I feel conflicted. On the one hand, Prusa seems to be a good and reliable brand. On the other hand, it seems overpriced compared to the competitors. Bambu seems to be a no-go but mostly for ethical open source reasons, not for price or quality reasons. At the same time, I’ve seen this article that says Prusa is even falling back on their open source principles. But not sure how up to date that is any more.
If we look beyond Bambu or Prusa, there’s a variety of smaller brands that I have trouble distinguishing. With these other brands, it’s hard to tell whether they’re worth anything or just cheap knockoffs.
If we do consider Prusa, there’s also the question of MK4S vs Core One. The Core One is much more expensive, to the point where it is ridiculously expensive compared to the competitors. The MK4S is slightly cheaper, but it seems like Prusa is focused on the Core One development going forward, so I’d be slightly worried of being “left behind” with the MK4S.
What do you think? Which printer should you get in 2026? Or perhaps there is some upcoming release or something to wait for?
I don’t know current best options, but last I was looking, the Voron design was where I was leaning. I’d suggest avoiding companies that violate open source licenses.
I used to be a Prusa evangelist, but I don’t forgive them for the MMU2S. Huge amount of people never could get it to work. I’m curious as to the actual percentage working. I couldn’t ever get it to work even with multiple complete rebuilds. That product should have been recalled or a free fix offered. Years later they released a new version that supposedly fixed the issues and you still had to pay to upgrade to it. Discounted if they had a support record for you. If not, full price.
From time to time I see a new Prusa printer and think “that looks good, I should buy it”, and then remember the insane amount of time I wasted trying to get the MMU2S to work. Never buying Prusa again until they provide me the working MMU I paid for at no additional cost. As there’s basically zero chance of that, my boycott continues and I suggest not supporting a company that fucked over their customers with an expensive poorly designed product that they then want them to pay to fix.
From what I can read, Voron is more like the printer itself becomes the hobby, rather than actually printing stuff. I’m not really interested in tinkering with the printer itself, I just want it to work.