Bambu P1S Combo Review

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• Excellent print quality
• Fast print times
• Automatic colour changing
• Built-in camera

Cons

• Basic non-touchscreen control panel
• Filament wastage can be high in multicolour printing
• No failed print detection
• Lacks “Skip Object” from X1 Carbon

Our Verdict

The Bambu P1S is an excellent 3D printer that’s well worth the relatively high price. The Combo is ideal if you need to regularly print in more than one colour, but it’s also really handy being able to print different objects in different colours without having to change filament manually. It’s just a shame Bambu didn’t put a nice touchscreen on it.

Best Prices Today: Bambu P1S Combo

Bambu Lab is a brand that has appeared almost of nowhere and quickly established a reputation for top-notch print quality. Using a CoreXY motion system, its printers are also much faster than traditional “bed slingers” so you can have your cake and eat it: great-looking prints without the long wait times.

The P1S is one of the company’s latest models, offering many of the flagship X1 Carbon’s features at a more affordable price.

That means it’s compatible with the Bambu AMS – effectively a CD autochanger (remember those?) for 3D printing – and has the same build volume, print speeds and quality.

There are a few disadvantages, but these won’t be deal-breakers for everyone. You might end up deciding to spend even more on the X1 Carbon, but there’s still plenty to love here.

Features & design

• 256mm cubed print volume
• Fully enclosed design
• Fully automatic bed levelling

The P1S is essentially a fully enclosed version of the P1P. Being protected from temperature changes and drafts in the room is important when you’re printing with certain types of filaments such as ABS that need a consistent ambient temperature that’s higher than room temperature.

Build volume is the same 256x256x256mm, as is CoreXY movement system and control panel, with the main difference – aside from the side and top panels forming an enclosure – being a built-in camera that lets you monitor prints.

Given the tiny price difference between the two, the P1S is the obvious choice.

For the uninitiated, all Bambu printers come virtually ready to go and with the P1S you just need to attach the screen, spool holder and remove the packing material (and shipping screws) before beginning to print.

With the P1S Combo, setup takes about 40 minutes because you have to extract the AMS from the print chamber first. Fortunately, Bambu has a great YouTube video and step-by-step instructions that show you exactly which screws to remove and how to connect it all up.

Jim Martin / Foundry

When you switch it on for the first time, you’re prompted to connect it to Wi-Fi and link your Bambu account, which you’ll have to create, probably in the Bambu Handy mobile app.

After that, it runs an in-depth calibration that takes around 15 minutes. Once that’s done, you can start printing. As you’d hope for at this price, bed levelling is completely automatic, so the first layer should be perfect every time.

You can choose whether or not to run a much shorter calibration before each print, but this is five minutes well spent, especially for anything that takes more than an hour to print.

One of the chief differences between the P1S and Bambu’s flagship X1 Carbon is the screen. On the latter you get a nice colour touchscreen, similar to that on the Creality K1 and K1 Max , reviewed. It makes the X1 Carbon easy to use and shows you a picture of what you’re about to print.

The small dot-matrix monochrome screen on the P1S is undoubtedly its worst feature and feels out of place on what is otherwise a premium device. Even cheap bed-slingers now have touchscreens, so the fact you have to use a direction pad to navigate to menus and options on the P1S is disappointing.

Jim Martin / Foundry

There’s just about enough information and control, such as current temperatures, remaining print time and the ability to load and unload filaments. And as most people will start prints from the Bambu Studio app on their computer or via the mobile app, it’s not a complete disaster.

Strangely, the P1S’s bed is limited to 100°C, which is 10°C less than the X1 Carbon. Not that it makes much difference: you can still print ABS, ASA, PETG and other filaments without warping issues.

AMS – Automatic Material System

• Up to four reels of filament
• Up to four AMS units per printer

The AMS sits on top of the P1S and has space for four reels of filament.

Jim Martin / Foundry

You can still hang a fifth reel on the spool holder at the rear, but this is an either or situation: you cannot have all five reels available for printing at the same time.

The AMS is a really clever bit of kit. You simply insert the filament from each spool into the feed tube a little way and that’s it: from then on the AMS handles loading and unloading automatically.

It’s air-tight, or at least close to it, and two large packs of silica gel help to ensure no moisture can be absorbed by the filament while it’s in the AMS.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Swapping reels in and out is also easy as none are left routed through to the print head. You have to push down quite hard on the grey tab but then the filament can be pulled out and a new spool dropped in. Poking the filament into the tube is enough: the AMS takes over.

Performance

• Superb print quality with most filaments
• Fast
• Virtually no failed prints

It’s the end result that matters most, and this is where the P1S stands head and shoulders above the competition. Print quality is absolutely astounding, from the clean, even finish to the precision that allows you to print intricate working models whose parts aren’t fused together.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Bambu was good enough to send a variety of filament to try including carbon-fibre infused PLA and PETG to the much tougher-to-work-with TPU.

In fact, it was only when printing with TPU that print quality took a nosedive. It was acceptable for small things like the spiders you see above, but although this phone case printed successfully with some strategically placed supports, the small bottom chamfer was quite messy on the top edge and overall quality was simply nowhere near models printed with more rigid filaments.

Jim Martin / Foundry

I’ll let the P1S off here because TPU is hard for any printer, but I will say that it’s annoying to have to swap between using an external spool and filament in the AMS. You can’t put TPU in the AMS, and that means disconnecting its feed tube and manually feeding the TPU (or whatever you’re using externally) into the print head.

I couldn’t find a way in Bambu Studio to print from that external reel without also disconnecting the AMS’s power cable. It showed the TPU loaded correctly, but still gave me no option to print from it, throwing an error because – of course – there was no matching filament in the AMS.

Speed is the other highlight. That’s something you should expect from any CoreXY printer, but if you’re upgrading from something like a Creality Ender 3 or any other bed slinger, it seems incredible to be able to get such high quality prints in so little time.

A 3Dbenchy takes less than 20 minutes, around a quarter of the time most entry-level 3D printers take, and the default speed of 300mm per second means prints rarely take more than an hour or two.

Reliability is great, but not perfect. However, apart from one or two disappointments where things didn’t stick to the textured PEI plate, the only times prints failed was when I made a mistake such as selecting the wrong plate in Bambu studio or forgetting to remove the prime tower from the build plate before starting another print. It’s a little frustrating that the P1S can’t use its camera to detect failed prints, and it’s also annoying that you can’t exclude a specific model that’s failing on the build plate and continue to print the others as you can on the X1 Carbon. But these are all reasons why you might want to go the whole hog and just splash out on that printer instead.

Multi-colour printing is, of course, the other huge reason to choose a Bambu P1S. There are workarounds for doing this on other printers, but having an automatic system that changes colours without waiting for you to go and intervene is a huge benefit.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Because the old colour has to be purged from the nozzle before the new one emerges, colour changes can use up a fair amount of filament. And while you can arrange it so that there are minimal changes, that works only in certain circumstances, such as when colours change vertically in the model, as shown above.

If you wanted, say, the articulated axolotl shown below with each segment having alternating colours, then the filament would need to be changed at least once for every single layer of the print. That doesn’t just use up a lot of filament, it also adds a lot of time.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Bambu Studio allows you to specify how much filament should be “flushed” for changing from any colour to another, but will also automatically determine how much needs to be purged if you want to ensure no colour bleed. For example, in the model below, I deliberately lowered the flushing volume between red and white to show that you end up with pink for a while (look at the bottom) until the red is completely gone. The pattern visible here is simply because the white is only one layer thick.

Jim Martin / Foundry

There are also options to flush into the model’s infill, where the mixed colour won’t be seen. The default setting in Bambu Studio is also to print a ‘prime tower’ that helps with the colour changes, but even so, when filaments are swapped the P1S still ejects a coil of filament out of a chute at the rear. It’s strange there’s nothing to collect them: they simply end up on the desk behind the printer, or on the floor.

Jim Martin / Foundry

The point here is that printing with multiple colours when the printer has only one nozzle isn’t particularly fast or efficient. It does work well though, and it’s quite amazing to watch the AMS in action, loading and unloading different filaments as required.

There’s another benefit, too. Even if you don’t need a model to have multiple colours, the AMS means you can quickly and easily swap to a different colour for the next print automatically. Don’t underestimate how handy that is.

Bambu Studio & Handy app

You don’t have to use Bambu’s slicer or app, but you’d be slightly mad not to. Studio isn’t a Cura clone, so can take a little getting used to if you’ve only ever used Cura.

For first-time users, it’s great to have everything in one app: preparation, slicing and print monitoring. Studio has a variety of tools, including the ability to add supports manually, but also –and crucially – a painting tool that lets you add different colours to objects.

Jim Martin / Foundry

There are lots of great tutorials on Bambu’s wiki that teach you how to use the tools, which is good because they can be quite complex. Painting in particular isn’t as straightforward as you might expect, although if you select the correct options it’s possible to quickly fill certain areas without having to paint them manually with your mouse.

Jim Martin / Foundry

As Studio can sync colours from what’s loaded in the AMS, you don’t have to set those up manually either, and it’s as simple as right-clicking on an object and changing filament colour to one of those available.

One of the best things about Studio is that it will apply presets based on the filament you’re using. And although you don’t have to exclusively use Bambu filament, there are presets for all of them which means you don’t have to think about what bed and nozzle temperatures to use: they’re set automatically.

As I was about to publish this review, Bambu Lab launched www.makerworld.com , and integrated it into both Studio – the desktop software – and the Bambu Handy mobile app.

This fixed one of the drawbacks I would have mentioned otherwise: the inability to browse for something to print and send it to the printer all within the apps.

Both apps show the camera feed and print progress along with any problems or errors that might need your attention.

Jim Martin / Foundry

One oddity with the P1S is that when you print from either of the apps, it doesn’t store those models on the microSD card that must be inserted into the slot on top of the printer itself for remote printing to work. It is possible to print from a selection of pre-sliced models, but if you want to re-print anything you’ll have to look in the Print History in the apps.

Price & availability

The Bambu P1S costs $699 / £639, or $949 / £869 for the Combo version. You can buy a P1S directly from Bambu’s website .

If you already have the P1S or want more than four colours you can buy the AMS separately for $349 / £309. Just note that you also need the AMS Hub to connect more than one AMS to the P1S.

For alternative options, see our roundup of the best 3D printers .

Should I buy the Bambu P1S?

Bambu has an enviable reputation for excellent print quality, and P1S certainly lived up to the hype in my testing, besting every other printer I’ve reviewed.

However, even if you don’t go for the Combo, it is more expensive than some rivals. It’s $100 more than the Creality K1, and lacks the X1 Carbon’s touchscreen, which the K1 has.

While it does have a useful built-in camera for monitoring prints, it doesn’t have AI monitoring that could alert you to a failed print, rather than discovering only later that one object (or the entire print) hasn’t worked. Depending on where you keep the printer, these things may or may not be a problem.

Ultimately, it’s only the screen that really lets the P1S down, but as I said already, you can largely avoid it by using the desktop or mobile apps. And, finally, having made full use of the Creality K1 Max’s large build volume just before reviewing the P1S Combo, it is a shame that there’s no similar offering in Bambu’s range. So long as you won’t often need to print objects bigger than 256x256x256mm, though, the P1S really is a great choice and, even with that primitive screen, it’s easy to recommend.

Best Prices Today: Bambu P1S Combo

Author: Jim Martin, Executive Editor, Tech Advisor

Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.

Recent stories by Jim Martin:

• The best 3D printers 2024
• Creality K1C review
• Bambu A1 review

Just a few years ago, 3D printing was a hobby for geeks and nerds. It was difficult, frustrating and slow.

Fast forward to 2024, and that has all changed completely. Now, you can buy – for a very reasonable sum – a printer that works out of the box, doesn’t require hours of tweaking and adjusting and prints large models in hours – not days. Small models can take mere minutes.

Since you’re reading this, you’ve probably made it past the point of wondering what on earth you’d use a 3D printer for, but if not, there are many useful tools and gadgets as well as fun things to print, all of which are available to download free from sites such as Thingiverse and Printables .

Here we’ll explain what to look for in a 3D printer and recommend what you should buy.

First, a brief word on colour: consumer 3D printers are single-nozzle devices which print one colour at a time. If you want to multicolour prints, then Bambu’s P1S Combo and A1 Combo can hold four spools of filament and change colour automatically. Multicolour prints can take a long time, though, and waste filament.

One other thing: until you’ve spent time getting to grips with a 3D modelling app such as Fusion 360 or Tinkercad , you’ll be limited to printing objects that other people have designed. There are lots of them, but if you want something bespoke, you’ll have to create it yourself.

Don’t be put off buying a 3D printer, though. Choose wisely and you’ll be rewarded with a device that can print intricate, articulated models from the off.

We’re focusing mainly on FDM (fused deposition modelling) printers here because these are the most popular type. The other type is a resin 3D printer, such as the Creality Halot One Plus, which works very differently, and are designed for printing small, intricate, solid models.

Best 3D printers 2024

1. Bambu P1S – Best 3D printer for most people

Pros

• Excellent print quality
• Automatic colour changing
• Fast CoreXY motion system

Cons

• Basic non-touchscreen control panel
• Filament wastage can be high in multicolour printing
• No failed print detection

With so many tech products you get what you pay for. This inevitably means the “best” will also be the most expensive. It’s certainly the case here, but just because the P1S is expensive doesn’t mean it isn’t good value.

If you buy the P1S Combo, it will come with an AMS, a unit that sits on top of the printer. It holds four spools of filament and can load and unload them automatically and print in multiple colours without any assistance from you.

With only one nozzle, multicolour prints aren’t exactly fast. But the AMS also takes the pain out of changing filament when you want to print something in a different colour to the previous print.

If you don’t care about multicolour, you can buy the non-Combo version of the P1S for quite a bit less.

Overall, the P1S is a remarkably good printer. It’s really fast thanks to the use of a coreXY system, and as it’s fully enclosed it’s reliable even when printing with ASA, nylon, polycarbonate and other filament types because of the stable internal temperatures. More importantly, print quality is absolutely superb.

If there’s a downside, it’s the rubbish dot-matrix screen which seems very out of place on a printer this expensive. But, there are other ways to control the P1S, such as printing from a PC or phone via Wi-Fi. The Creality K1C is a good alternative if you must have a touchscreen, and it also has a few other features such as failed print detection.

If you just want to print with PLA, PETG and other filament types that don’t require an enclosure, take a look at Bambu’s A1 which is a lot cheaper.

Read our full Bambu P1S Combo review

2. Bambu A1 – Best budget 3D printer

Pros

• Fast, reliable printing
• Fully automatic levelling
• Excellent value

Cons

• Doesn’t support more exotic filament
• AMS Lite adds significantly to the price

In our full review, we call the A1 “the 3D printer you’ve been waiting for”, and with good reason. It’s as close to ‘one click’ printing as you’ll get right now: it adjusts itself automatically for reliable printing and has all the features most people want, at a surprisingly affordable price. Bambu’s desktop and mobile apps are really good, too.

Like Bambu’s more expensive P1S, it can print models up to 256mm³ and you can buy the optional AMS Lite (shown to the right of the A1) for automatic multicolour printing.

The only drawback is that the A1 can’t really print nylon, ABS, ASA and other ‘exotic’ filaments because they require an enclosure. Without one, they tend to warp. The A1 can print carbon-fibre filaments if you buy Bambu’s hardened nozzle, which is very easy to fit.

Print quality, when using supported filament types, is sensational.

Read our full Bambu A1 review

3. Creality K1 Max – Best large 3D printer

Pros

• Fast, reliable printing
• Large build volume
• Fully automatic bed levelling

Cons

• Some features exclusive to Creality’s slicer
• No multi-colour capabilities

Some may say the K1 is just a poor copy of the Bambu P1S, but that does it a disservice when so many 3D printers are basically copies of each other. There are two models, the smaller K1 which is cheaper than the larger K1 Max.

The Max offers a 300x300x300 build volume, something not currently available from Bambu and it has an easy-to-use touchscreen. Bed levelling is fully automatic and it even has a LiDAR system that helps ensure prints are successful and good quality.

There’s built-in Wi-Fi and an ‘AI’ camera that can detect when prints are failing, as well as when you might have accidentally left a model or some tools on the build plate.

As both K1 and K1 Max use coreXY systems, they’re just as fast as the Bambu and although quality isn’t quite up to the P1S’s level, it’s still very good.

Read our full Creality K1 Max review

4. Elegoo Neptune 4 – Best cheap 3D printer

Pros

• Fast printing
• Automatic bed levelling
• Intuitive touchscreen controller

Cons

• No Wi-Fi
• More expensive in UK than US
• Elegoo’s slicer isn’t the best

The Neptune 4 offers everything most people are looking for in a first 3D printer. It’s easy to set up, has auto bed levelling, a colour touchscreen and is pretty fast to boot.

That’s already a lot for the low price, so it’s not too surprising it doesn’t have Wi-Fi. Unlike some of the budget models here, it competes with the coreXY printers for speed thanks to an upgraded print head with much improved cooling over the Neptune 3.

It’s a shame that like the Ender 3 S1 Pro levelling isn’t completely automatic, but once you’ve adjusted the knobs, subsequent levelling is automatic.

Print quality is very good at the default 300mm speed, but it’s a good idea to use an alternative to Elegoo’s slicer which caused us quite a few headaches when prints failed.

Read our full Elegoo Neptune 4 review

5. Creality K1C – Best for exotic filaments

Pros

• Can print carbon fibre filaments out of the box
• Can print ASA, nylon, ABS as well as PLA and PETG
• Built in camera

Cons

• Single colour printing only
• Can be very noisy
• Frustrating to change filament

The K1C can print models up to 220x220x250mm, and comes almost fully assembled. It’s fully automatic, which means there’s no need to make any manual adjustments: it prints reliably from the word go.

Effectively, it’s an upgrade of Creality’s K1 and has a hardened steel nozzle that can print abrasive filaments like carbon-fibre infused PLA and PETG. Unlike the K1 it also has a camera for monitoring print progress remotely, and it’ll detect and notify you of problems like foreign objects left on the build plate and failed prints.

The touchscreen makes it easy to use, and Creality’s desktop and mobile apps aren’t bad, although they lack the polish and ease of use of Bambu’s.

The only real limitation is that the K1C can’t print in multiple colours, but if you don’t need to do that, it’s a great choice.

6. Anycubic Kobra 2 Plus – Best for printing huge models

Pros

• Massive build volume
• Fast

Cons

• Takes up a lot of space
• Not suitable for filaments which require an enclosure

With a build volume of 320 x 320 x 400mm (WDH), the Kobra 2 Plus can print very large models. If that’s not enough, there’s also the Kobra 2 Max with an even larger 420 x 420 x 500mm volume.

It’s a bed slinger, which means the build plate moves backwards and forwards. In turn, this means you need quite a lot of desk space for the Kobra 2 Plus. It’s fast and capable of good print quality, and is pretty easy to use thanks to automatic bed levelling, vibration compensation and a colour touchscreen.

Read our full Anycubic Kobra 2 Plus review

7. Creality 3D Ender 3 S1 Pro

Pros

• Great print quality
• Almost all the features you’d want

Cons

• Auto-levelling requires manual input
• Slow by today’s standards

The S1 Pro is really a budget 3D printer but it’s more expensive than the cheapest because it has had all the bells and whistles thrown at it.

There’s the Sprite direct drive print head with dual metal gears for reliable extrusion. It’s capable of heating to 300C, so you can print with a wide range of filaments. The bed goes up to 110C, too, which helps prints adhere when working with more awkward types of filament.

It isn’t enclosed, though, and is a bed-slinger, so needs room in front and behind it to accommodate its range of travel. There’s a useful LED strip which is really bright, and a colour touchscreen. Its interface could be improved a bit, but it’s not bad.

Print quality is very good, but it isn’t fast. To improve it you can buy Creality’s Sonic Pad – a Klipper-based touchscreen – but this adds a lot of cost and hassle. If speed is important, choose a printer that offers 300mm/sec out of the box like the Bambu A1.

Read our full Creality 3D Ender 3 S1 Pro review

8. Creality Halot One Plus

Pros

• Easy to use & reliable
• Works with various slicers
• Great print quality

Cons

• Fan runs constantly during printing
• Requires post-printing cleanup + curing (like all resin printers)
• More expensive than some rivals

The Halot One Plus is an easy-to-use resin 3D printer that has a good-sized build volume, prints reliably and at high quality. It’s quite expensive compared to rivals, especially in the UK.

The Halot One Plus is a resin printer, so is very different to the others here. Instead of using filament on a reel, it prints using liquid resin which is cured, layer by layer, using UV light.

Build volume is smaller than the FDM printers here, but it’s still relatively large for a resin printer, and the screen’s high resolution means models have lots of fine detail.

The Halot One Plus printed ultra-reliably in our tests, but if you are keen on a resin printer, bear in mind that you have to clean up prints afterwards, which usually means buying a separate washing and curing device that looks a lot like a resin printer and takes up the same amount of desk space.

Read our full Creality Halot One Plus review

Buyer’s guide

Here are the key things you should look out for when choosing a 3D printer.

Automatic levelling

Unless the surface on which objects are printed is perfectly level, prints won’t stick to it and will fail sooner or later.

Manual levelling is a chore you could do without, so go for a printer with auto levelling. Be careful: some printers claim to have auto levelling, but rely on you to do a lot of the work. Which is why it pays to read reviews as well as knowing what to look for.

Heated bed

Almost all 3D printers have them, but it’s a must have. A heated bed will help prints to stick: don’t buy a printer without one.

PEI sheet

Models can be difficult to remove from the build plate. A PEI (polyetherimide) sheet helps immensely. It’s a flexible metal sheet with a textured coating is used, and held in place with magnets. When the model finishes printing, you simply lift the sheet off, flex it and the model pops off.

Touchscreen

Some printers still use a monochrome screen with a rotary dial or buttons. This isn’t nearly as easy to use as a touchscreen. Bambu P1S (and P1P) would be much better with a touchscreen, but it’s not the end of the world with those as you can print from your PC or phone using Bambu’s apps. When a printer doesn’t have Wi-Fi (or any networking) you are stuck using the screen it comes with.

Build volume

A printer’s build volume tells you how big an object it can print. It’s wise to assume that the actual maximum volume is a bit smaller than the specifications suggest, and go for one with a slightly larger volume than the biggest object you will need to print.

It can be hard to know this, and remember that a bigger volume means a bigger printer, which you’ll need space for.

Really large models can be printed in sections and superglued (or otherwise fixed) together, so you don’t necessarily need a huge printer.

Nozzle and bed temperatures

Most people print using PLA, the most common type of filament. It’s easy to work with, strong and durable.

All 3D printers have nozzles that go up to the 220°C or so that PLA requires. But if you want to print with ABS, PETG or another type that needs high temperatures, be sure to opt for a printer that can go up to around 300°C. But see Enclosure below, too.

Similarly, watch out for heated bed temperatures. Some won’t go beyond 80°C, but you’ll need 100°C or more for successful ABS prints.

Enclosure

Some materials such as ABS, ASA, polycarbonate and nylon need carefully controlled ambient temperature to prevent them from warping while printing. If you need to use these – perhaps because you want to print models that can survive exposure to sunlight, then look for an enclosed printer – essentially a self-contained box.

Run-out sensor

With large models taking many hours to print and the fact that you can’t always know if there’s enough filament left on the reel to complete it, a run-out sensor can be a life saver. It does it what it says: detects when the filament runs out and halts printing automatically, allowing you to load a new reel and carry on printing.

Without one, the filament could run out and the printer will carry on printing thin air, and you’d be none the wiser.

What’s the best 3D printer for beginners

The Bambu A1 is an excellent choice for beginners. It’s relatively affordable and is very easy to use because it handles so many things automatically. It’s also fast and offers top notch print quality.

How much does a beginner 3D printer cost?

Printers start from as little as $130 / £130, but you may want to spend more to get a better model with more features, faster speeds and better print quality. There are a lot of great printers under $500 / £500.

What type of 3D printer is best?

The most common type is FDM (printers that use filament on a spool), but the absolute best quality is from SLA printers, which use resin and are capable of printing much finer detail. There are lots of pros and cons of each type, but put simply, resin printers are best for small, intricate figurines, while filament printers are best for printing things that are useful around the home as well as models that hinge or articulate.

Is it cheap to use a 3D printer?

Spools of filament typically weigh 1kg and cost from $15 / £15 to $30 / £30. It’s therefore the weight of the model that matters most, not the size. So-called slicing software turns a 3D model into instructions a 3D printer can understand, and you can adjust the settings to save weight by minimising the amount of infill. Sometimes it’s cheaper to print your own parts, but sometimes you might find it’s cheaper to buy pre-made plastic things than to 3D print them.

Are 3D printers good for beginners?

3D printing is much easier than it used to be thanks to modern printers that automate a lot of the fiddly things like bed levelling. They can also compensate for vibrations, resume printing after a power cut or when the filament runs out. The difficult part is designing your own models to print, but there are thousands of pre-made models available online to download free.

Author: Jim Martin, Executive Editor, Tech Advisor

Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.

Recent stories by Jim Martin:

• Creality K1C review
• Bambu A1 review
• Bambu A1: a full-size bed slinger 3D printer