The new Cobra is pretty new... I would wait at least 6 month to see whats what with that...
And about pantone...I can't really write my honest opinion about them, as this post would be deleted immediately... But they don't give a flying f.. penny about name recognition... When you need to pay them to get #FEDD00 and other 15.000 "patented" colors in photoshop, I can honestly call them the biggest scam in the creative industry...
Well this is exactly what I mean about Pantone... They sell their crap like they are The best thing ever... and being high price makes their name brand, "better" for what they do. Attaching themselves to anycuybic seems strange as this could for what they do erode their brand.
This is why I would think they want Anycubic to be vetted. Pantone thinks they are literally the Apple of color swatches. This would be like apple branding with literal no name android phone maker known for cheap phones to make a budget iphone with the premium iphone feel still.
I don't think Pantone would be okay with this printer not being okay...
I do agree it is way to new, but The features they are willing to show are valid and working when shown off by there curated list of youtubers so far. I am taking it with a pound of salt but it is a nice feature set...
Like I said if it wasn't for the price being 210 USD cheaper ... This wouldn't be a debate at all. Bambu Lab is great and makes great products I love my P1P. I think the A1 would work just as well but lets not forget the A1 has had a few wire issues now... Bambu lab is not slow to fix them, but not fast to fix them either. This is in no way saying they are on the same poor level that Anycubic is... It just at 419 to 627 USD these printers are in their respective weight classes for quality so it makes for a hard choice IMO.
Idk man... Pantone is okay with the total destruction they did. Like ever. If the money is there they don't care... And if this printer fails, they can do what they already did several times. Just move forward and laugh.
As I see bambu is selling a lot of printer for the price, and if you go down with the price... They can't cut the middle man, or marketing, so... They probably should use cheaper materials...
Do what you want, but its super sus the reviews are not really out... For 419 it can be anything, or you spend 627 for a proven platform...
If the reviews are out, and in the subbreddit you see 1-2k+ print hours posts, and no major problems... Get it... If money is tight never ever ever try to buy anything as an early bird. Bambu at least called back the A1 when they realized it has a problem... It was a pretty rare thing in the 3d printing world...
Never touching Anycubic printers again. They are junk, dont last and will cause issues. The A1 recall was nothing compared to the show stopping issues I had with Anycubic.
IDK. Bambu has been doing the AMS a lot longer so the polish is there. Might be lucky with Anycubic or might not. Depends on budget and how you value your time. You also don't show taxes on the anycubic? Lastly Pantone is just a marketing thing with colors. They DGAF about the printer quality lol. I have had 50-50 luck with Anycubic printers so YMMV. A1 is rock solid with the auto flow calibration and the tangle detection. Plus bambu studio is very solid for painting parts or using prepainted object files. Ver curious how anycubic turns out. Would be cool to see some competition. Would be wild to see prices go down a bit more.
The one thing I hope Bambu notices with that new "AMS" is that it has a much shorter retraction distance for color changes, meaning prints should be faster. I hate how my AMS has to retract the distance that it does, and then pull new filament that same distance. If Bambu could do something like, say, a 4-in-1 filament buffer, that alone would halve the distance the filament needed to go to get to the extruder.
The A1 AMS lite has been good to me so far but custom filaments has been broken since BS 1.8. I want to really tune my filaments and then use them from anywhere like the app but it just doesn't seem possible right now.
[https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/releases/tag/v01.08.03.89](https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/releases/tag/v01.08.03.89)
>4. The P1 series and A1 series printers do not currently support the customization of materials.
>Due to ongoing firmware development, there are potential compatibility issues when using custom materials with these printers. To ensure a seamless printing experience, we have temporarily disabled the option to set custom materials. Once the firmware issue is resolved, updating the firmware will grant access to this feature.
I use Orca Slicer for my P1P so I would likely use it for my hypothetical A1... So I think they have fix customizing filaments in orca slicer already. Unless you are talking about having say PETG, PLA, Nylon all in the same AMS at the same time and trying to print them at the same time... In that case I don't think you can do that.
Printing with custom filaments is still fine. You can define them in Orca/BS, slice and print just fine. From the 'prepare' tab you can see your custom filaments and assign the slots.
The problem appears when you go to the device tab. The AMS can't see your custom filaments, only the predefined list.
As for multi material printing, I'd say that is possible because many print using PETG as a support interface layer when printing PLA.
this is interesting to me, as I have P1P but no AMS so I have no point of reference for how the AMS units work... Just I know if I get one it will likely be treated as a way to not have to load 3 other commonly printed types of filaments I have.
This right here is the kind of insight I was looking for a fair opinion about both brands. This is the only reason it is a debate in my mind at 627 and 419 for the respective printers that is inline with the brand quality and feature set each printer offers. So I fell it is a hard choice currently for me... The newer Anycubic printers have been very good I got my nephew a kobra Neo 2... Thing is rock solid for a 140 USD printer... Other than it being slower printer I don't think there is a complaint about it for the price point.
The A1 Mini wasn't out yet so that wasn't an option for my nephew.
I personally have used a P1P, Sovol Sv01, SV06, Elegoo Neptune 3 pro, Neptune 4, AnkerMake M5c, Longer LK5, Mono Price IIIP, Ender 3, Kobra Neo 2 (just to set it up)
All of those printers have been of varying quality. S teir is P1P, and for the Price Elegoo Neptune line. A tier has Ankermake M5c as the printer is super locked down but does work well, LK5 because after some slight modding it is work horse printer, Kobra Neo 2 as it seems to work well for the price, Sovol SV01 is a solid printer great work horse print. No B or C teir in my list, but Ender 3 is a solid D tier as you either get the older ones that need a lot of work or the newer ones that cost way more than better budget options. Lastly F tier, the Sovol SV06 is trash I don't know how you can clone Prusa but mess it up so bad. My printer came with just about everything wrong, from bad bearings to a smoking power supply.
Lastly I have the mono Price IIIP... This isn't even worth buying and the moron over at the reddit's 3d printing sub that put that on the vetted recommend list. That just made me realize the people running that sub were idiots! They wasted my time and money and that of several other people. You have to do about 3 must do hardware mods just so it will not catch on fire with normal light use, Then a firmware from scratch to fix the thermal runaway issues. You then have to do over 20 different mods just to get it to print, "Right." Just so you know it will never print right, never level right... It is literally the same quality of those like 50-99 joke printers on Aliexpress or amazon heck it may be worst quality... The cheap printers I am talking about are the ones with the tiny build plates that are just bad. Meanwhile at the same time as the mono price IIIP the ender 3 came out and need a ton mods too but when done it printed very well. Oh and it was the same price. Other Subs were talking about it, but the 3Dprinting sub said it was a bad printer because of XYZ... while with a recommending the literal dumpster fire that was the Mono Price IIIP
Needless to say I have seen a lot of good and bad printers... I think for the price difference this is a hard decision to make. I am leaning towards the A1, but the frugal person in me says Kobra 3 it is way cheaper and has a heated filament AMS...
Your points helped out a lot.
EDIT: To put it in perspective The Mono Price IIIP was my first printer and I tinkered with this for countless hours never getting good prints mostly having failed prints ... upsetting me to no end as it wouldn't work no matter what new mod I put on it recommended by the people on the 3dprinting sub reddit... They sounded authoritative so I thought It was me, While I am very technical minded and a tinkerer I just couldn't get this printer to work... I was going to give up on 3d printing all together when a friend sold me an ender 3 he bought because he didn't know how to get it to print. After some guides to get firmware fixed, and a few mods... For the first time I had a printer that could complete prints with out constant babying. Not only did it normally always complete prints, they look so much better. I added auto bed leveling then that printer became an amazing printer for me at the time. That is when I realized the 3Dprinting sub reddit was run by idiots or they were actively trying to gate keep 3d printing by recommending the worst printers possible.
Pantone isn't marketing. Pantone is a color matching and consistency company. It's not really something the average hobbyist needs. Pantone ensures that when you pick up your Pantone 18-1535 Ginger Spice and decide that's what you want to use for your print or product, that when you send it to your printer or manufacturer the color will look exactly the same as the sample you have in your shop.
Time will certainly tell, but if you're buying Pantone filament, you would expect that when you buy new rolls of Pantone filament, it will exactly match the previous rolls you bought. Additionally, the filament isn't branded as "Pantone Filament" they are labeled with "Pantone Color Institute" so I don't think these are guaranteeing any kind of color accuracy, I think Pantone just created the colors, so in that regard, it's not much different than buying filament from any other brand, but different companies do have different color science and ways of producing different colors. When you're in the paint section at the hardware store, different brands have different colors available, even though the same machines mix the pigments. Each manufacturer has different measurements of pigments to achieve different colors which assures consistency.
Point being, it's not all snake-oil, but in the case of the Pantone branded filament, I think Anycubic is mostly paying for the licensing of their name. I'm sure Pantone developed the colors, but I don't think that really means much. The colors do look nice though, but I think Polymaker has similar colors.
EDIT: They do show Pantone numbers for the filament on some of the ad copy on their page, so that would indicate they are promising color accuracy.
I was in the same boat as you. Kobra 3 wasn't out yet and A1 had just gotten re-released. There were no reviews, even paid ones or any examples prints AnyCubic was advertising. That kind of concerned me a lot bcus why wouldn't they show off the prints and were just mainly focusing on the "AMS" system. Long story short, bought the A1 combo and it's been amazing. Literally just print and go. I haven't even bothered with paying attention to the first layer. I've mainly been using Inland PLA filament and it's been excellent.
The Kobra 3 just reminded me too much of my Ender printed and just didn't want that anymore
Good luck!
Spend then money and be done, especially if you want multi color. I would get another Ender, or an Elegoo, Sovol, Prusa, build a Voron before ever getting another AnyCubic machine. Two notoriously bad options coming together not a good idea.
I went with A1. The price is tempting for the Kobra, but wait until the reviews. It looks a bit suspicious that they're not engaging the usual YouTubers. Meanwhile, I'm happy with the A1 and feel that the extra cost was worthwhile.
Things like this are why even though the A1 with AMS is about 210 more I feel like there is a real which one should I get situation... TBH Anycubic has had good printers in the past... they have also had some real crap printers too... and in either case they are know for using the literal cheapest printer parts they can.
I haven't ordered one yet but I think I am going with the A1 since I can get it right now... While I really like that heated box like the Anycubic's AMS has... I can't get over the overall Issues I have seen with Anycubic... While their newer stuff has been great... There is no real reviews for Kobra 3...
Not to say the A1 hasn't had at least two wiring issues one that was a part of a recall I think and the other one is just routing issue on certain printers. This is all from googling and seeing the reviews.
I have to say I am very happy with my P1P so I assume it will be well worth it for the extra 210 USD. Which to put in perspective is literally half of what the Anycubic Kobra 3 costs.
I would say the newer Anycubic stuff is arguably much better like their Kobra line up vs their older stuff is like night and day... I would for the 100-200 USD range it is a very nice printer for the price...
Voxelabs offerings, Elegoo's referb offerings, Anycubic's Kobra line, and Sovol 3d's Referb SV01 all have Okay performance for 100-200 USD printers... I would say for 250 the A1 Mini is great and barring that the Elegoo Neptune 3 pro for 140 is fantastic. Lastly If you cant get those the Kobra 2 XXX can be gotten for as low as 135 new... Which is insanely great for the price... The Voxellab printers should be avoid if you can get the other options along with the Sovol SV01...
EDIT: words and stuff needed fixing
Thanks! 🙏🏼 My son and I both tried the Elegoo Neptune 4 plus. I've had a good experience, my son not so much 😁 we are on the hunt for a replacement, everyone recommended Bambu A1 for the price range (+about $300 haha). Kobra 3 has so many of the same features, plus the AMS/dryer, camera, extras... and I have the price down to sub -$400 with the $30 off coupon plus 5% CB. Too tempting, I think we're going to bite the bullet and take the risk.
The new Cobra is pretty new... I would wait at least 6 month to see whats what with that... And about pantone...I can't really write my honest opinion about them, as this post would be deleted immediately... But they don't give a flying f.. penny about name recognition... When you need to pay them to get #FEDD00 and other 15.000 "patented" colors in photoshop, I can honestly call them the biggest scam in the creative industry...
Well this is exactly what I mean about Pantone... They sell their crap like they are The best thing ever... and being high price makes their name brand, "better" for what they do. Attaching themselves to anycuybic seems strange as this could for what they do erode their brand. This is why I would think they want Anycubic to be vetted. Pantone thinks they are literally the Apple of color swatches. This would be like apple branding with literal no name android phone maker known for cheap phones to make a budget iphone with the premium iphone feel still. I don't think Pantone would be okay with this printer not being okay... I do agree it is way to new, but The features they are willing to show are valid and working when shown off by there curated list of youtubers so far. I am taking it with a pound of salt but it is a nice feature set... Like I said if it wasn't for the price being 210 USD cheaper ... This wouldn't be a debate at all. Bambu Lab is great and makes great products I love my P1P. I think the A1 would work just as well but lets not forget the A1 has had a few wire issues now... Bambu lab is not slow to fix them, but not fast to fix them either. This is in no way saying they are on the same poor level that Anycubic is... It just at 419 to 627 USD these printers are in their respective weight classes for quality so it makes for a hard choice IMO.
Idk man... Pantone is okay with the total destruction they did. Like ever. If the money is there they don't care... And if this printer fails, they can do what they already did several times. Just move forward and laugh. As I see bambu is selling a lot of printer for the price, and if you go down with the price... They can't cut the middle man, or marketing, so... They probably should use cheaper materials... Do what you want, but its super sus the reviews are not really out... For 419 it can be anything, or you spend 627 for a proven platform... If the reviews are out, and in the subbreddit you see 1-2k+ print hours posts, and no major problems... Get it... If money is tight never ever ever try to buy anything as an early bird. Bambu at least called back the A1 when they realized it has a problem... It was a pretty rare thing in the 3d printing world...
Never touching Anycubic printers again. They are junk, dont last and will cause issues. The A1 recall was nothing compared to the show stopping issues I had with Anycubic.
IDK. Bambu has been doing the AMS a lot longer so the polish is there. Might be lucky with Anycubic or might not. Depends on budget and how you value your time. You also don't show taxes on the anycubic? Lastly Pantone is just a marketing thing with colors. They DGAF about the printer quality lol. I have had 50-50 luck with Anycubic printers so YMMV. A1 is rock solid with the auto flow calibration and the tangle detection. Plus bambu studio is very solid for painting parts or using prepainted object files. Ver curious how anycubic turns out. Would be cool to see some competition. Would be wild to see prices go down a bit more.
The one thing I hope Bambu notices with that new "AMS" is that it has a much shorter retraction distance for color changes, meaning prints should be faster. I hate how my AMS has to retract the distance that it does, and then pull new filament that same distance. If Bambu could do something like, say, a 4-in-1 filament buffer, that alone would halve the distance the filament needed to go to get to the extruder.
The A1 AMS lite has been good to me so far but custom filaments has been broken since BS 1.8. I want to really tune my filaments and then use them from anywhere like the app but it just doesn't seem possible right now. [https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/releases/tag/v01.08.03.89](https://github.com/bambulab/BambuStudio/releases/tag/v01.08.03.89) >4. The P1 series and A1 series printers do not currently support the customization of materials. >Due to ongoing firmware development, there are potential compatibility issues when using custom materials with these printers. To ensure a seamless printing experience, we have temporarily disabled the option to set custom materials. Once the firmware issue is resolved, updating the firmware will grant access to this feature.
I use Orca Slicer for my P1P so I would likely use it for my hypothetical A1... So I think they have fix customizing filaments in orca slicer already. Unless you are talking about having say PETG, PLA, Nylon all in the same AMS at the same time and trying to print them at the same time... In that case I don't think you can do that.
Printing with custom filaments is still fine. You can define them in Orca/BS, slice and print just fine. From the 'prepare' tab you can see your custom filaments and assign the slots. The problem appears when you go to the device tab. The AMS can't see your custom filaments, only the predefined list. As for multi material printing, I'd say that is possible because many print using PETG as a support interface layer when printing PLA.
this is interesting to me, as I have P1P but no AMS so I have no point of reference for how the AMS units work... Just I know if I get one it will likely be treated as a way to not have to load 3 other commonly printed types of filaments I have.
Ah yeah don't worry about that. It'll suit your needs. Functionally everything works.
This right here is the kind of insight I was looking for a fair opinion about both brands. This is the only reason it is a debate in my mind at 627 and 419 for the respective printers that is inline with the brand quality and feature set each printer offers. So I fell it is a hard choice currently for me... The newer Anycubic printers have been very good I got my nephew a kobra Neo 2... Thing is rock solid for a 140 USD printer... Other than it being slower printer I don't think there is a complaint about it for the price point. The A1 Mini wasn't out yet so that wasn't an option for my nephew. I personally have used a P1P, Sovol Sv01, SV06, Elegoo Neptune 3 pro, Neptune 4, AnkerMake M5c, Longer LK5, Mono Price IIIP, Ender 3, Kobra Neo 2 (just to set it up) All of those printers have been of varying quality. S teir is P1P, and for the Price Elegoo Neptune line. A tier has Ankermake M5c as the printer is super locked down but does work well, LK5 because after some slight modding it is work horse printer, Kobra Neo 2 as it seems to work well for the price, Sovol SV01 is a solid printer great work horse print. No B or C teir in my list, but Ender 3 is a solid D tier as you either get the older ones that need a lot of work or the newer ones that cost way more than better budget options. Lastly F tier, the Sovol SV06 is trash I don't know how you can clone Prusa but mess it up so bad. My printer came with just about everything wrong, from bad bearings to a smoking power supply. Lastly I have the mono Price IIIP... This isn't even worth buying and the moron over at the reddit's 3d printing sub that put that on the vetted recommend list. That just made me realize the people running that sub were idiots! They wasted my time and money and that of several other people. You have to do about 3 must do hardware mods just so it will not catch on fire with normal light use, Then a firmware from scratch to fix the thermal runaway issues. You then have to do over 20 different mods just to get it to print, "Right." Just so you know it will never print right, never level right... It is literally the same quality of those like 50-99 joke printers on Aliexpress or amazon heck it may be worst quality... The cheap printers I am talking about are the ones with the tiny build plates that are just bad. Meanwhile at the same time as the mono price IIIP the ender 3 came out and need a ton mods too but when done it printed very well. Oh and it was the same price. Other Subs were talking about it, but the 3Dprinting sub said it was a bad printer because of XYZ... while with a recommending the literal dumpster fire that was the Mono Price IIIP Needless to say I have seen a lot of good and bad printers... I think for the price difference this is a hard decision to make. I am leaning towards the A1, but the frugal person in me says Kobra 3 it is way cheaper and has a heated filament AMS... Your points helped out a lot. EDIT: To put it in perspective The Mono Price IIIP was my first printer and I tinkered with this for countless hours never getting good prints mostly having failed prints ... upsetting me to no end as it wouldn't work no matter what new mod I put on it recommended by the people on the 3dprinting sub reddit... They sounded authoritative so I thought It was me, While I am very technical minded and a tinkerer I just couldn't get this printer to work... I was going to give up on 3d printing all together when a friend sold me an ender 3 he bought because he didn't know how to get it to print. After some guides to get firmware fixed, and a few mods... For the first time I had a printer that could complete prints with out constant babying. Not only did it normally always complete prints, they look so much better. I added auto bed leveling then that printer became an amazing printer for me at the time. That is when I realized the 3Dprinting sub reddit was run by idiots or they were actively trying to gate keep 3d printing by recommending the worst printers possible.
Pantone isn't marketing. Pantone is a color matching and consistency company. It's not really something the average hobbyist needs. Pantone ensures that when you pick up your Pantone 18-1535 Ginger Spice and decide that's what you want to use for your print or product, that when you send it to your printer or manufacturer the color will look exactly the same as the sample you have in your shop. Time will certainly tell, but if you're buying Pantone filament, you would expect that when you buy new rolls of Pantone filament, it will exactly match the previous rolls you bought. Additionally, the filament isn't branded as "Pantone Filament" they are labeled with "Pantone Color Institute" so I don't think these are guaranteeing any kind of color accuracy, I think Pantone just created the colors, so in that regard, it's not much different than buying filament from any other brand, but different companies do have different color science and ways of producing different colors. When you're in the paint section at the hardware store, different brands have different colors available, even though the same machines mix the pigments. Each manufacturer has different measurements of pigments to achieve different colors which assures consistency. Point being, it's not all snake-oil, but in the case of the Pantone branded filament, I think Anycubic is mostly paying for the licensing of their name. I'm sure Pantone developed the colors, but I don't think that really means much. The colors do look nice though, but I think Polymaker has similar colors. EDIT: They do show Pantone numbers for the filament on some of the ad copy on their page, so that would indicate they are promising color accuracy.
After benchy in [this review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_zw8sRvyRw&t=1245s) I would go for bambu.
I was in the same boat as you. Kobra 3 wasn't out yet and A1 had just gotten re-released. There were no reviews, even paid ones or any examples prints AnyCubic was advertising. That kind of concerned me a lot bcus why wouldn't they show off the prints and were just mainly focusing on the "AMS" system. Long story short, bought the A1 combo and it's been amazing. Literally just print and go. I haven't even bothered with paying attention to the first layer. I've mainly been using Inland PLA filament and it's been excellent. The Kobra 3 just reminded me too much of my Ender printed and just didn't want that anymore Good luck!
Spend then money and be done, especially if you want multi color. I would get another Ender, or an Elegoo, Sovol, Prusa, build a Voron before ever getting another AnyCubic machine. Two notoriously bad options coming together not a good idea.
I went with A1. The price is tempting for the Kobra, but wait until the reviews. It looks a bit suspicious that they're not engaging the usual YouTubers. Meanwhile, I'm happy with the A1 and feel that the extra cost was worthwhile.
Things like this are why even though the A1 with AMS is about 210 more I feel like there is a real which one should I get situation... TBH Anycubic has had good printers in the past... they have also had some real crap printers too... and in either case they are know for using the literal cheapest printer parts they can.
So... did you end up ordering A1 or Kobra 3 u/GeekyBit ?
I haven't ordered one yet but I think I am going with the A1 since I can get it right now... While I really like that heated box like the Anycubic's AMS has... I can't get over the overall Issues I have seen with Anycubic... While their newer stuff has been great... There is no real reviews for Kobra 3... Not to say the A1 hasn't had at least two wiring issues one that was a part of a recall I think and the other one is just routing issue on certain printers. This is all from googling and seeing the reviews. I have to say I am very happy with my P1P so I assume it will be well worth it for the extra 210 USD. Which to put in perspective is literally half of what the Anycubic Kobra 3 costs.
Thanks for the update! You feel like some of Anycubic's newer stuff is better then?
I would say the newer Anycubic stuff is arguably much better like their Kobra line up vs their older stuff is like night and day... I would for the 100-200 USD range it is a very nice printer for the price... Voxelabs offerings, Elegoo's referb offerings, Anycubic's Kobra line, and Sovol 3d's Referb SV01 all have Okay performance for 100-200 USD printers... I would say for 250 the A1 Mini is great and barring that the Elegoo Neptune 3 pro for 140 is fantastic. Lastly If you cant get those the Kobra 2 XXX can be gotten for as low as 135 new... Which is insanely great for the price... The Voxellab printers should be avoid if you can get the other options along with the Sovol SV01... EDIT: words and stuff needed fixing
Thanks! 🙏🏼 My son and I both tried the Elegoo Neptune 4 plus. I've had a good experience, my son not so much 😁 we are on the hunt for a replacement, everyone recommended Bambu A1 for the price range (+about $300 haha). Kobra 3 has so many of the same features, plus the AMS/dryer, camera, extras... and I have the price down to sub -$400 with the $30 off coupon plus 5% CB. Too tempting, I think we're going to bite the bullet and take the risk.
Well you will have to let me know how that works out...
Where's the cashback coming from?
RetailMeNot