• Price: $429

You know how at Christmas we often get puzzles and jigsaws and all kinds of stuff like that? Yeah, they’re dull, aren’t they? This Christmas, why not build yourselves a fully functional 3D printer instead?

The Original Prusa Mini+ is a small 3D printer with a build volume of just 180 x 180 x 180 mm, but it comes as a kit alongside Prusa Research’s famously excellent build guide and documentation. If you’re a family that loves creative technology as well as building something from a collection of bits, this could be a hugely fun way to spend the holiday season.

More on the Mini+

Original Prusa Mini+ Review: Best Small 3D Printer

Despite one or two flaws, this is a printer we have a real soft spot for, and for the most part, it provides a polished, deeply enjoyable 3D printing experience. Just remember to follow those instructions to the dot!

• Price: $999 (pre-order only)

Forget the budget, there’s always somebody special in your life who deserves something a bit extravagant, isn’t there?

If that person is us (and it should be) then keep your Cartier shiny things and your well-packaged items of luxury clothing and instead, get us a Bambu Lab X1.

Bambuzled

Bambu Lab X1 Carbon (AMS) Review: Fresh Thinking, No Tinkerin'

This exciting new 3D printer has a bit of a buzz around it right now, as well as a 256 x 256 x 256 mm build volume, a CoreXY motion system, can print exotic filament varieties, and looks, to be quite honest, very damn cool. Oh, but don’t let the looks distract you, there’s also AI print detection, lidar-assisted bed leveling, an automatic material system, and Wi-Fi connectivity. So much more than a pretty face. The only downside? It’ll need to be a pre-order, so don’t bank on it being squished under the tree this Christmas.

Price? Well, a buck under four figures, but hey, we’ve earned it. Spoil your favorite editors this Christmas.

• Price: $1,399

In a similar vein to the Prusa Mini+ mentioned above, the Voron 2.4 is also a kit. A very big kit.

This is the sort of project that’ll keep you going, potentially, for a few weeks. A learning experience, a journey, highs and lows, frustration, delight, drama, energy drinks, late nights… building a Voron 2.4 could leave you experiencing or feeling all of those things.

At the end of the build, you’ll have one of the most capable and exciting 3D printers a consumer can get their hands on. The question is, are you willing to go through it to get it?

Well, there’s only one way to find out.

• Price: $550

Elegoo’s excellent Saturn 2 is currently the best medium-sized resin 3D printer that you can purchase, in our opinion.

With an 8K resolution LCD that delivers ultra-fine print details across a spacious 219 x 123 x 250 mm build volume, users get the ability to enjoy printing big but without sacrificing the attention to detail that smaller printers often provide.

Check Out Our Review

Elegoo Saturn 2 Review: The Best Mid-Sized Resin 3D Printer

Elegoo also made a host of quality of life changes to the second Saturn, including a screen protector, an easier-to-handle print-plate release knob, air filtration, and even the possibility to hook it up to a separate, heavy-duty ventilation system. All in all, it’s one of the best resin printers we’ve used in 2022, and at around $550, it’s also fairly priced.

• Price: $320

Elegoo’s pretty good at making resin 3D printers. The Saturn 2 could be out of the budget for a few people, but the Mars 3 is far less likely to be, priced at just over $200 when it’s on sale.

Alas, a New Mars!

Elegoo Mars 3 Review: The Best Resin 3D Printer

It’s a resin 3D printer that, like the Saturn 2 listed above, is very easy to use, prints with minimal fuss, and with a 143 x 90 x 165 mm build volume, it’s not a bad size at all for something that could be considered a smaller resin printer. It also comes equipped with a 4K monochrome LCD, and its 35 micron print resolution allows for some finely rendered details in the prints.

Great prints, low price tag, minimum effort from the user – that’s the Elegoo Mars 3. It’s a fun machine to print with, and won’t break the bank. A great holiday gift, if you ask us.

• Price: $19.99

Over the last few months, the All3DP editorial team has been using this PLA for many purposes, and we’ve been very impressed with it.

PolyTerra is produced by Polymaker, a very reputable manufacturer of filament. It’s a filament that’s sustainably sourced, according to the company, and with every spool produced, a tree is planted as well, so there’s a little green element in there too.

Available in a string of cool colors, PolyTerra PLA has printed consistently well on a variety of 3D printers in our offices, and, as you might imagine, there’s often quite the variety of machines at our place.

The Maker in your life is likely to be pretty happy printing with PLA of this quality, and a strong, distinctive color collection allows for some fun to be had with color selection too.

• Price: $18

FormFutura’s ReForm rPET is a PETG-based filament that has left us impressed during our testing too. PETG can traditionally be a little tricky to handle, requiring a lot of fine tuning in your printer’s slicer settings to get really dialed in.

We get through a lot of PETG filaments in the office and often find them to be pretty difficult, and very stringy. This one wasn’t though, and there’s an option of 12 different colors to choose from, which also provides some variety, as does the different number of weights too.

An easy to handle, colorful filament like this is bound to go down well with anyone who owns an FDM 3D printer, and as a bonus, its price is also pretty reasonable.

• Price: $42

Dichromatic filament is a little bit trendy at the moment, and you can see why, given the cool effect it produces. It is eye catching, to say the least, and plays with the light beautifully.

Every spool of this filament contains two colors that melt simultaneously within the printer, effectively printing something in both colors at the same time. Depending on what angle you’re observing the print from, the color can be one, the other, or both at the same time. Cool, huh?

MatterHackers Quantum PLA comes in 12 different colors and will print on more or less any FDM 3D printer. If you’re looking for a quirky, fun, eye-catching material to gift to a maker in your life this holiday season, we think this is a pretty good bet.

• Price: $49.99

There really is something to be said for Phrozen’s special 8K 3D printing resins. They’re capable of generating fantastic surface details and are definitely a step up on “standard” resins on the market.

Phrozen says this resin is specially formulated to show off the finest of details, and we have found during our time testing the stuff that this is true, it really does show off the little things well, and its hue helps too.

We’re sure there’s far more science involved in what goes into the 8K resin superior to standard resins, but we’ve found it consistently delivers fantastic print details, and we fancy it would even work well in 4K resin 3D printers too. So, if you want to gift somebody some great resin for printing this holiday season, this is the one we’d probably go for.

• Price: $19

If you have somebody in your life who loves to print tabletop miniatures for gaming or displays, then we think the resin you ought to gift them this holiday season is Elegoo’s ABS-like resin.

ABS is a tough 3D printing filament, so ABS resin is really just a stronger resin that should hold up better to knocks and breakages should be far rarer. This is particularly useful when printing miniatures as they often have very small pieces and thin, delicate sections which can easily be damaged.

ABS-like resin can be a little stronger smelling, so it’s important your loved one has a good printing enclosure with filtration, ideally. Resin can give off harmful fumes, so be sure to recommend that to them when giving them the bottle, if they haven’t got this sort of setup already.

• Price: $22

Anycubic’s plant-based resins are the resins we would go to for everyday, normal 3D printing use.

The company says that the resins are made from a soya extract, and produce a lower level of bad smells, but we can’t honestly tell you if that’s true, because to us most resins simply smell the same.

The key thing about this resin is that it’s affordable, always in stock, looks great, renders nice details in prints, and is available in a few cool colors too. It’s simple, but it’s good quality, and that’s why we recommend it as a gift.

• Price: $249

If there’s somebody in your life who has a resin 3D printer but doesn’t yet have one of these machines, they are majorly missing out, and you could revolutionize their 3D printing experience with this purchase.

Anycubic’s Wash & Cure Plus machine is a spacious device that has the ability to, you guessed it, wash and cure resin prints. To keep things brief and simple here, basically washing the print removes excess resin, and curing the print under a UV light helps cure the resin to ensure it’s ready to be displayed and won’t keep leaking.

Without one of these machines, the above processes are both an absolute hassle, this handy gadget makes it a heck of a lot easier. It’s simply a must-have if you’re printing with resin – and this machine is currently our favorite on the market.

• Price: $19.90

Bondtech has come up with a clever solution to increasing the flow rate from a 3D printing nozzle, and that’s its CHT nozzle range.

The company says that it has managed to increase the melting capacity (and therefore the flow rate of the filament) by 30% thanks to the inclusion of a special tri-sided blade within the nozzle that breaks the filament strand into three finer strands. That makes it quicker to melt, and bingo, there you go.

The nozzles are affordable and are constructed from brass with a nickel coating. Though they won’t really be suitable for more advanced abrasive materials, this is a quick and easy upgrade to almost any FDM 3D printer. Bondtech has also thankfully made a selection of them to fit different hot ends.

• Price: $30

Not a great deal to say about this, honestly. Resin 3D printing is a messy, smelly game, and it’s essential that somebody involved in resin printing has the right tools and kit to handle it.

This handy little kit over at MatterHackers includes safety goggles, a brush, a funnel, scrapers, a cutter, and more. In short, everything you ought to have on hand for resin 3D printing.

If somebody has just been gifted their first resin 3D printer, this will be an important additional purchase for them.

• Price: $399

The Cricut Maker 3 is a digital cutting machine that uses CNC technology to carefully and accurately cut out complex shapes from materials. It’s a hugely clever, fun, and easy to use machine that creatives can really indulge themselves in, and you’ll often see these being made to produce cards, t-shirts, and even in our case, beer bottle labels.

Cricut Noises

Cricut Maker 3 Review: Editor's Pick 2022

Cricut claims this machine can work with over 300 different materials, and it can use 13 different tools, although many are sold separately. It’s enormously fun to sit and create with, experimentation and iteration is simple and quick, and it can be a real rabbit hole to fall down in terms of possibilities for projects and plans.

It has its flaws of course, it’s quite expensive, its software isn’t great, and it can often feel like the machine exists only to make you buy more of Cricut’s additional extras, but in our book, it’s still a fun tool to have if you’re a creative powerhouse.

• Price: $349

If somebody you know is looking for a place to dip their toes into CNC machining, then Sainsmart is probably your best bet. The company makes small, highly affordable CNC machines capable of working with a variety of materials and has a good reputation for providing support to its users.

This is an evolved version of the 3018 PROVer, which is a small CNC machine very fairly priced at around $350. Users should be able to work with a variety of basic materials to get a feel for CNCing, and this V2 version features a number of upgrades to hopefully make the process easier than previously.

More Great CNC Machines

The Best CNC Routers in 2024 – Buyer's Guide

A new redesigned control board, a touch probe, an aluminum spoil board, and a redesigned Z-axis make the V2 a worthy upgrade on the original machine, and should also be up and ready to use in around 20 minutes.

• Price: $99

It’s important to keep track of the time, especially when you’re working on a lot of projects. This Casio G-Shock watch is probably a great gift for anyone who’s always busy in a workshop or on the go with multiple projects.

Like many models from the famous family of watches, it’s actually built from resin, but not the type we use in 3D printing. It’ll stand up to a lot of punishment, as well as being submerged in water and exposure to chemicals and dust.

Sure, a fancy watch is nice, but something like this? That’s a piece anyone can rely on, no matter the conditions they find themselves in. G-Shocks are also pretty collectible, so maybe this gift will trigger a hobby.

• Price: $24.99

The truth is, there’s probably not many reasons why somebody would really need this thermometer gun in 3D printing. It can be quite useful to check the temperatures of a heated bed and see if there are any cold spots you need to be aware of, or if it’s not quite heating to the temperature you tell it to heat to. Other than that though…

But, here’s the thing, these gadgets are infinitely cool. It’s a small laser gun that tells you temperatures! What temperature is my cooking? Is my iguana cold? Is Starbucks a couple of degrees short in my Americano? Think of the possibilities! Never again will you wonder how hot something is. Get creative, and enjoy checking the temperature of anything and everything!

• Price: $19.99

A good glue can be tremendously helpful when 3D printing with some materials on an FDM 3D printer. It can help a print feel at home and stick to the print surface better, and that boost to bed adhesion can be the difference between a failed or successful print. Not all glues are created equal though…

Some glue smells absolutely awful, pungent nose hair-wilting stuff that could leave a child in tears or spook a small paddock of horses. Nope, we’re sorry, but if a glue stinks to high heaven, it’s a real sticking point for us.

Magigoo is specially formulated for 3D printing though. It’s non-toxic, long lasting, and odorless, unlike this other generic glue we have right next to us here whish, as we cam tell fron the smel is wery stromg smelling indeeeed, oof wow, lovelee unicorm, Sharon wowwww is tht pet gee?!

• Price: $18.99

Unfortunately, Prusa Research doesn’t yet sell that Peaky Blinder-inspired flat cap Big Jo likes to strut around looking dapper in, but the Czech 3D printing giant does sell other cool bits and bobs in its merch store.

How about a mug decorated with PrusaSlicer shortcodes? How about a funky lil’ beanie with a silly slogan on? Hoodies and t-shirts too, of course. We’d take the beanie though, it is the cold season, after all.

“Top Solid Layer” heh heh heh…