Finally, Prusa takes on Bambu! CORE One review (and X1C comparison)

Summary

Highlights

• The Core One and X1C offer similar print speeds, but the Core One provides consistent temperature control, crucial for high-quality prints. 🖨️
• Prusa's open-source approach allows flexibility in firmware and networking, unlike Bambu's restrictive updates. 🔧
• Prusa's Core One offers a dependable 3D printing experience, performing exceptionally in tests against the X1C and XL models. 👍
• While Prusa's Core One is slightly more expensive, its features and local manufacturing offer excellent value. 💲
• Prusa's designed the Core One for technical superiority, but Bambu focuses on user-friendly design to attract newcomers. 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Prusa's Core One is like a MK4S with a CoreXY motion system, offering better temperature control for materials like ABS and ASA. 🌡️
• The Core One has a higher print height but identical usable bed size to the Bambu X1C, making it great for taller projects. 📏
• Prusa's open-source approach means you can flash any firmware you want without voiding the warranty, unlike Bambu's restrictive policies. 🔓
• While the Core One offers more technical features, Bambu's X1C appeals to new users with its familiar design and user-friendly interface. 📱
• Despite slightly higher costs, the Core One kit offers significant savings and a hands-on assembly experience. 💰

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Core One Overview The chapter provides an introduction to the Core One, with the speaker acknowledging their delayed coverage of the machine. They express the intent to explore aspects that might have been overlooked initially. Additionally, there is a comparison between the Core One and the X1C, noting specific areas where Prusa aims to surpass its competitor, Bambu.
• 01:30 - 03:00: First Impressions and Printing Speed The chapter begins with an introduction about how certain aspects are crucial for customers to purchase products. It highlights the importance of first impressions and mentions how this video is sponsored by VoxelPLA. The speaker shares their initial thoughts on the Core One printer, noting its similarities to the MK4S, particularly pointing out the CoreXY motion system. Despite these resemblances, the Core One boasts additional features like being fully enclosed, while maintaining the same toolhead, bed, and electronics.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Comparison with Bambu X1C The chapter compares the printing speed and temperature control between the Bambu X1C and another printer, referred to as the Core One. The Core One prints faster not only due to larger layer heights and a high-flow nozzle but also due to its ability to move more quickly. With similar settings, both printers often result in comparable print times. However, the Bambu X1C can be up to 20% faster in some instances, though this speed comes at the cost of temperature control, affecting the quality of PLA prints.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Enclosure and Temperature Management The chapter discusses the heating mechanisms and temperature management of 3D printers. Specifically, it examines the performance of two different models: the Core One and the X1C. It describes how the Core One heats evenly, producing a consistently glossy part, whereas the X1C starts underheated at fast speeds and becomes glossy as it moves upward. This consistent heating by the Core One might offer better part strength, although this hasn't been explicitly tested. Additionally, the chapter begins to touch on a comparison aspect, specifically print volume, with the Bambu printer being mentioned.
• 07:30 - 09:30: Printing Reliability The chapter discusses the practical aspects of printing reliability, focusing on the differences between two printers - the X1C and the Core One. It highlights that although there is a larger print area available, a portion of it is utilized for calibration and the filament cutter. As a result, the effective usable bed size remains similar between the two models. However, the print height is slightly increased from 250mm on the X1C to 270mm on the Core One, which is considered a beneficial improvement.
• 09:30 - 13:30: User Experience and Emotional Connection In this chapter, the focus is on the importance of user experience and emotional connection in product usage, particularly discussing 3D printing. The transcript provides insight into the differences between Prusa and Bambu 3D printers when it comes to multi-material usage. For Prusa, the presence of a prime tower for purging in between color changes is a key consideration, as it requires space on the print bed, affecting the usable area for printing. In contrast, the Bambu printer uses a 'poop chute' to handle this purging process externally, thus enabling full use of the print bed for multi-color printing. This technical aspect highlights how product design can significantly impact user satisfaction and emotional engagement by offering different user experiences, tailored to preferences for functionality and ease of use.
• 13:30 - 15:30: Pricing and Value This chapter discusses the strategic decisions around product design, specifically relating to the placement of a filament spool in CoreXY 3D printers. It highlights the practical improvement of moving the spool from the back to the side of the machine for easier access. The author appreciates this change as it improves user convenience by utilizing space that was otherwise unused in the printer design.
• 15:30 - 18:00: Conclusion and Community Engagement The chapter discusses the differences in components used in the Core One and X1C setups, highlighting the 10mm rods and steel panels in the Core One compared to the 8mm rods and linear rail in the X1C. It mentions the use of steel and polycarbonate in the Core One, emphasizing their solid feel.

Finally, Prusa takes on Bambu! CORE One review (and X1C comparison) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I know I’m a bit late with my coverage of the Core  One, so you probably already got the gist of what   people think about the machine. But because I  now got a little extra time to use the Core One,   I get to cover the things that might have been  missed in the first round of content. I also   happen to have an X1C at hand, and because you  can’t really talk about the Core One without   also talking about the X1C, of course I’ll be  comparing the two, and there are actually quite   a few places where Prusa is clearly trying to  one-up the Bambu competitor. And it manages
• 00:30 - 01:00 to do so except for one rather important  aspect that gets people to actually buy   them. We’ll dig into all of that, this video  is supported by VoxelPLA, let’s get started. My first impression of the Core One was  “oh, that’s basically a MK4S with a CoreXY   motion system”. And yeah, that’s pretty much  exactly what it is. It uses the same toolhead,   the same bed, the same electronics platform, but  now is fully enclosed and as you would expect,
• 01:00 - 01:30 prints a bit faster, this time not just from being  able to do larger layer heights, it still has a   high-flow nozzle, but also from physically being  able to move faster, so with comparable settings,   the Core One often lands on exactly the  same print times as the X1C. In some cases,   the Bambu machine is still about 20% faster,  but it does so at the expense of temperature   control. PLA prints matte when the hotend can’t  quite deliver heat fast enough into the filament
• 01:30 - 02:00 to fully heat it up, and with this cone printing  fastest at the bottom and slower up top as the   printer tries to keep it from overheating, the  Core One produces a consistently glossy part,   while the X1C starts out underheated at its  fastest speed and fully glossy up top. This   might give the Core One an edge in part strength,  but I haven’t specifically tested for this. Now, because we’re already in the comparisons  part, print volume. On paper, the Bambu has a
• 02:00 - 02:30 larger print area, but in practice, it uses the  front 20mm of its bed for calibration patterns,   and then the front left corner is also occupied  by the filament cutter. So in practice,   the usable bed size is basically identical  between the two, but the print height is   being one-upped from a usable 250mm on the X1C  to 270mm on the Core One. That’s nice to have,
• 02:30 - 03:00 but personally I almost only print flat  parts, so for me, area is more important.  Once you add on the MMU on the Prusa or the  AMS on the Bambu, that’s where you’ll start   seeing a difference, because the Prusa will  print a prime tower on the bed for purging the   hotend between colors or materials, so you’ll  have to fit that in with your print, while the   Bambu has its poop chute out the back, so it can  use the full bed area for multi-color printing.
• 03:00 - 03:30 Speaking of the backside, this is where the  one-upping continues. So even back with the   old Ultimakers, it was annoying to have the  filament spool on the back, and you’d have to   do the blind reacharound to change filament,  or spin the printer around on a lazy susan or   something. The Core One just bumps the side  panels in and puts the spool there. That’s   space that’s not being used in a CoreXY anyway,  so might as well put the spool there. And, yeah,   this obviously is super convenient. For the actual CoreXY mechanism, the Core One
• 03:30 - 04:00 has thicker 10mm rods on the side instead of the  8mm rods that X1C uses, and the X-axis on the Core   One uses a standard linear rail, similar to the  original Voron design instead of the custom carbon   fiber rods. But both setups obviously work. The panels on the Core One are steel and   polycarbonate, instead of aluminum and glass, so  the steel feels more solid, but the polycarbonate
• 04:00 - 04:30 feels a bit more hacky, and we’ll  circle back to this in a bit,   but these two material choices also help with  temperature retention inside the enclosure.  So while the Core One does not have an  active chamber heater, it does use the   heated bed and its chamber fans to essentially  create a temperature-regulated build chamber,   which is really important if you want to print  ABS, ASA, polycarbonate. Prusa says the Core   One goes up to 55°C, and I guess if your room  temperature is high enough, it might do that,
• 04:30 - 05:00 but in my rather cool basement studio, the printer  paused for about half an hour to get the chamber   to 40°C before starting my ABS print, and 40°C  is the default minimum starting temperature   in Prusa Slicer for most high-temperature  filaments. Low-temp filaments like PLA instead   have a nominal or maximum temperature, and the  Core One will use the chamber fans to keep the   air temperature inside the machine below that. The Core One eventually reached about 50°C
• 05:00 - 05:30 after a couple of layers of ABS, and  it managed to produce the most accurate   part when compared to the X1C and the XL, which  both topped out around 40°C inside the printer,   or the MK4S, which obviously has no enclosure. Printing with ABS or ASA was kinda fading into   obscurity because it was such a pain, but this  preheating routine and especially the fact that   it’s just something that happens automatically, is  making these materials a much easier option again.
• 05:30 - 06:00 Now, an enclosure does have the downside of  trapping heat whether you want it or not,   so on the enclosed Bambu machines, you’re supposed  to take off the top panel and leave the door open   when you’re printing PLA, and the printer will  actually yell at you if you keep the door closed.   The Core One also has a door switch for detecting  that, but you can leave it closed even for PLA,   because it has this sliding grill on top here that  you open up for PLA and close for everything else.
• 06:00 - 06:30 On my machine, this was quite loose, and just the  PTFE tube for the hotend ended up sliding it open   from brushing past it, so I tightened the screws  a bit, and now it stays in place. In combination   with the rear-mounted exhaust fans, this even sort  of guides air over the build platform similar to   the X1C’s auxiliary side fan, but of course  not as directly aimed at the current layer. And for comparing these machines, I’ve  used filament from today’s sponsor,
• 06:30 - 07:00 VoxelPLA! Their PLA+ and PETG+ filaments are  optimized for high-flow, high-speed printing   and are just $16.99 for a full 1kg spool - and  they get even cheaper with bulk discounts and   free shipping on orders over $65. Their filaments  make no compromises on reliability and quality,   and just like Prusa prints parts on their own  printers, VoxelPLA also puts their money where   their mouth is and exclusively uses their  own filaments in their 250 printer-strong
• 07:00 - 07:30 print farm in southern California. I’ve  been very happy with their filaments,   and you can be too, if you check them  out at the link in the description below. Now, all this effort and extra hardware would  be pointless if the Core One wasn’t producing   good prints or wasn’t doing so reliably. But  after a week of throwing everything I could at   the machine, I have nothing to report. Anything  other than basically flawless prints would simply   not be acceptable these days, and the Core One  delivers that. So does the X1C, the XL, the MK4S,
• 07:30 - 08:00 I tried specifically looking for input shaping  artifacts that might pop up from the faster moves,   but even there, you’re splitting hairs. The  biggest difference was that PrusaSlicer has   the Arachne slicing mode enabled by default, while  BambuStudio does not, so the Prusa machines try   to reproduce more of the details that are right  at the edge of what the nozzle size can handle,   while the Bambu just doesn’t try to print them at  all, but once you use classic slicing for both,
• 08:00 - 08:30 they’re all producing prints that are  virtually identical. If you look real close,   all of the machines have the smallest amount  of surface rippling, just in different spots,   and none of them are really an issue. Reliability has also been great, I’ve started   most of my prints remotely through PrusaConnect  straight from the slicer, the loadcell-based bed   leveling is as consistent as ever, and most of  the time, I only checked on the printer once I
• 08:30 - 09:00 got the notification that the printjob was done.  Prusa is finally also offering a first-party   camera if you need more monitoring, it’s a FullHD  camera specific to the Core One that magnetically   snaps into the front corner of the printer.  This is its own WiFi device, and thankfully,   they’ve now streamlined the setup process both  for the printer itself and for the camera - both   can be set up through the Prusa App, the printer  itself gets a tap on the back onto its NFC area,
• 09:00 - 09:30 and the camera reads a QR code that the app shows.  The Core One also still has a wired ethernet jack,   and you can of course use the networking features  on the local network only without going through   their cloud service or requiring an account. Or  skip connecting it to a network entirely, it will   happily print from a USB drive just the same. Bambu has, of course, recently announced the   firmware updates that would stop their printers  from using files that aren’t signed by either   BambuStudio or their BambuConnect application,  and would also lock out accessories like the Panda
• 09:30 - 10:00 Touch and remove the ability to control your own  machines through OrcaSlicer or HomeAssistant. At   the same time, their terms of service clearly  state that their printers will auto-update   and “may” entirely block you from printing if  they realize you’re not on the latest firmware.   Obviously, that created a bit of a community  response, so there’s since been a new blog   post saying “well, we’re not actually going to  enforce that”, and there’s also been a developer
• 10:00 - 10:30 mode announced that would restore much of the  functionality that the update would remove, but   right now, there’s just a lot of uncertainty about  the exact direction that Bambu is pushing towards.  For the Core One, Prusa has explicitly  stated that you will always be able to   flash whatever firmware you want, be it the  Prusa or third-party ones, and they’ll even   honor the machine’s warranty if you do so. But the thing is, everything I talked about   up until this point, features, print quality,  lock-in, whatever, doesn’t actually matter when
• 10:30 - 11:00 it comes to selling printers. Prusa, as a whole,  I think have just become too used to what a good   3D printer is to them, and honestly, so have I.  This has been a slow realization process for me   over the last couple of weeks. When I look at an  i3-style printer, the MK4S in this case, to me,   this is the essence of a 3D printer, I’ve used  printers that look like this for over a decade
• 11:00 - 11:30 now, and Prusa has been making printers for  just as long, but what us “old folk” fail to see   is that to a new user, this is an intimidating  machine. It has nothing to do with the things   that regular people would be familiar with,  how should they relate to this and feel like   it’s something they can use? If you don’t force  yourself to regularly take that step back and   really reconsider what people are going to see  in your products, you end up making a Prusa XL.
• 11:30 - 12:00 I mean, this is my most used printer at the  moment, because it just does so many things really   well, but you show this to someone who’s looking  to get their first 3D printer and tell them,   yeah, this is their flagship product, but  even if you convince them that this is the   best 3D printer in the world, I don’t think  the average person would be confident that   this is something that they can use, even if it  really is no different than any other printer.
• 12:00 - 12:30 But this is something that Bambu is doing  incredibly well. The moment you see or touch   the machine, there are just so many things that  you can relate to, that are familiar. The plastic   panel and the buttons feel like they’re straight  out of an N64. The UI on the screen looks like   it’s a phone app. The glass panels probably  run off the same production lines that make   computer case windows. And when you take it  out of the box, the smell even reminds you of   unboxing some quirky gadgets on Christmas morning. It looks and feels just like a regular consumer
• 12:30 - 13:00 product. Everything about this is designed to  immediately comfort the user and potential buyers,   and then when you get to start your first  print, it shakes, it makes cool noises,   you get that gratification of “wow,  I made it do this, this is crazy”.  And I think Prusa is just about starting to  realize how much the emotional connection to a   product matters, too, but they’ve got quite a way  to go still. You take the Core One out of the box,   and the first thing you get to do is going to  be the most unsatisfying peel of your life.
• 13:00 - 13:30 Just, please, pre-peel these in the factory. I mean, in the MK4S video, I’ve already talked   about how the UI of the printer and in PrusaSlicer  are highly functional, and packed with features,   but come with a distinct eastern European  simplistic vibe that takes some time to soak up.  I do appreciate the moddability of the Core  One, one of the first things I did was print a
• 13:30 - 14:00 filter holder for the back fans that takes these  Uppatvind particle filters that Ikea stocks for   5 bucks a pop, and Prusa is also making a GPIO  expansion board that that you can interface with   through gcode, so you can easily tie the printer  into other automation stuff if you want to do   that, and of course on the Prusa platform, none  of the networking functionality is locked down,   so you can integrate and control it  through tools like Home Assistant.  I think with the Core One, from a technical  and functional standpoint, Prusa has finally
• 14:00 - 14:30 made that product that eliminates all the easy  “yeah, but it doesn’t do this” sort of arguments.  We do have to quickly talk about pricing, though,  and especially US pricing is going to fluctuate,   tariffs, of course, but also, for right now, all  of the Core One units are shipping from Prague,   but pretty soon they will start building them  in the US and shipping them domestically,   so the total cost for getting one in  the US is likely going to come down.  The most surprising thing to me about pricing  was that, essentially, the Core One is making the
• 14:30 - 15:00 MK4S obsolete. To make it an apples-to-apples  comparison, with the enclosure, the Core One   actually ends up being 50€ cheaper than the MK4S,  while also being a better printer in every single   way you stack things. If you already have one, you  can also upgrade a MK4S to a Core One, but you’re   paying almost 50% of the price of a full Core One  kit, so I just don’t think it’s worth converting a   perfectly working printer if you could just sell  that and buy a completely new Core One instead.
• 15:00 - 15:30 I tried to figure out prices between the X1C  and the Core One, and with adding shipping,   imports and taxes for the US, which most  of you are watching from, right now,   the assembled Core One is a little more  expensive than the X1C, because that’s on   sale now right, and that also includes the Buddy  Cam to make them more comparable. Regular prices   for just the printers with shipping and all gets  them exactly tied for total cost. But you can also   get a kit version of the Core One, which drops  the price by 250 bucks, making it significantly
• 15:30 - 16:00 cheaper than the X1C. And I think both options  make the Core One really good value overall,   especially for a product that is engineered  and manufactured locally here in Europe,   and soon assembled in the US as well. For the  kit version that you get to assemble yourself,   I’d guess that would take you less than a day  if you’ve never built a 3D printer before,   but if you’re at all interested in how things  work, and you have the time, assembling a Prusa   kit usually is a pretty good experience. So there we go - honestly, the Core One was
• 16:00 - 16:30 inevitable for Prusa. With the general perception  of “if it’s not a CoreXY, it’s not worth getting”,   this is the printer that they just had to make.  And they managed to engineer a printer that now   does basically everything an X1C does, and  even does some things significantly better,   like controlling enclosure temperature instead of  controlling you. Which one you get or recommend   for people to get is now just down to which of  their strengths are more important to you. I   hope I managed to lay out all the important bits  for you to make that decision, and if it tips in
• 16:30 - 17:00 favor of the Core One, Prusa gave us reviewers  affiliate “discount” codes, but didn’t actually   set up a discount for you, so what I’ll do to try  and make up for it, is that for the entire month   of February, I’ll use the affiliate commission  and donate 50€ to my local dog shelter for every   order of a Core One if you use MadeWithLayers as  a coupon code. I know it’s still not a discount
• 17:00 - 17:30 for you, but it’s the least I can do. As always, thank you to all of you for   watching and subscribing, we just  made it past half a million subs,   and even though that number doesn’t mean much  anymore on YouTube, it’s still incredible to   think that half a million of you actively decided,  like yeah, I want to see more of this guy please,   so thank you. A huge shoutout to everyone who  supported me on the way to half a million, through   Patreon or YouTube memberships, and as always,  keep on making, and I’ll see you in the next one.