This $200 3d Printer Has Come A LONG Ways (Creality Ender 3 V3 SE)

Get $5 Off Your First PCBWay Order Here:

Find out more or purchase the Ender 3 V3 SE Here (AFF):
or Here (AFF):

Check out the TalonClaw 4 Kit (Apulo's Link):

PEI bed I purchased for the printer (AFF):

Find out more or purchase the Sovol SV06 Here (AFF):

Love the channel? Consider supporting me on Patreon:

Get Great Filament From PolyMaker & Help Support The Channel:

ModBot Merch Store is now live! Get yours here:

In this video we dive into the Ender 3 V3 SE. The Ender 3 has had many revisions but the SE is what I consider the evolution of the original Ender 3. Priced at around $200 I was very curious to see what the state of entry level 3d printers are like in 2024. We go over the printers specs, what setup is like, how it performs, and I share my overall thoughts based on my testing.

(´∀｀)♡ As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases:

Lets Get Social!

[dbronze]

In 10 years Creality will release the Ender 3 V33 SE V3 SEE333

[anthonylong]

I got a brand new v3 SE from Sovol for $130 shipped. Its been a workhorse. Not a single issue for over 2 months

[zsill]

At this point I would still suggest a higher quality printer even to a newbie.

Not having rods or rails on X, klipper, or an all metal hotend means your still going to spend more upgrading this printer (which seems very likely), than just buying something for 100$ extra that has all of those things built in.

[TheDarkPreacher]

I got an Ender 3 Pro for my first printer. Modified the heck out of it. Then one day I saw the Ender 3 V3 SE at Microcenter for $99 (Super special sale that didn't last long) and snapped it up, because it prints faster than the old Ender 3 Pro I had that I modified, plus it comes standard with all the features that I had to add on the Pro with aftermarket parts. It's a very nice machine, very little tinkering needed to improve it (But that doesn't stop me from looking up ways to possibly tweak it!).

[Orbitechaerospace]

In Brazil they sold the Ender 3 v3 SE for 300$, I bought one for my projects and it has been good so far and the build plate is still reasonably good

[peircedan]

I have had mine for about 7 months. It is my third budget printer and a little bigger and better than my previous machines. I ordered a textured PEI plate at the same time as the printer as I had watched other videos before making my purchase. I eventually moved the z offset a very small amount from the auto z offset. Beyond those things it has worked as is from Amazon.
One additional con that I have lived with so far is it could use better part cooling.

[shotzonyou]

Just got my v3se and I have to say the experience was much better than the ender3 v2 especially for a beginner.

[CmfortCruise]

I've had an Ender 3 for over 5 years before just upgrading to a Bambu A1 this past week. The difference is night and day, with how the market looks today I just don't see the benefit to investing in an Ender when you can get so much more out of even an A1 mini for not much more money. And even if you tried to upgrade an Ender to the same level of a Bambu, you'd end up spending more anyways. I'm definitely against monopolies though, I really hope competitors catch up.

[dbeelee]

Core xy printers are now entry level printers. They are the closest to plug & play for majority of filament types. Buying a machine which does OK on some things is a potential waste. The question of growth within the 3D printing industry is now modeling software ease of use. My yesterday's modeling to print was a replacement flag holder on a kid's swingset. Today's effort is modeling/printing house numbers and street address as well as designing aventuri generators for dust control inside a cnc machining cabinet.

[heatedpoolandbar]

This was my first printer. I got it in November and I've put a lot of hours in it with little to no problems. I don't understand why they didn't ship it with a PEI bed though.

[jeffm]

The KE is the better machine for not all that much more money. The SE certainly is a decent machine.

[Garage]

Good printer for the money, especially when on sale. Biggest problem is it's nearly impossible to recommend over the A1 Mini unless someone absolutely needs the size or really wants to mod. I'm not even a Bambu Lab fan boy either.

[Chucka]

Nice review. I got one 10 days ago. The cat printed at 200c on mine and came out perfectly. I use the profile supplied by Cura and have seen zero stringing in dozens of prints.

The only issue I've had is prints not sticking. A slight adjustment of the Z offset solved that. Items stick well and release easily.

A PEI print surface would have been nice but they're cheap.

I don't notice the screen beeping as I use Octoprint exclusively.

[BillSmithem]

I bought an Ender 3 V3 SE back in Feb. '24. Print quality was terrible. The only thing about it that’s better than the Ender 3 V2 I’ve had for years is that it’s faster.

All four of the screws that attach the X axis to the lead screws were loose, three visibly, with one so loose it was about to fall out. Print quality improved once I tightened them.

The auto bed leveling is useless. On one side of the bed it was obviously too close and on the other it was so high off the bed nothing stuck. It also improved slightly once I noticed that all four bed mounting screws were also loose (not even finger tight), but I still didn't get proper first layers unless I leveled the bed myself manually. The interface to do that was horrible.

When I contacted support to see if there was anything they could suggest to help with the bed leveling or any chance of their supporting Host Action Commands or at least releasing the source (as all Marlin based printers are obligated to do to comply with the open source license) their only response was to tell me the code was proprietary. No help with the bed leveling issues.

So I ended up wiping Creality's code and installing Klipper. Had to do quite a bit of searching on github and tweaking settings. Works fine now, but that's the last thing I'll ever buy from Creality.

And nothing ever stuck well to the build plate they shipped. Ended up with a Cosgrow PEI plate which actually works.

[MrBaskins]

you can turn off the beeps, found out how on google. thanks for saving me some cash tho, gonna get the KE or the V3 plus instead of this

[jonahdent]

I have one as my only printer. Its great. However, after about a month, the cooling fan on the hot end started the im going to fail noise. An easy fix but not what I would expect from a month and a half old printer. I was using it alot. Had i done a bit more research i might have spent a bit more cash on a different printer. As others have said - It's a good work horse and i would recomment it to anyone after a low budget printer. The only 'mod' (if you can call it that) I have done is buy a PEI plate.

[TS_Mind_Swept]

And that's why I got the KE, this one had a few problems that that one solves; which sure, they cost more so the printer costs more, but if it's something you want on the printer anyway then it's worth it to not have to worry about that later. Now I just wish creality would remove most of their older printers from their line up.. like sure, keep making parts for them (if people even want the parts and haven't upgraded most of the thing at this point SuperVinlin), but with this new line there's really no point in offering the entire printer..

[GeekDetour]

Daniel, thanks for reviewing this one - on this race to offer the cheapest entry level printer, it’s easy to cross the line of “bad”… The print plate releasing the coating is sooo lame. The chassis all in plastic makes me worry about stability for taller parts. I feel that the original Ender 3 Pro is was a better option - from the construction point of view.
I have Creality in my heart: offering decent printers at a very accessible price is so important - but this one was a slippery slope.

[nevyn]

I've had a Ender 3 v3 SE for a couple of weeks now. I'm planning on getting a 2nd one later this week. It's my first printer and repairs and parts have been a bit of a shit show. I got a blob and accidentally clipped the thermistor cable so got a new thermistor. Only to find that I needed to solder the old plug on the new thermistor which was a bit icky (single piece of copper holding them, I used some heat shrink to cover the bare copper etc.). After I got it working again, I had plastic coming out of the top and bottom of the hot end. In trying to sort that out, I stupidly burnt the PTFE in the heatbreak. I've got a new hot end coming (hopefully tomorrow) but I've since decided that if I want to be able to focus on developing something, I really need to have a 2nd printer just so that I don't have to wait around for parts before being able to carry on with development.

I like it as a first printer just because I'm learning, pretty quickly, what bits definitely need upgrading (Build plate obviously.I'll be switching to Klipper later this week hopefully. Had to wait around for an OTG cable to use a Raspberry Pi Zero 2. If that works, I'll see if I can repurpose an old Raspberry Pi 2 for the same thing. Also some sort of enclosure. I'm getting some warping even with PLA), what would be nice to upgrade (linear rails for both the x and y-axis. X axis for longevity and Y axis, a little wider out on the plate for better stability), and what redundancies I need in place to keep these printers going.

I chose the Ender 3 v3 se because of price and local (New Zealand) availability and reviews. At $400NZD, it's amazingly affordable. I did not buy the printer expecting that I wouldn't need to do some upgrades and really do appreciate learning as I go. It's a bit like a first car. It's a clanger and it's value is more about what I'd put into it.

[JasonRobards]

I wonder if they have fixed the clogging problem. It always baffled me how much of the printer was left for the customer to "tweak". It basically left us to beta test the product. Oddly, while their customer support was outsourced to youtubers looking for content. (not this one though...)

So many things stupid desing flaws are/were left to the user who then had to rely on unreliable sources to fix them. I believe we are past the novelty stage for 3D printing where this is an acceptable business practice. Half a year ago I bought a resin printer in the same price range and was amazed how much reliable that machine is. At the same time, it is so well made that I can't see how I could "tweak" the thing.

I would be tempted to try the V3, as I was very happy with the V2. However, when I inevitably ran into a problem I could not fix myself, I experienced how utterly useless the Creality customer support is. The machine is now dead and I have nowhere to fix it. And I hate to spend this amount of money on something that could become unfixable.