What’s Great

• Quick and quiet printing
• Fully automatic calibration and setup
• Excellent layer uniformity

Note: The Bambu Lab A1 3D printer is temporarily unavailable following a recall action by Bambu Lab. Hit the link to read more.

You can pick up faster CoreXY 3D printers for the A1’s less than $500 price tag, but it’s the ease of use and ecosystem that tip things in the A1’s favor here.

The Bambu Lab A1 is a tightly tuned “standard” sized printer capable of dampening its movements to eliminate the motor noise of printing. The general experience is rich with the mod cons of a 3D printer in 2024, including a nicely designed removable PEI print bed that facilitates easy print removal and snaps back into position with ease. There’s a large full-color touchscreen UI to tap away at and follow through the guided setup, and you’re never left guessing as to what’s happening and where you are.

The A1’s main advantage over similarly-priced systems is its toollessly swappable hot ends. Held in place by a metal cage you can open with one hand. You can drop in a variety of nozzle sizes and toughnesses (all official Bambu Lab products, priced reasonably fairly), making it effortless to scale your printing up or down, from the strength given by chunky layers to high-detail miniatures only possible with a 0.2 mm nozzle.

Lastly, there’s the possibility to add Bambu Lab’s AMS Lite four-filament system, letting you use different colors and materials in the same print. It’s an additional ~$249 purchase (or part of a discounted $559 bundle for both printer and AMS Lite) that seriously augments the printer’s abilities and your options for printing.

Bargain Hunting

The Best Budget 3D Printers in 2024 (FDM & Resin)

What’s Great

• Excellent performance for the price
• Great removable PEI-coated print bed
• Useful smart features like sensorless homing and auto-bed leveling

The Sovols SV06 made a lot of waves when it launched. The machine is a clone of the ever-popular Original Prusa i3 series but for a fraction of the price. Where Prusa i3 machines can cost as much as $1,099, the SV06 offers similar hardware for just ~$209. That’s not to say the systems are the same (Prusa’s software and quality control are next level), but the SV06 manages to offer a similarly great experience for a very accessible price.

Part of that experience is the SV06’s auto-calibration routines that handle the mesh bed leveling of the 220 x 220 x 250 mm fixed bed with an inductive sensor and level the X-axis that rides on a dual-driven Z – eliminating some of the more tedious maintenance routines. It’s not completely hands-off, though, something newer systems at this price point are starting to offer.

Attack of the Clones

Sovol SV06 Review: Low Cost, High Potential

The one thing to watch out for when considering the SV06 is its poor performance with flexible materials. The system’s direct extruder with planetary gearing performs great with rigid filament, but we found flexibles tend to get caught up in the gearing and jam. But, given the all-metal hot end, you can still use more rigid high-temperature filaments than is typical for machines in its price range.

During our review, we also found the SV06’s TMC2209 stepper motors to be remarkably quiet – making for a tidy home printing solution. It’s an excellent machine, suitable for enthusiasts looking for something hassle-free or for beginners who want to tap into the community experience of a popular system.

Other Machines

The Best Budget 3D Printers in 2024 (FDM & Resin)

What’s Great

• Reliable auto-bed leveling system
• It’s quiet
• Great bang-for-buck ratio – cheap and capable

The Creality Ender 3 V3 SE sets a new baseline for cheap 3D printing, blending a familiar form with the beginner-friendly fully automatic bed leveling and self-offsetting to give effortlessly perfect first layers.

Its standard features run to a 220 x 220 x 250 mm build volume, with a Sprite dual-gear direct extruder feeding filament to a hot end that tops out at 260°C. Printing through the full height is served by dual Z-axis motors, ensuring stability throughout.

In our time printing with the Ender 3 V3 SE, we’ve found it to be a little workhorse. While it lacks the flashier features and firmware of today’s pricier machines (it runs Marlin firmware out of the box), it offers a fuss-free printing experience that’s a clear evolution on similar machines from previous years.

The removable magnetic print bed can be a bit fussy to return to position after a print, and there’s no filament sensor, which is an odd omission these days, even at this price point. But all in all, a simple yet refined cheap 3D printer.

Read More

The Best Budget 3D Printers in 2024 (FDM & Resin)

What’s Great

• Fabulous design and build quality
• High print speeds
• Simple, slick, user-friendly experience

It’s such a subjective thing, premium. But we’ve done our best to define it. Some will say it’s hardware quality above all else, but we think it’s much more. Excellent hardware quality and quality assurance, plus an overall experience that inspires confidence printing and puts less onus on the end user. That’s premium 3D printing to us, and right now, the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon best exemplifies this.

Bambu Lab’s opening salvo of printers, including the X1 Carbon, is a direct hit to the idea that desktop 3D printing for ~$1,000 or less is a dull space overflowing with aluminum extrusions, the tedium of granular settings and conveniences that end at automatic-bed leveling. At the top of the line, the X1 Carbon is available for $1,199.

The X1 Carbon, in addition to using carbon fiber rods in its CoreXY motion system for supreme lightness, sports an all-metal hot end reaching 300 °C plus an abrasive-resistant nozzle and extruder for confident handling of carbon and glass-filled filaments.

An In-depth Look

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

Of greater interest, though, is the onboard lidar, which the X1 Carbon uses to scan the print bed and the first layer of a print. If it detects something fishy, it will alert you directly on your computer or via the Bambu Handy app so you can fix the issue before losing time and filament.

Further slickness comes in solid Wi-Fi connectivity (albeit 2.4 GHz only,) a vibrant and responsive touchscreen display, and thoughtful extras, such as the “filament drying” menu option, which walks you through using the X1 Carbon to dry a selected spool of filament using the printers headed print bed and enclosure.

An optional extra, the AMS (Automatic Material System), adds multi-material capabilities supporting four different filaments. It’s possible to chain several AMS units for sixteen-filament prints.

Read More

The Best Premium 3D Printers of 2023

Alternatives

At $699, the Ankermake M5 is what we currently consider the most budget “premium” 3D printer. A bed slinger with a fairly average 235 x 235 x 235 mm build volume, the M5 has a strong direct extruder and a sleek, high-quality frame that discretely houses its more premium features and saves some space. That frame includes a touchscreen display and camera, crucial for the M5’s AI-powered failure detection. The M5 will spot common errors like layer shifting, spaghetti, a blocked nozzle, or prints coming off the bed mid-print and alert you to them. While the system can be hit or miss, AnkerMake is rattling out software updates at a frightening pace. A recent update doubled its already nippy print speed to 500 mm/s

Alternatively, if you’ve got extra cash to spare (prices start at $1,999), the Original Prusa XL could be an intriguing top-drawer choice for you. For one, the XL’s incredibly advanced extruder, dubbed the Nextruder, is loaded with features including a proprietary load cell for “an always-perfect first layer”, print failure, and dirty nozzle detection. It has a large, 360 x 360 x 360 build volume and potential for multiple print (or tool) heads, indicating versatility you don’t find in many other places at this price point.

What’s Great

• Four-filament printing
• Self-calibrating smarts
• lug-and-play

Note: The Bambu Lab A1 3D printer is temporarily unavailable following a recall action by Bambu Lab. Hit the link to read more.

Dual extrusion 3D printing is many things to many makers. We recently broadened it to include multi-extrusion tech, given the sheer versatility such systems offer.

The Bambu Lab A1 is an excellent Cartesian XZ-head 3D printer, and at ~$400, it’s comparatively affordable, too. It boasts a 256 x 256 x 256 mm build volume – just like Bambu Lab’s CoreXY systems – a linear rail across its X-axis for steady and smooth print head motion, and discreet linear rods on all other axes, automatic bed leveling and offsets along with a host of other calibration automation that includes noise reduction, a toollessly replaceable hot end, and the same seamless software experience that made us fast fans of Bambu Lab. Combined with the AMS lite, it’s a four-filament powerhouse for $559.

Like the full-fledged AMS, purging between material changes can be considered excessive. Though that’s one of the reasons the system works as well as it does, it can certainly feel wasteful. There are some more sacrifices when picking the AMS lite over the standard version, too. For one, there are no enclosures for either the printer or the AMS lite, and you’re limited to just four filaments – unlike the full AMS’ extendability to a whopping 16 materials. And, unfortunately, there’s no upgrading later. The A1 series isn’t compatible with the standard AMS.

Read More

The Best Dual Extruder 3D Printers in 2024

Alternatives

Tighter budgets can experience dual extrusion with the Geeetech A10M, an Ender 3-style machine that feeds from two extruders into a single nozzle. It’s quite dated now, but at ~$159, we’ve yet to find a printer that offers the same value for dual extrusion 3D printing. Beginners may struggle with it – expect to spend time fine-tuning settings for crisp results.

Alternatively, for a superior four-filament option, consider the Bambu Lab P1S paired with the company’s “AMS” automatic material station. They’re available for $699 and $349 independently, but a bundle currently offers them for $949 together. The printer itself rocks – see above – but with the AMS sitting on top, it can automatically handle up to four different colors or materials for a single print. The unit mounts seamlessly, integrates directly into the printer’s slicer, and outputs high-quality prints. It can be a bit wasteful, though, with seemingly excessive purging between material changes, but this can be managed by adjusting values in the slicer.

What’s Great

• Good value for the user experience and finish
• Exceptional print quality
• Large, colorful, and easy-to-use UI

Despite its diminutive size, the Original Prusa Mini+ doesn’t hold back. This little printer prints objects of superb quality in a variety of materials, including PLA, ABS, PETG, and even high-temp plastics like PC. Its removable bed makes print handling a cinch, and there’s robust manufacturer support should something go wrong.

The Original Prusa Mini+ benefits from auto-bed leveling through its SuperPinda probe. Dependable and reliable first-layers are a given, just one perk among many on this intelligent little printer.

Read the Review

Original Prusa Mini+ Review: Best Small 3D Printer

The Mini+ does not have the smallest footprint of the printers we’ve picked, but it does offer one of the best print-volume-to-size ratios at 12%. The total space it takes up is 457 x 482 x 482 mm – more when you include the printer’s lack of onboard spool holding (arguably the Mini+’s one big oversight). Prusa Research offers a solution in the form of a project to modify the Mini+’s base, accommodating the spool underneath the printer and raising it for a slightly taller overall height. It doesn’t excuse the Mini+’s gangliness, but it does complete the printer if you have the time to tinker.

In 2023, Prusa Research dropped a firmware update that considerably boosts the Mini+’s print speeds, helping the printer maintain some relevance against speedier, newer competition. The printer’s general compactness (and potential for modification to be even more space efficient) is a true asset.

Read More

The Best Small & Mini 3D Printers of 2023

Alternatives

If you’ve got a bigger budget to play with, there’s the LulzBot Taz SideKick 289. Its printing capabilities in standard configuration aren’t much different from the Mini+, but it does have the advantage of being collapsible, with all protruding elements of the printer folding in on themselves with the removal of a few thumbscrews. No tools are needed to set it up, and it all fits within its small, desktop-PC-sized frame. The toolless modularity extends to tooheads, too. You can purchase different extruder setups for different jobs and materials, giving you quick swaps and high productivity. It’s a pricey upgrade, though. A standard configuration with all you need to print out of the box runs around ~$1,085.

What’s Great

• Fast, high-quality printing
• Actively heated build chamber
• Vanilla Klipper experience

For its ~$600 price tag, the Qidi Tech X-Plus 3 gives you a Klipper-based machine with a fully enclosed 280 x 280 mm build area – the smallest on our mid-size filament 3D printer recommendations, granted, but still in the ballpark of 300 x 300 mm, where we feel “mid-size” begins in desktop 3D printing. It uses a CoreXY motion system and input shaping, allowing it to print up to 600 mm/s in some situations. Speedy acceleration and a high-flow hot end let it put plastic down at a rate that’s on pace with today’s top speed-touting printers.

The X-Plus 3’s party trick is an actively heated build chamber capable of heating to 65 °C. Indeed, this printer is friendly to warp-happy materials, performing favorably against similar-style printers that lack actively heated chambers in testing. A filament dry box is included as standard, mounting to the back of the printer and serving as the default (and fiddly, but still removable) spool holding option.

Compared to many modern enclosed-style printers the X-Plus requires some initial calibration, which is a bit old hat, but we found it to hold its offsets and, generally, it remained a hands-off experience throughout our printing.

Overall, it’s a handily complete package that doesn’t disappoint for the price tag. It’s not the prettiest printer – unless lots of plastic and an overinflated look are your thing, we don’t judge – but it does put down plastic with speed and uniformity, which we absolutely rate it for.

Read More

The Best Medium-Sized 3D Printers of 2023

Alternatives

Thanks to an ever-decreasing price tag, the Sovol SV06 Plus, our former top pick for mid-size filament 3D printers, is now our budget pick. For some ~$290, you get a sturdy, upgradeable bed-slinging 3D printer that offers decent print quality from the get-go. TPU performance wasn’t the best – we found the noodly filament tangled easily in the SV06 Plus’ planetary extruder, but the whole thing is easy enough to dismantle and return to functionality.

Those with deeper pockets should look to the Qidi Tech X-Max 3 – basically a larger X-Plus 3 with minor differences. The main thing to know is the build volume increase from the Plus’ 280 x 280 mm build area to a roomier 320 x 320 mm. Everything else about the experience is the same and great. Near vanilla Klipper with Fluidd built into the slicer, plus a heated, enclosed print chamber and fast, uniform prints following a partially manual calibration. As a larger machine, it carries a larger price tag, too – approximately $900 at the time of writing.

What’s Great

• Easy assembly
• Sturdy construction
• Quiet operation

There are hot new speed-oriented large-scale printers now, and while the Mingda Magician Pro isn’t one of them, the pricing pressure from the newer machines means this former upgrade is terrific value right now.

The Mingda Magician Pro comes with the comforts you’d expect of a pricier printer, including a direct extruder, a simple-to-use touchscreen interface, a full metal base plate, and an excellent 400 x 400 mm textured glass build surface complimenting the 400 mm Z axis.

The large print bed retains heat well and gets suitably hot, even towards the extremes of the build volume, not a given at printers of this size. Mingda’s textured glass worked well with larger prints, though we found in testing that a raft or brim was necessary more often than not for smaller prints.

For a large 3D printer, the Magician Pro is remarkably quiet, which is a plus if you plan on running it in a domestic setting. Not so great is the omission of large-bore nozzles in the box. If you’re planning on printing large models, stepping up a nozzle size or two from the stock 0.4 mm nozzle provided is essential to cut print times down to a reasonable number of hours instead of days.

Read More

The Best Large 3D Printers in 2024

Alternatives

With prices in flux a little, we don’t really have a clear budget large-format recommendation to point to right now. So, instead, we’ll throw a little curveball and suggest that perhaps a mid-size 3D printer is a fine alternative to save a buck or two. The Sovol SV06 Plus offers a fair balance of performance, build volume and price.

Alternatively, we recently tested a feature-packed Klipper-toting large format 3D printer that comfortably scales up your possibilities. The Comgrow T500 offers a roomy 504 x 504 x 504 mm build volume, wireless connectivity, a tank-like build, and a handy 7-inch touchpad interface with KlipperScreen UI. Large nozzles come in the box, too, expediting your journey to quicker large-scale prints.

What’s Great

• Fast, with self-calibrating smarts
• High-uniformity prints
• Beginner-friendly experience

The linear rail-touting Bambu Lab A1 Mini is small, with a build volume of just 180 x 180 x 180 mm, but don’t let its size fool you into thinking it’s in any way diminished – it is packed with smarts, including noise-cancelation tech, full self-calibration, over the air updates and self-diagnostics, all for just $299. It’s also fast, and during testing, it consistently delivered impressive quality prints.

The A1 Mini offers, in a word, simplicity and builds upon this with Bambu Lab’s new MakerWorld 3D model repository, which offers one-click printing with the A1 Mini.

Colorf'all

Bambu Lab A1 Mini Review: Not Different, Just Better

We found it’s not quite as polished as the company’s other offerings: the interface is a touch laggy, and there are minor bugs in the UI. Largely, though, these compromises are few and far between and well worth bearing for the savings and variety of quality-of-life features that come with the machine. A high-quality camera for remote monitoring, a (admittedly finicky) nozzle wiper, and – perhaps most importantly – a hot end that allows for toolless swapping, making it trivial to change nozzle sizes for fast or highly detailed prints.

Its printing capabilities are a little narrower than other Bambu Lab printers (you’re more or less confined to PLA, PETG, and TPU-like filament), but your horizons widen somewhat with the A1 Mini’s compatibility with Bambu Lab’s AMS lite, a four-filament system for multicolor and multi-material printing.

All told the Bambu Lab A1 Mini is the ideal beginner 3D printer and a machine that we have recommended to friends getting into the hobby.

Read More

The Best 3D Printers for Beginners in 2024

Alternatives

For tighter budgets, the Kingroon KP3S 3.0 offers a comparable but more basic experience. Often available for ~$100, you get atypical hardware for the price point, including linear rails, plus an easy upgrade path and an enthusiastic community surrounding it.

Alternatively, if you’re new to 3D printing and have a larger budget to work with, there’s no better value under $1,000 than the Bambu Lab P1P. Besides being one of the quickest printers around, it’s practically plug-and-play, is easy to operate, and has customizable design elements that allow you to truly make your shiny new 3D printer your own.

What’s Great

• Excellent software & UI
• Fast, effective printing & cooling
• AMS compatible

For price to function, and performance, the Bambu Lab P1S is the 3D printer to beat. And not just in terms of enclosed 3D printers, the P1S is currently our pick for the best 3D printer under $1,000 overall, too.

The Bambu Lab’s P1S is arguably the company’s best-value printer, giving you a fully enclosed 256 x 256 x 256 mm build volume, a strain gauge array embedded into the build plate for fully automated bed leveling, a built-in light and (admittedly lackluster) camera to see within that volume, super quick print speeds, an auxiliary print fan to help along printing at higher speeds, and out-of-the-box compatibility with Bambu Lab’s excellent (separately purchased) AMS multicolor material station, all for $699. It’s an easy recommendation for a lot of different situations.

Its enclosure rounds out the roster of compatible materials, helping to limit the spread of UFPs and generally increasing your success rate when 3D printing. It also helps the system look tidy and self-contained, which is a plus for home users.

Out of the Box

Bambu Lab P1S Review: Hot Box

Note that the P1S doesn’t monitor chamber temperature. Temperature regulation is limited to ensuring temperatures don’t fly off the chart, and Bambu Lab still advises opening the door and top cover when printing low-temperature filaments like PLA.

It’s not perfect (no printer is), but the P1S’ tradeoffs are minor. For one, the buttons and UI on the machine are comically poor, but you can just use your computer or smartphone instead. Also, not being able to access the contents of the printer’s microSD memory remotely is frustrating, but that’s common to all Bambu Lab printers, bar the X1.

All told, the Bambu Lab P1S is a powerhouse of a printer at a middle-of-the-road price point.

Read More

The Best Enclosed 3D Printers of 2023

Alternatives

Slimmer budgets in need of an enclosed 3D printer can experience the speed and print quality of the P1S, with the notable but manageable compromise of a hit to print volume, with the Qidi Tech X-Smart 3. A teeny tiny 175 x 180 x 170 mm build volume machine with CoreXY kinematics, Klipper firmware, and solid, PrusaSlicer-based software, it can be picked up for ~$300. Bargain.

Makers with larger needs of their machine should consider the X-Smart 3’s supersized sibling, the Qidi Tech X-Max 3. Packing a 320 x 320 mm build area, plus similar fast, quality prints, Klipper firmware, and software, the X-Max 3 stands apart not only for its build volume – it has a heated print chamber, improving your print success rate when using warp-happy materials. Such a feature set comes at a price, though: approximately $900.

What’s Great

• Three creative tech tools in the footprint of one
• Overall presentation of the Artisan is premium
• Decent dual extrusion printing experience

There’s an unquestionable slickness to the machines Snapmaker produces. High-quality fit and finish backed up with glossy build guides and manuals to inspire your creativity. The Snapmaker Artisan is the latest in this series. At ~$3,000, it’s a considerable markup from its solidity and more versatility with the multitude of creative processes you can tackle.

Separating the Artisan from its predecessors is the perfected quick-swap mechanism, which truly makes changing modes a toolless, effortless procedure. Other improvements see the Artisan operate quicker and quieter than the Snapmaker 2.0.

Read More

Snapmaker Artisan Review: Big Potential

More powerful laser and CNC modules come as standard, giving a slight spec bump on the 2.0, too. And there’s a nifty dual extrusion experience in the UltiMakeresque print core system, letting you quickly combine different nozzle types in your work.

Of note also is the inclusion of a fast-heating print bed, which has user-selectable zones for faster printing of smaller models.

If you expect to need to swap modes often and really put your machine through its paces, the Artisan is the comfortable choice. While it’s not necessarily better than a dedicated machine for each of the functions it offers, it does a competent enough job of combining the three.

Read More

The Best 3-In-1 3D Printers in 2024

Alternatives

Our old top pick, the Snapmaker 2.0 A350T, still exists and, with new lower pricing (~$1,200), still presents great value for money if space is at a premium and you absolutely need to do some combination of 3D printing, laser engraving, or CNC carving. Out of the box, it’s missing the bells and whistles of the new Snapmaker Artisan, but for close to a third of the price, you’re getting the same basic experience. There is also the possibility of upgrading the 2.0 with more powerful toolheads and peripherals, including the Artisan’s quick-swap module fixtures and powerful lasers with air assist.

Those still limited on space but with bigger budgets should consider the ZMorph Fab. A more-than-3-in-1 multifunction creativity power tool, it offers diverse 3D printing toolheads, including dual extrusion, plus CNC and laser cutting, and thick-paste extrusion. The machine itself is rather beautiful, with sheet metal flares, a tidy UI, and sophisticated software to boot – though you’ll need to part with $5,999 to call one your own.

What’s Great

• Massive toy library to print
• Kid-friendly experience
• Snappy on-device UI and app-based control

Critics will point to its premium models and plus subscription as a negative, but much like the shows and movies your kids stream on the likes of Disney+ or Netflix, Toybox’s offering is not an unfamiliar reality of modern media consumption. On the plus side, there are no ads, and the curation here means everything you see is not only possible to print but nearly impossible to mess up. The Toybox takes the effort of finding or making 3D printable toys, for the most part, out of your hands.

The purchase of the printer is enough to give you access to thousands of models and some basic in-app model creation from the get-go, but the 10,000+ library can be expanded through purchasable extras and a monthly subscription. There is plenty here to keep inquisitive young minds going.

Toybox’s greatest success is in cutting the clutter of the process of 3D printing and making every toy a tap away from physical reality. The print quality is not great, not by a long shot, but having put all of the machines tested for our toy 3D printer guide in front of real, live, fidgety kids, they simply did not care how good the prints were or weren’t. What mattered was that going from finding a model in the library to printing it on the Toybox’s dinky print plate is an intuitive and fast process that can keep pace with young kids’ shorter attention spans.

Read More

The Best Toy 3D Printers of 2023

Alternatives

For slightly older kids, or parents looking for a little more agency over the items they print without going full hog into the hobby of 3D printing, the AOSeed X-Maker offers a terrific blend of customizable prints and a more general 3D printing experience. Its app needs a bit of polish, but at its core, it offers a library of ready-to-print models and a suite of tools for kids to customize subsets of toys and props. At closer to ~$500, it’s much pricier than the Toybox, but the printer is more capable.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for a capable printer to augment your kids’ play and are willing to dip your toes into “full” 3D printing (rather than the more walled-off, kid-friendly version outlined above), look to our top pick for beginners, the Bambu Lab A1 Mini. It’s fast, smart, and holds your hand. Furthermore, you can get the full experience of slicing your own models and configuring jobs to print or fire jobs directly to the machine from the companion app. It’s close to the best of all worlds, although greater supervision would be required if using the browsing user-created 3D model websites.

What’s Great

• Smart design – tidy operation
• Heated vat improves success rate
• Hinged lid for easy access

The UniFormation GKtwo is a mid-sized printer with oodles of design touches to make using it a tidier and smoother experience than other low-cost resin 3D printers. It may not offer cutting-edge resolution like the Photon Mono M5s or Mars 4 Ultra featured elsewhere in this list (it’s still an infinitesimal difference to the eye if you ask us), but it offers the luxury of a quick-release print plate and slide-out resin vat, plus a hinged lid for convenient access to the build chamber.

The GKtwo also boasts a killer feature in its temperature-controlled heated resin vat. A crucial component of assured 3D printing success with resin is that the resin temperature is sitting pretty around 30 °C. Prints can work below this, but it’s one heck of a catalyst for reliable performance to have your resin warm. The GKtwo lets you select from one of three temperatures for your resin vat, and the printer will calculate in a heat-up period before your print commences. The entire system is automatic and baked into the printer’s software, making it an effortless print success system.

It produces fabulously crisp prints, thanks to its mid-size 8K masking LCD, and, if your budget can stretch further, it can pair with complementary post-processing stations designed to fit the printer’s build plate. (You can, for example, take the plate straight out of the printer and lower it into a recess in the company’s ultrasonic cleaner for efficient, hands-off cleaning.)

Handily, the GKtwo is supported by popular third-party slicers, including Voxeldance Tango, Lychee, and Chitubox Basic. The provided slicing software is based on PrusaSlicer, which gives excellent support structure generation, so you may well be comfortable sticking with that instead.

A 12K LCD upgrade and Wi-Fi dongle for the GKtwo are due to be released soon, which will put the GKtwo head and shoulders above the rest.

Get More for Less

The Best Budget 3D Printers in 2024 (FDM & Resin)

What’s Great

• Capable of fast, high-res printing
• Resin level & print failure smarts
• Well-implemented Wi-Fi connectivity

Anycubic Photon Mono M5s is a different breed of desktop resin printer, introducing print-boosting smarts the likes of which we’ve only really seen in filament 3D printing over the last couple of years. Packing a print-plate gantry-mounted sensor, the M5s can detect peel force, resin level, and the vat bottom to augment your printing experience.

In testing, we didn’t find it to be flawless. Few are. But that this system pulls off even half of what it does makes the M5s our preferred choice over all the other desktop 3D printers we’ve experienced lately.

All of the above is in a compact frame, to boot – the Photon Mono M5s’ dimensions are barely any larger than the likes of the Phrozen Sonic Mini 8K S and Photon Mono 2, both machines we consider to be small 3D printers, yet it punches out with a 200 x 123 x 218 mm build volume.

Print speed is a focus; the M5s comes with ACF film for its resin vat interface layer, allowing for quicker than typical layer changes. It also packs a 12K 10.1-inch masking LCD, which puts extremely small pixels at its disposal for super-fine print resolution. It’s as fine as you can get.

Anycubic has gotten the Wi-Fi connectivity of the printer to sing, with a seamless link between the company’s software and hardware. You can also keep tabs on things using the company’s surprisingly slick mobile app, which gives you diagnostics of the printer, guides, and tips, plus a community aspect with models you can pipe to the print at the click of a button – all without bombarding you with adverts or notifications.

It’s a quick and compact printer with layers of features for its ~$400 price tag – certainly one to consider if you prioritize convenience.

Print Better for Less

The Best Budget 3D Printers in 2024 (FDM & Resin)

What’s Great

• Bleeding-edge resolution
• Useful Wi-Fi connectivity
• Top all-round performance

In our opinion, as long as it’s still supported and continues to drop in price, the Elegoo Mars 3 is the budget resin 3D printer to beat. But, if your budget stretches closer to $300 than the Mars 3’s sub-$200 price tag, the top-spec variant of its successor, the Elegoo Mars 4 Ultra, isn’t a bad place to park your cash.

Cramming more pixels into roughly the same build area shrinks the pixel size down to 18 microns. If you value the bleeding edge of resolution possibilities in LCD-based 3D printing, then this is it. While this should translate to the crispest of detail and undetectable voxels (provided you print with a suitably fine layer height), some users report the ACF film used as an interface layer in the vat for higher print speeds muddies the detail, taking that resolution advantage over other systems off the table. At casual observation, we can’t tell the difference.

The print volume is a switch-up on the Mars 3, ringing in at a longer, narrower, and shorter 153.36 x 77.76 x 165 mm. You don’t really lose much over the Mars 3, so this is really more of an adaptation on Elegoo’s part to fit the new 9K LCD used rather than a shift in the printer’s form. Upgrades to the light engine see a focus on light uniformity across the build area, while distinct features include Wi-Fi connectivity and speedier printing through the use of the aforementioned ACF film and the release of Elegoo’s Rapid Standard resin. Both are modern conveniences that we’re generally happy to see. The connection speed is decent, which is particularly helpful for slinging the chonky files that you typically get with large, detailed resin 3D prints.

A perpetual license for TangoSlicer is included in the box, which we greatly appreciate, too. It’s a competent slicer that comes with a wealth of control and automation tools for preparing your prints. If you’re familiar with the likes of Chitubo Basic or Lychee Slicer, the Mars 4 Ultra is compatible there, too. No need to learn the idiosyncrasies of a new slicer. Phew.

All the Best Budget Printers

The Best Budget 3D Printers in 2024 (FDM & Resin)

Note: At the time of writing, Elegoo has the Mars 4 Ultra available for $309 – a shade over the bracket we're recommending it for here. We know that it is available for less than $300 at other retailers, so shop around.

What’s Great

• High-resolution prints
• Deceptively large build volume
• Compact footprint

This ultra-budget resin 3D printer from Anycubic is a no-frills workhorse that’s simple to operate and reliably returns high-quality prints for your efforts. Easily found for ~$170, the bang you get for your buck is terrifically high; a 6-inch LCD is crammed inside the printer’s teeny footprint giving you a deceptively large 165 x 89 x 143 mm build volume to work with.

Interacting with the machine can be a bit fiddly, with the printer’s spartan exterior interrupted only by the 2.8-inch touchscreen front and center and a full-size USB port on the side. The Mono 2 is noticeably light, meaning any knocks and bumps resulting from interacting with it can tip it – not a desirable trait for a machine with a large, shallow pool of toxic resin inside.

Given the mess that resin 3D printing can make, Anycubic hedges things in your favor with a large screen protection kit included in the box. This guards the fragile LCD mask against resin spills, helping you eke out the full lifespan of the LCD before replacement is necessary.

Software-wise, the slicer Anycubic provides is decent enough for general printing with all essential preparation tools, including hollowing and hole punching, available to you out of the box. The Mono 2 is also compatible with third-party slicers, so you can use it with your preferred software instead.

Lightness and “eh” display aside (we can’t begrudge that last one much at this price point), the Photon Mono 2 is a comfortable budget pick.

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The Best Budget 3D Printers in 2024 (FDM & Resin)

What’s Great

• Super duper high-resolution prints
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• Refined software experience

Bucking the trend of mid-size printers getting better features and resolution these days, the Elegoo Mars 4 Ultra is a bolt from the blue, boasting one of, if not the highest resolution LCDs going in desktop resin 3D printing. It’s the best Mars series 3D printer to date, introducing a discerning pixel count that could see your models with voxels as fine as 18 microns in the X and Y- axes, resin and conditions dependent, of course.

Backing up the jump to such pixelatious new heights is a jump to a new OS for the printer. Based on Linux and exclusive to Elegoo’s new Ultra designation of printer, this new system layers in smarter features such as printer self-checks, richer print diagnostics, and the ability to adjust more print settings mid-print. When tested, we found the printer unable to check for OTA updates, despite the menu option to do so.

Minor gripes aside, it’s the typical workhorse performance we expect of Elegoo’s Mars series, but better.

Print performance is characteristically terrific, although the legwork typically required to dial in settings is still required here. There are no new systems or magic tools to make printing easier. It’s the same old tool, just a little sharper. And for ~$300, we absolutely do not mind. Elegoo has found some secret sauce to make their machines, with older (but still excellent) printers now dirt cheap and the new flagships at uber-competitive price points like this. We do not mind.

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Alternatives

If you can do without the conveniences of Wi-Fi and uber-high resolution and want to spend as little as possible, then the Elegoo Mars 3 is the small printer to beat. Currently available for ~$150, you get a popular resin 3D printer that gives crisp, high-resolution prints and a year’s access to the Chitubox Pro slicer.

We struggled to think of any small desktop resin 3D printers that presented any kind of upgrade on the Mars 4 Ultra. With this in mind, we think the only direction to go is slightly larger, with a compact, mid-size resin 3D printer. Check our mid-size pick, the Anycubic Photon Mono M5s.

What’s Great

• Capable of fast, high-res printing
• Resin level & print failure smarts
• Well-implemented Wi-Fi connectivity

The Anycubic Photon Mono M5s appears elsewhere on this list, both as our resin 3D printer under $500 pick and beginner’s pick. If that doesn’t say enough, then let’s recap. It is a mid-size build volume 3D printer, with an admittedly below-average build height – 218 mm compared to the Saturn 3’s 250 mm. It is, nevertheless, within our definition of being between 8-12 inches on the diagonal across the build volume.

You get a 12K masking LCD, giving it one of the finest resolutions available today, and, paired with a fast resin, the ability to print exceedingly fast. At full clip, you can print a full-volume print in a matter of a few hours.

Read the Review

Anycubic Photon Mono M5s Review: Innovation, Finally

The standout element of the M5s is its print plate sensor, which serves multiple purposes. For starters, it replaces the Z-axis endstop and, basically, gives ersatz plate leveling (you don’t need to do it, ever). Then there’s resin level measurement, to the degree the printer will tell you if it doesn’t think you have enough in the tank for your print. Finally, it has peel separation detection, which will alert you to the absence of the expected snapback jolt of the print separating from the resin vat release film. Without this, it’s safe to assume the print has failed, and the printer will pause itself for you to confirm and then cancel the print.

We’ll admit the system wasn’t 100% perfect in our time testing, but for the hit rate it does offer, it’s a welcome development on the desktop resin 3D printer and a feature-rich mid-size pick.

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The Best Mid-Sized Resin 3D Printers of 2023

Alternatives

If you have a tighter budget to work with, the new Elegoo Saturn 3 offers all the resolution of the M5s and steady, reliable performance for a touch less at ~$380. You forego the connectivity and smart stuff, but as a basic tool to get the job done, it’s a fine option.

Alternatively, if you’ve got upgrade money budgeted for your mid-size resin 3D printer, then the UniFormation GKtwo calls. The screwless print plate and resin vat fixtures are ergonomic highlights alongside the flip-top lid. Best of all, though, is the heated resin vat, which gives near-guaranteed print success. It costs ~$850 but is easily the most luxurious resin printer we’ve used lately.

What’s Great

• User-friendliest design we’ve seen on a large desktop resin printer
• You can print single-piece helmets and larger objects
• The factory-leveled print plate makes your first print a cinch

Resin 3D printing is messy. With huge print plates and resin vats that need two-handed operation, large-format resin 3D printing has the potential to be even messier. The Phrozen Sonic Mega 8K S goes a merciful way to make this mess manageable with a user-friendly design and pre-calibrated build plate providing a ready-to-run experience right out of the box.

The Sonic Mega 8K S sports a flip-hinged lid that sweeps atop the printer, replacing the original Mega 8K’s double doors that spread wide to take up an enormous footprint. This helps the Mega 8K S keep a surprisingly compact footprint for its 330 x 185 x 300 mm print volume.

ACF film comes as standard on the Sonic Mega 8K S’ resin vat, which allows you to print fast at the expense of shortening the film and LCD’s lifespans. What fast means in this context is the transition speeds between layers, having the printer’s stages of movement happen quickly without putting stress on the print and putting it at risk of ripping apart.

Post-print, there’s a conveniently placed hook to hang the print plate from to let resin run back into the vat before you whisk the print away for cleaning.

In all, it’s an easy-to-handle large-format resin 3D printer that’s highly convenient for large jobs.

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The Best Large Resin 3D Printers in 2024

Alternatives

A budget alternative to consider is the Anycubic Photon M3 Max. At $799, it has enough of the ingredients for a comfortable and convenient printing experience, including an auto-resin refilling function that keeps your vat topped up for larger print jobs. The build volume is smaller, mind, and across this smaller volume, you have marginally less resolution to play with in your prints. It’s an excellent choice for half the money.

The Sonic Mega 8K S is a large machine, no doubt about it. But there are bigger resin 3D printers if you need to print huge, no matter the cost. The Peopoly Phenom XXL V2 is one such behemoth. It costs an eye-watering $8,199 but eclipses all others with its 527 × 296 x 550 mm build volume.

What’s Great

• Capable of fast, high-res printing
• Resin level & print failure smarts
• Well-implemented Wi-Fi connectivity

There are a few ways we think a decent 3D printer for a beginner can go: either as a kit that’s as much an education as it is a purchased product; a simple, low-to-no-frill budget device that’s well-known and well-supported; or a rich, plug-and-play experience that gets on with the job better than the alternatives.

Currently, the Anycubic Photon Mono M5s is very much top of the plug-and-play pot, with its compact footprint offering a generous mid-size build volume and layer upon layer of smart, well-implemented features that make using the printer as smooth and hiccup-free as you could hope.

Read the Review

Anycubic Photon Mono M5s Review: Innovation, Finally

Chief among these things is the print-plate sensor, which brings a handful of benefits, including a leveling-free operation, resin fill level detection, and print failure detection. These three things are virtually unheard of in budget resin 3D printing, and all feature in the M5s.

The hit rate is not 100% perfect, granted – we didn’t see 100% success with the print failure detection – but even some failed prints caught (and subsequently paused by the printer) equal time and, potentially, resin saved. It makes for a pretty forgiving printer.

Rounding things off is fast and smooth Wi-Fi connectivity and a slick app experience that gives you a quick view of the printer’s condition, task list, and troubleshooting help should something go wrong.

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The Best Resin 3D Printers for Beginners of 2023

Alternatives

The Elegoo Mars 3 is a safe bet for tighter budgets. It’s simple and easy to use, and we found it relatively forgiving in testing. There is a steep curve to resin 3D printing, but the Mars 3 is an easygoing companion to learn it with. Not to mention, it’s very cheap now – about $150 – and has been a popular model for a couple of years. There’s plenty of chatter online to turn to should you need it.

Alternatively, there is the UniFormation GKtwo. While it costs ~$850 – much more than our other beginner recommendations – it packs features like active resin vat heating, which virtually guarantees print success. Temperature is possibly the most significant factor in getting resin prints to succeed, and the GKtwo covers it completely. Add to this intelligent design touches that make interacting with the printer easier than all others, and it’s a worthwhile upgrade.