this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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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?

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[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

but all proprietary and as locked down as possible hatdware-wise.

There's no DRM in the hardware. It isn't locked down at all. There are 3rd party hotends already. Not even Prusa has open source hardware now.

I am fairly confident they will follow a similar path even though they have made some software source - available.

They have released all firmware source code. So it doesn't matter what they do in the future. You have control over your hardware for forever.