Anycubic Kobra X Review: Purge-Saving Multicolor Printing on a Budget

The Anycubic Kobra X is one of those odd novelties in 3D printing – a budget 3D printer that tried something bold. Instead of wholesale ripping off another printer – the smooth, white plastic body look is a little derivative at this point – the Kobra X stands apart, incorporating an in-head filament path switcher that Anycubic calls ACE Gen 2.

This does a couple of things for the printer – it eliminates the need for a cumbersome external box to handle filament switching, keeping all filament feed paths close to the extruder with no need for lengthy retreats and loads. Secondly – and it’s not clear if this is a consequence of the switcher’s position or not, so we won’t say it is – the filament cutter, which lops the end off at filament change for clean transitions, sits closer to the nozzle. This makes the offcut smaller, and consequently less to purge (theoretically – more on that later).

Some assembly is required to take the Kobra X from its box to plugged in and ready to print – the four main steps comprise attaching the gantry to the base, connecting a small handful of cables, attaching the display, and installing the purge flicker. Expect it to take less than an hour of effort for even the uninitiated.

Connecting the printer to the internet is not mandatory to get things going. Throughout a significant portion of our testing of the Kobra X, we used it in LAN mode (disconnected from the internet, transferring jobs via local area network) which proved to be exceptionally robust. Usually when we’re testing printers, connections splutter and drops, but we don’t recall the Kobra X dropping its connection once in our time with it.

The design of the Kobra X has you positioning four filament spools on holders mounted to the top brace. Comprising two holders for two filament spools apiece, it’s easy enough to hoist filament on and off the printer, though the feed angle through the injection molded guide tube holders can be tricky at times.

The filament loading experience is where things feel a bit basic compared to other machines – a consequence of picking and choosing where to keep costs low, we’re sure. Bizarrely the documentation for the printer makes no mention of it having RFID filament recognition, even though it does. Using it requires finding the menu option on  the printer to enable it each time, and it generally seems more hassle than punching in the details yourself.

The display’s responsiveness feels like a casualty of cost-cutting. Prodding and swiping at it if a mixed bag, with mishits and taps going unregistered. It’s worth noting the ACE Gen 2 can also be fussy about detecting filament on load – with the path in not wholly smooth, we occasionally needed a couple of attempts before it registered, something others have reported too.

Once you feed a filament far enough into the printhead, it will populate that particular slot on the display for you to then customize. At least there’s that.

Taking the core components of the Kobra X in isolation, the individual aspects are great. The printer works great. The slicer gave us no trouble in testing – though we’ll flag that AnycubicSlicerNext has a rougher reputation elsewhere, with enough crash and stability complaints that it’s commonly advised to use OrcaSlicer with a community-built Kobra X profile, instead. The slicer is, ostensibly, an Anycubic skin of OrcaSlicer, softened at the edges with a friendly blue colorscheme. The essentials to competently print, and then some, are all present if you’re just getting started out on your printing journey.

Even the app is a slick, seamless extension of controlling the printer, although we found the path to getting it downloaded a little suspect. For example, setting up you are presented with a QR code inviting you to download the Anycubic app in order to bind your account to the printer. The intention here is to scan the code form within the Anycubic app in order to bind your printer. If you scan the code with your phone’s camera app, though, you’re navigated to a subdomain of Anycubic’s that, frankly, doesn’t look trustworthy at all. There’s no direct link to the Android or Apple app stores, just a dodgy-looking site with insufficient information about what it wants you to download. I promptly closed out.

Instead, download the app yourself directly from your app store before you begin. Or don’t – you don’t need it to operate the printer, although you do get access to useful features like printer maintenance, direct printer control and monitoring, and more.

Anycubic contributed to the scourge of wasteful single-nozzle printing with its ACE Pro, the first non-Bambu filament switcher in the space. The end result was the same – lots of filament waste at switches. The Kobra X seems like an attempt to try and rebalance this. Rather than slapping a premium on the new tech, Anycubic has put it on the super cheap model. It feels a little like an apology.

But it’s no secret that Anycubic moves on quickly from its printers. One might not agree with it, but its a strategy. A consequence of this, though, is a vast web of unique parts shared to small pools of machines. The company keeps spares available through it’s webstore, but right now the Kobra X is the only Anycubic printer with the ACE Gen 2. It’s not clear if others will follow, preserving the useful life and justification for Anycubic to keep spares in stock – it’s a long-term hypothetical you’d have to weigh up before getting one, we think.

In practice, the system has performed reliably enough in testing. From time to time we’ve gotten filament track errors, but the solution has invariably been to unload and reload the filament. Whether it’s by design or an accident, the Kobra X has no filament sensing outside of the printhead, so a fully used up spool will be ingested deep inside the machine – when it is detected, the last scrap of material is neatly ejected through the side of the printhead housing. It feels like a mistake, but the consistency with which we’ve seen it suggests maybe it isn’t.