Please help me choose my first 3D printer, with the features I need

I’ve owned 3 printers, all cheap. For what I spent fixing it upgrading them I could have bought a Prusa. More than saying my next printer will be a Prusa, I can say that I actually have one on preorder.

Also, I will never buy a fdm without a bed leveling function. No, it’s not necessary, but if you want a low frustration printing experience, it is - in my direct experience - essential. Prior to having abl I would keep an eye on every print start. With abl I send a job to the printer and check on it when I get around to it.

Some notes:

Auto bed leveling is completely overrated. On a decently calibrated printer on a decently flat surface with decent spring tension you need to level the bed maybe once every few months. Auto bed level can also only correct small misalignments and it does so by skewing the one surface of the print. It's at best a small gadget to make the first layer overly perfect, and it's totally not necessary.

Powerloss recovery can be enabled on every printer by using (or compiling) the firmware with that setting enabled or by using an external print server like octoprint or repetier server. But: if enabled in firmware (not on an external print server) it causes bad print artifacts and wears down the SD card rather quickly. I have had a single time in 6 years of printing where I accidentally turned off the power mid-print and not a single time where I had powerloss due to things outside of my own stupidity. It's not a feature that I'd place any value on, unless you live somewhere where power outages are very frequent. Also, if you recover after a power loss and the hotend has cooled, it needs to be heated up in-place to basically melt the hotend free from the print. You will have a massive gash at that point.

Filament runout sensor is a nice gimmick, but again only important in special cases, namely you intend to print really huge parts that take multiple rolls to finish. Otherwise you'll just use the last bit of filament to print small things.

Size: I'd recommend you a bed that's 220x220 to 240x240 as this is the standard size. This means, you will be able to print almost anything you find online without issues. Larger only matters if you have specific use cases in mind. Prints that huge will take very long to print though (longer than a week), so you might not want print anything larger than a standard board anyway.

Without enclosure you can easily print PLA, PETG, TPU/TPE and filaments based on these materials. You need an enclosure if you want to print ABS or Nylon or other specialized materials. An enclosure helps to keep the air warmer and draft-less to avoid warping for filaments that tend to warp. Also it allows you to use air filtration to avoid the toxic fumes that ABS or Nylon tend to create during printing.

Surfaces are a solved problem by now. They will all work fine. The only difference is cosmetic. I personally would go with a textured surface since all the other sides of a 3D print are slightly rough and it looks a little dumb if one side is super smooth.

One thing to really watch out for: Before your first print (and if your prints stop sticking) wipe it thoroughly with a cloth rag soaked in isopropyl alcohol (IPA). This is a step that you really shouldn't skip, otherwise your prints won't stick to the surface.

Used printers are a massive gamble. There are many things that can be subtilely broken or damaged that you will not notice if you don't know exactly what you are looking for. It will just print really badly and you'll never figure out why without the propper knowledge. If you don't want to tinker a lot, don't get a used printer.

Both the Mini+ and the Ender 3v2 Neo are really good printers. The Ender 3v2 Neo will get you a bit more for your money, but the Mini+ is really cute and comes with free Haribo.

Speed is not important? Are you sure? Is this your first printer? I though that too at first, but trust me, you are most likely going to want speed more and more once you get going. Also, 3D printing is pretty much synonymous with tinkering unless you have some sort of business model in mind, but if you do... (see comments about speed).

My take, go with lightly used mk3. Market is primed for two reasons - first, in US at least there is just less of a sellers market lately for anything used and with recent Mk4 release people are looking to sell to upgrade.

Wish you luck with whatever you end up with and have fun and don't be afraid to tinker!

Go for the used Prusa MK3S+. People used to pay a premium for assembled and tested printers. As long as you can get the printer to you without being banged up in shipping it's good. Really shipping would be my biggest concern.

I have a MK3S+ and it just prints. I print for my Etsy shop and don't really feel the need for a backup printer. I have 1600+ hours of printing on it. In that time I've had one nozzle clog and one blob. I do a little dust filter on the filament so i don't often get clogs https://www.printables.com/@Fohn23_807562/collections/641537

I'm totally happy with just the smooth sheet. The textured sheet is supposed to work better printing PETG but I've been able to get perfect PETG prints on the smooth sheet using windex as a release agent.

Keep in mind that any hobby printer, especially those under ~$/€1k are subject to needing some level of tinkering to get reliable printing. If speed is unimportant, any of the options you provide will be a good fit. You will benefit from running some basic tuning for each spool of filament to get the best print quality. The speed can be dialed in to reduce failures but not take forever.

Build plate finish is more of a personal preference when it comes to PLA. Textured plate will provide slightly better grip to prevent the print from popping off mid-print, but it's a visible and tactile texture to that surface. It would probably be best to have a both a texture and smooth plate on hand long term.

Enclosure mainly comes into play if you print high-shrink materials like ABS or ASA. If you don't like to tinker, I wouldn't try to enclose a prusa or ender and would save up for a design built for it. If you don't mind tinkering a bit, you can always add the enclosure later.

Buying a used printer isn't a terrible option, but I would get eyes on first to ensure it prints as-is, especially since you want it to be plug and play. People sell printers for a variety of reasons such as upgrading, lack of interest, lack of funding, etc.

Stay as far away from Creality as you can. I HATE mine despite people recommending their products all over (at the time) Reddit. WireCutter (NYTimes) also recommends against them primarily for setup and maintenance pains.

Just look at this video: https://youtu.be/ubZMG_1PK20

If you can trust to that used mk3, 10 days is nothing, I would go for that one. My average print time is 6h so it means someone printed like 40 prints and I could do that in bit more than a month of average use. They are made for way more hours.

High quality, no hassle. I want to print, not tinker.

Sadly, there is some thinkering involved even with $2k+ machines. Getting prusa over ender is like paying more to dodge desing flaws, faulty parts and crappy support, its not buying plug&play machine. Its still hobby grade machine. Most important is to have loads of patience and prepare for learning advanture, but thats super fun IMO. Once you master your machine, after you experienced many failed prints on it, you can then proceed to plug&play workflow.

IMO, assembling your first printer is highly recommended, it will help a lot in the future. Auto bed leveling is pain that you need only if hardware is not built in low enough tolerances, so if you can get printer that prints good without abl its even better. Speed is super important, print time is quite huge on even fast printer. You can expect 12h print for some 15x15x15 cm part with 0.4 nozzle and 0.2 layer height. And thats quite optimistic guess, some prints take days to finish. You will always balance between speed and quality. Using 0.8 nozzle can push 4x more flow with proper hotend if quality is acceptable. So its not just about axis movement speed or acceleration, its quite important how you model your parts and how good you are with your slicer. Using different infill or model orientation can be a big thing sometimes.

About size, smaller machines are more rigid but can print smaller parts obviously. Since printing is super slow, smaller is better for cheap machines imo, but kinda limiting if you want to print long flat parts for example. Prusa mini have cantilever X axis, so it has to be much smaller or use much higher cross sections for same rigidity as mk3. Rigidity is actually a limit for your max accelerations/speed without losing on quality.

Also, I wouldnt put filament sensor and power features on the list. Lot of people disable them due to issues they cause, it sounds more usefull than it is. 1 kg of filament is like 24 hours of print time and its not hard to guess if you have enough material for a job (slicer will tell you how much you need). If you lose power printer will stop and probably make scarf cuz heated nozzle will heat everything around it. If thats not on the visible part, you can messure your print and continue from there, or just print top part and glue them together. Its quite hard to continue without noticable mark afaik, and UPS is probably the right way to deal with it. I lost power 4 times in 7 years, found that a lot, but was lucky cuz printer was on idle every time.

Start with PLA since its the easiest to print and suits most people. PEI sheet with no enclosure will work easy, but make sure A/C or window is not blowing air on one side. Enclosure is still amazing, it protects printer from dust, isolates some noise and it makes environment temp more stable which is super important, especially for materials like ABS. It can also help in keeping your filament dry, especially if you want to print PETG (filament drier is recommended and almost must have for PETG anyway). Its safe to start without one, but deffo plan to get enclosure in the future (even cheap ikea lack will do).

I only have experience with the Prusa Mini+,and I have had it for 2 years now and have barely had to maintain it. But, still, the only printer i've owned.

I'd go prusa mini at this price point. It's a really reliable little machine, and easier to build than the MK3 and others. Enders are really not worth your time, trust me, I had one.

Just as a heads up,you claim to say that speed and size is not important, but trust me, speed and size is always important for 3D printers. Minimum size (except for unique situations) should be around 8"/200 mm cube. For speed, I think the Voron kit was (one of) the fastest ones out there. Now your budget won't allow for one of those printers, but they are a good way to compare the ones you are considering.

I just upgraded from Monoprice Select 3d (not what you want) to an Ender 3 S1 and am super happy. I’d recommend the S1 over V2 for you if you think you might want to ever print flexible filament

I got mine for $299 USD on Amazon

You’ll want an enclosure if you want to contain smell or if you want to print in ABS (of any size, as drafts will fracture the print before it cools)

What I get from the comments here and my own one is... Creality has questionable quality control. There's some people really against their stuff, but my 2019 Ender 3 still goes well and it gets the bare minimum of maintenance. There's a few upgrades, true (BTT silent board, geared extruder, Raspberry with Octoprint, stiff springs) but mechanically it's still the same.

So I guess you either get a good unit or not, surprise!

I never really see flashforge mentioned all that much. But my finder 3 worked straight out the box and has been perfect ever since! Although I have a feeling if it does break repair would be difficult

I’d recommend the Ender 3, I have the Ender 3 Pro v2 I believe, and it’s been very reliable and worked right out the box. I got it on sale at micro center for $100 USD, I’ve heard they go on sale fairly regularly.

Assembly is easy. It doesn’t have auto bed leveling, but the adjustment knobs are easy to use (look up some videos on using a piece of paper and moving the X and Y location of the extruded to level).

It doesn’t have error detection, but I’ve seen some mods online that use an Arduino for this. Even with error detection I don’t think it’s recommended to print unattended due to fire risk.

It comes with a removable flexible textured print surface with heated bed. This texture helps with print adhesion by keeping the part being printed secure while printing. And for fragile parts, you can remove the print surface and bend it to help remove the part after printing is finished. This has worked nearly flawlessly for me, compared to earlier printers where people would use painters tape/glue sticks/etc to help with bed adhesion.

An enclosure is a nice addition, but not really necessary unless you’re doing large prints or really trying to push the boundaries of what you can print. The idea of the enclosure is that it keeps heat in to prevent the part from warping as the extruder moves up along the Z axis. For small parts the heated bed will provide enough heat. You can build one out of plexiglass and 3D printed brackets, or an ikea coffee table (look online for examples).

The Prusa is what you want; it works straight out of the box and requires basically no tinkering. It’s just not at the price point you’re looking for. Given that, I would go with the Ender 3 v2. It’s a great printer, but you do have to assemble it first. It’s easy enough to do, mine had good instructions with it.

For a print surface, I live in an extremely dry climate and had a hell of a time getting anything to stick to the bed until I switched to a PEI sheet. It’s a textured, magnetic, metal sheet coated in PEI. It’s nice because it magnetically sticks to the printer and you can peel it off and flex it to pop off your prints. That single issue was pretty much the only issue I’ve had with my Ender 3 v2. Very little tinkering. It’s a great printer at a great price point. But you do have to put it together first.

I’ve thought about getting a BLtouch or something similar, but I just don’t have to really level the bed very often. The only times I do re-level it are when I occasionally have to pick up and move my printer.

I also have never used an enclosure, but I only print with PLA. As others have mentioned, there are other materials you can print with that create toxic fumes that you would want to vent outside. In that case, you would enclose it. They could also reduce noise, but that’s never been an issue for me.

I would also recommend sticking to PLA filament at first because it’s easy to print with and sticking to one material means you don’t have to change any print settings.

tl;dr The Ender is a great choice, unless you want to increase your budget and buy a Prusa.

Solvo SV 06