenter for just $100, and it’s a better printer than our former budget pick, the Monoprice MP Cadet, on nearly every metric. You’ll also find an avid community of Ender-3 owners who post DIY upgrades and guides on how to use the machine, a crucial aspect of learning to operate the printer and troubleshooting when things go wrong.

So why don’t we recommend an Ender-3 model as a top pick or even a budget pick? In our experience, we’ve found that the Ender-3 line requires more setup and more maintenance, and in comparison with our picks it poses a much more difficult learning curve for those who are just getting into 3D printing. As an example, crucial tasks such as leveling the print bed on the Ender-3 require using separate calibration files that might have to be run multiple times or manually moving the print head across the bed, in contrast to Bambu Lab’s and Monoprice’s easier, more automatic workflows. This manual work adds many minutes of preprint setup for a 3D-printing newcomer versus seconds for our top picks, and in turn it leads to a higher chance of the machine sitting in the corner gathering dust. These processes become rote after time and are made easier by optional upgrades, but initially they require some dedication to learn.

Bambu Lab earned its top-pick and upgrade-pick status for its printers by prioritizing the user experience when building its machines and software. The Bambu Lab printers we recommend are especially easy to set up, and they print reliably without the need for any manual calibration.

That doesn’t mean we don’t like the Ender-3 line. They’re great machines for those who are already mechanically adept or who don’t get easily frustrated while learning a new, complex hobby. However, they’re not the best 3D printers for most people.

This is not a comprehensive list of all the 3D printers we have tested. We have removed any models that have been discontinued or that no longer meet our requirements.

The AnkerMake M5 is an interesting printer that’s well built, easy to set up, and capable of producing fast, high-quality prints. What impressed us most was its speed, as it printed test models nearly twice as quickly as our former upgrade pick, the Prusa MK3S+. (The Bambu Lab X1-Carbon is still faster, though.) Further iterations of this machine might be picks in the future, but this first version was particularly loud in our tests, and the slicer software has not been officially released, as it’s currently listed as being in beta; that beta software lacks many features found in PrusaSlicer and UltiMaker Cura. In our testing, we had some issues with layer adhesion for small details, likely due to the machine’s blistering print speeds, and we also struggled with bed adhesion for smaller parts.

The Artillery Sidewinder X2 was previously our pick for large-format printing, but it’s a few years old now and no longer competitive with 3D printers released in the past year. These days we’re looking for a more automated setup and integrated wireless printing, which the Sidewinder X2 lacks.

The Creality Ender-2 Pro, a $170 competitor to the Prusa Mini+, seems built to look nearly identical to that model. However, in our tests its menus were confusing and made the printer more difficult to operate than any of our picks. Its fans were also drastically louder than those of any other printer we tested.

The Creality Ender-3 S1 Plus is an addition to the Ender-3 line with a high-resolution display and a larger print volume. We found it to be louder, more complicated to set up, and more difficult to level in comparison with the Artillery Sidewinder X2.

The Creality K1 is the company’s new flagship printer, and its design seems to be heavily based on, if not copied from, the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon. We found its print quality to be consistently worse, and although we could monitor the printer from Creality’s app, the software was crammed full of things to buy and ads for Creality’s subscription service.

The Prusa Mini+ was a previous top pick in this guide and remains a great printer. However, for about $200 less, Bambu Lab has made a printer with a similar design that’s easier to use and requires less calibration. Prusa recently updated the Mini+ to print just as quickly as the Bambu Lab A1 Mini or Prusa MK4, but the A1 Mini’s price difference and ease of use still have us favoring the Bambu Lab machine here.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.