Battle of the Bedslingers: Bambu A1 vs Prusa MK4

🥊I put the Bambu Lab A1 up against a Prusa MK4 to see who's faster, cheaper and better. Who wins this match up in the Battle of the Bedslingers?

Thanks to Jim @TheEdgeofTech for showing us how to remove a Bambu X1 Nozzle!

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⭐Bambu Lab A1 Printers

⭐Prusa Printers

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REVIEW
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[vickington]

I really wanted to get rid of my Ender 3 Pro that I bought in 2019. It was becoming a hassle to print normal things. I was so close to biting the bullet on a MK4 but right before I completed the order I looked to see some competitors and saw that the A1 had literally just come out. I instantly bought one instead of the MK4 and its been amazing! It got to my house in 2 days (right before christmas!). So much more reliable than the ender and so far its been "print and forget". Not going to shill Bambu Lab or any other brand but this printer has been great in my experience, the value is crazy good in my opinion.

[KanielD]

The MK4 is in the same price range as the X1C. That is the comparison I see every time. People always bring up “prusa’s track record” however the Prusa mini still isn’t feature complete, the MMU2 was trash & felt like they forgot about it.

[kaween]

The Prusa MK4 lacks accelerometer sensors, and their idea of input shaping is locked to static values. That on itself is a huge issue in terms of keeping constant quality of output as the IS values are derived not from the specific machine, but a "generic value". The funny part is Prusa themselves fully admit "accelerometers are essential for correct input shaping", yet they do NOT include these sensors on the MK4 (it does have an input port for 1 sensor, which is not enough for a bedslinger, but even that port is not attached to anything), and DO include them on the Prusa XL in each toolhead but are NOT capable of using them atm. For printers at these price tags, that's a major let down, especially since Bambu doesn't just use these sensors for input shaping, but they actually also use them to monitor the machine's "health" in terms of belt tension and possible unexpected levels of resistance in the movement system.

[politicalpolarbear]

I bought an A1 to replace my Prusa Mini. Compared to the MK4, my mini just can't copy the quality so I figure this might be at time to try out this legendary Bambu product line. If I think about it, the A1 competes on almost all levels with the MK4 for 1/3 the price. At least, it should. We'll see how it goes. I've been needing a second larger bed printer anyway for some projects so might as well see what the hype is about.

[Ferrous_Bueller]

At 5:40, why wouldn't you use the same filament for each print? Seems like that's the first thing you would want to do to keep a print comparison even.

[stephenschroeder]

The more I try to learn about this hobby/passion/obsession of 3D printing AND painting, the more I appreciate the complete painted figures I purchase from professionals.

At this point, I think it will be easier to learn to actually sculpt. LOL

Thank you for your video.

[villlagecom]

As a hobbiest that’s tried about 4 printers myself, this is one of the best reviews I’ve seen on 3d printers so far. Thanks for posting!!

[MrSirclint]

Casually saying "yeah its more expensive" as if its not nearly 4x 😂

[norwik]

In my humble opinion at this point Prusa should drastically cut prices on… wait for it… MK3

For sure I’ll give them some time to recoup R&D from MK4 but asking more for MK3 than A1 is just ridiculous at this point.

[Numenor]

I'd love to see your chart of cost per volume for all the new machines you calculated it for! 😊

[jeremyarnold]

I ended up purchasing the bambu labs x1c w/ams. The MK4 was the one I was going with but the youtubers made me lean towards the bambu labs. I should also mention that this is my FIRST 3d ever and my pc since 2001. So to say I'm a newbi is an under statement. This is why I chose to get the x1c over the mk4. I still mite have a mk4 one day but not yet. My toaster test I did didn't look as bad as yours did mine was totally beautiful printed and got .2 on the inside looseness. I was very impressed.

[bujin]

2:42. This is one of the dumbest comments ever. As though either price is the sole consideration, or not a consideration at all. It's a matter of value. What is the dollar buying? The A1 is coming in at half the price of the MK4, so the MK4 better be twice the printer, or deliver a unique killer feature, which justifies the added expense. Of course the seriously damning situation is that the A1 is probably the better printer period, for half the price.

[dfaz]

I love how she said "If budget is your concern go get a creality." LMAO! I ended up getting an Ender 3 V3 KE as my first printer because it's better for the money than the SE.

[MrSneakyGunz]

I've never seen your channell before this video. Bambu seems to be shedding it's light in all kinds of little corners. Great video! Subscribed.

[DiomedesDominguez]

2:56 You should never recommend an Ender, neither a Monoprice.

[Dustp]

One thing . Closed source vs open source. I can remember a certain few “ Revolutionary “ 3d printer companies that went belly up and the printers are now paperweights because everything was closed source and preparatory. Not to mention the possible privacy issues.

[JMLRecording]

top mount AMS works great IF you print rear support brackets. Bambu offers the STL's on their Handy app that cones out clean and keeps the A1 rock solid as Im sure Prusa does too.

[archemity]

Just picked up an A1 mini three weeks ago, kids been running it 24/7 ever since with zero issue. Gonna grab the A1 next. Makes zero sense to buy the Prusa for 3x the price nowadays.

[pomanprod]

I bought the a1 with the AMS for $620 to the door. For another $300, you get the privilege of owning the Prusia for no better performance and no AMS. No thanks.

[oleurgast]

While the MMU3 for the mk4 isn't available yet, you still could compare the A1+AMS light and the mk3s+ & MMU2/3 - basicly a 6 year old printer (with some upgrades). While I still work on my Prusa setup (have it from the beginning, but never used it due to the early problems), simply slice the same model both in bambulab Studio and Prusa slicer. You get printing time and waste pretty correct.
I used a test with 4 different coloured dices 1m³ bithout tuning settings.
The difference is astonishing:
Bambus A1 (mini, as I have it) with AMS light produces 4 times the waste and needs 25% more time than a 6 yo setup from Prusa!
However, this is a quite smal print, so the time overall is mostly caused by filament changing. Unload with ramping on a standard flow nozzle is much faster than cut&poo.

One reason the MMU2 never was realy successful is the reliability. Prusas setup has two downsides: The special modified e3d heatbreak needs ramping to be tuned to printing temperature and material to get a good filament tip. And the filament should be quite dry.
6 years ago this was a problem. But with the Revo hotend, the filament tip got much better on unload without fine tuning, making the setup much more easy. And filament dryers have become quite popular nowerdays. So if you upgraded the mk3s+ with a Revo Six (or maybe a Trianglelabs Unified nozzle), it works much more flowless (this is the reason I started building it now).
The other downside of Prusa is the spoolholder/filamentbuffer system. You have to make sure to have as low fraction as possible - so best not to use the filament buffer, but placing the filament on good spoolholders on a shelf above the printer. The AMS and AMS light have a filament-synchronicer (on the AMS integrated in the part known as "filament-buffer", on the A1 (mini) on the top of the printhead). Actually using a spring, a slider, a magnet and a hall sensor detects if filament is needed and the AMS-feeder is pushing the filament to the printhead. This reduced the force needed from the printheas extruder and making everything more easy.
Both downsides are solvable - but not very beginner friendly. But if you want to print multicolour often, you definitly are better off with Prusa. I am eager to see the MMU3 for mk4, as the nextruder nozzle leaves a even better filament tip than the Revo or TUN.

Also, while wipe2infill or whipe2object can reduce filament waste a lot on the prusa (or on the ERCF on Klipper printers), this reduces only size for the wipe tower (a lot). You can not reduce the poo on the Bambu-printers this way, as the remaining old filament in heatbreak and nozzle is been cut off and can not be retracted anymore. So neither wipe2infill nor wipe2object would give reasonable print results.

However, this only applys to full-colour prints. If you use multicolour only on the bottom or top layers, for horizontal support interface layers or to change to next spool after one is empty, the number of filament changes is quite smal and the filament changing time and waste do not matter much. So for many cases the Bambu AMS is actually a very good solution. Also only needing a few multicolour print a year (for Xmas gifts) the time and waste is acceptable.

So while I am experienced, I still bought the A1 mini as a nice quick2go solution. But at the same time, I build my MMU3 setup, just for fun. Practicaly I barely do any full multicolour, just sometimes in the first 3 layers for display cases (manualy filament change...). But my father got some multicolour prints this Xmas, printed on the A1 mini (the battery boxes in style of a beer box - I made a modifier with the logo of his favorate beer brand to use a second colour for it (Krombacher, I am german))