this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
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Dang that was the first 3d printer company that had me intrigued... Hopefully this is making hay is a short lived field, but it's not great publicity
Sorry if I’m the bearer of bad news, but this is somehow not the thing Bambu is doing that is their biggest issue with consumer trust right now.
There are probably plenty of posts here on Lemmy about the issues with the AGPL, potential violations, and sending sketchy legal threats to hobbyists trying to let people use their printers without going through Bambu servers; it is likely worth looking around for the latest on that debacle
You can read about these incidents here: https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Bambu_Lab
They've also threatened hobbyists trying to let use people use their printers explicitly with using Bambu servers!
And most people don't care about the AGPL. There are so many companies violating their software licenses. Ask UNIFI for their source.
Go with Prusa.
They offer printers with the same level of technology and the company is very pro-consumer. The slicer that Bambu Labs ships was forked from the open source slicer developed by Prusa.
This. For some reason there are people out there are still hell-bend on telling everyone Prusa would be "behind the curve" or "overpriced". Ignore that nonsense. They're pricey, but they're also quality and even more relevant right now the printer will be truly yours. Their services like Printables just work, meanwhile the first thing Makerworld slaps into your face is either begging to make an account or forcing you to just to download something.
I mean... I love prusa and their hardware is really really good, but calling them "pricey" is a just a bit of an understatement. You can buy 4 snapmaker U1s for the price of a Prusa XL (or cover my rent for 5 months...), and there's no appreciable difference in print quality between the machines. The XL uses higher quality components, but not so much that the difference is gonna be relevant to a consumer level (or realistically even to a hobby level) user.
I'm pretty surprised they still sell that one. It was one of the first (or even the first?) multihead printers and therefore of course very expensive, but by now… their Core+ is very much the reasonable one.
(Not the first by at least a decade, but for sure the first one that was available outside of industry (and actually worked))
Presumably they're continuing to sell the XL because INDX isn't available yet (hopefully soon). At the moment it's still one of only 3 available machines (2.5 really; bambu h2c only kinda counts) with nozzle swapping, and it really is an amazingly good machine. But even once INDX becomes available for the Core One, it's still going to be more than twice what a U1 costs for a much smaller build area. I'd really like a Core One L with INDX, especially because it has an enclosure + heater and the U1 doesn't, but that's going to be almost 4 months of rent for unreleased-but-hopefully-equivalent technology (admittedly with a 30mm larger build area) to the U1, which is only 1 month of rent on proven hardware which I can go and buy right now.
The value for the user they deliver is in the meta-characteristics like their position on opensource (though uh... snapmaker is kinda winning on that point too), their tech support and their community, and unfortunately these days it's not directly reflected in the hardware. That's not to say it's not top notch hardware, but that no longer sets you apart - Bambu alone has demonstrated that (and lets not forget the MK4S had a catch-on-fire problem back in the day, too. Of course, prusa decided not to be utter bastards about it...). You can get equally good machines for at least 1/2 the price, and the differences between hardened ground linear bearings and unhardened el-cheapo linear bearings will never become apparent for 99% of end users.
I really hope that Bambu gets taken down for this (though it's unlikely they'll go away entirely), and I'd love an INDX machine... but I can't justify spending four months rent on something where the cheaper options give identical results. They're almost a luxury brand - great if you can afford them, but most people absolutely can't. And honestly at this point they're just too expensive to be a useful recommendation for people trying to get into the hobby.
Also they are closing things down.
Wait what's closing?
OH come on Prussia was the Intel of printers the unreleased the same thing again and again. Hate them sure but Bambi shook up the 3d printer industry.