Buy the printer you can afford. If you can allocate the extra scratch, why not. I doubt you will regret your choice either way.
My experience is that automatic calibration with Lidar has gone a very long way. While it was barely useable at the beginning, I now get better results from the automatic calibration than manual.
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Basicly every little extra Costa extra. Thats why exclusive means exclude others.
Both are using the same mechanics. Personaly i wonder why Not more Users are asking why the A1 has some more modern peaks like active flow measurement in the Hotend, ore adaptive Bed leveling…
I bought the X1C, I didn’t really look at the P1S. I just thought that both printers represented good value, so the extra $500 for the X1C must be worth it. I actually bought when Bambu had their anniversary sale. The X1C had the biggest discount 
But my main question here is which printer retains the best resale value ?
They are both good options so the deciding factor(s) are really down to the ‘extras’ which you cannot have with the P1 series.
These would be the bigger screen, better video components, LIDAR and better controller board.
For my part I bought a P1S, it’s got a virtually identical printing profile in terms of quality and speed. I swapped out to harder extruder gearing and hot end before I even first powered it up. The 500 plus for an X1 series didn’t buy me anything that I really needed for my intended use.
It’s managed quite happily with all the types of filament I’ve used so far. It’s even changed my choice of goto material from PLA to ASA.
Value for money is usually more about your own view of an item, a top end ferrari represents great VFM for some but a base ford will be the same for others.
As long as you are happy then it is great value.
I have both the P1S and X1C. I make my own hardened, nickel-plated, high-flow nozzles and use them on both printers. As stated below, a camera upgrade would be nice. Depending on what the next new BL printer is, I might opt for that (if it has a larger print volume; I don’t much care for the flip-flop extruder) or just get another P1S for my farm.
What I would like to see is the ability to receive external sensor input in the firmware via MQTT, and have that input trigger GCODE scripts. But, that’s a whole other discussion. If anyone from BL is looking at this (doubtful!): even Apple allows people to use someone else’s microphones and headphones on their devices. That we can’t do that now isn’t crippling, but it does drive a wedge in to a relationship that should not be there and it opens up risk to BL for those who find work arounds.
Value is whatever YOU perceive it ti be. When i bought my X1CC, the p series didn’t exist. I’ve not needed a third printer, but it’d be another X1CC over a p model…
The differences for me are even smaller since I run an obxidian e3d nozzle anyway and absolutely do not use the lidar - it doesn’t work properly with the textured plate so I just stopped using it altogether a long time ago.
My reason for keeping it? I run the X1Plus patch (I feel bad calling it a firmware) and it has several convenience features, including the ability to easily tram your bed - honestly it is surprising Bambu doesn’t make that process any easier.
The higher temp nozzle and bed is also useful to me, although I stopped printing ABS and ASA in the bambu since it was warping just way to easily, I use different printers for that with a heated chamber (no, not X1E, it isn’t worth the price - I actually have something else that can do all that the X1C can - and even more as the nozzle is way hotter - for almost half the price of the X1C)
If I were starting and money was a constraint… I would probably go with the P1 and stick the e3d nozzle on it. It is likely that I would end up modding it to get a hotter bed and higher nozzle temp too.
If you want to print some more exotic materials, go for the x1c as 300C is the minimum required for multiple filaments.
As I wrote, they made huge improvements. If you stopped using it a long time ago, you would probably be surprised now. Since quite some time they also officially support textured plate, which was not supported for some time.
I suppose you have little motivation to try it again, but please don’t give advice to others based on totally outdated experience.
I will stay with my advice - it doesn’t work well enough as tested with the latest firmware available of 2 months ago - flow (or K level as bambu likes to call it) can wildly vary from one measurement to another.
So… perhaps you shouldn’t be telling me what to say or not.
We can load X1Plus to the X1C, which (still today) is not an option for P-series… that was reason enough for my choice.
That is not what I said. I just referred to the information that you gave. You wrote that you stopped using it long ago.
If you tried a recent version instead, I think that something is not working correctly. E.g. I heard that high levels of light can throw off the lidar, especially from added lights inside the printer. a stained lens can also cause problems.
Also well possible that my experience is an exception? We won’t find out.
I just wanted to prevent that advice is given based on outdated versions of the SW.
Since I kickstarted it, I’ll say it was worth it getting the X1CC since I got it before you got yours by years. If I were starting now? I’d probably choose one of the competitors that aren’t locking down the ecosystem over a P1S, given that everything they offer with that other people are offering for hundreds less. I was seriously impressed with the K1 and K1 Max I bought as tide me overs while I was waiting for support to solve my issue for over a month and get me the parts I needed to make my X1CC work again. If you’d said A1, I might have agreed with you, but the P1S is basically 4 year old technology at this point (it has a vastly slower processor than the X1). Once they lock everything down, who knows how long you’ll keep support for. I’d say you’re spending 300 dollars more for literally nothing at this point. Aurora Tech has shown that the Centauri Carbon does very well, especially compared to P1S. There are others with competing AMS. The first generation AMS is slow and wasteful as compared to the A1’s.
The 500$ for only the lidar makes it worth it.
I deal with a lot of different filaments, the fact I can fine-tune a filament in about 45 seconds compared to a couple hours (at least) per filament is insane.
Take 20 filaments, 2 hours per, at even lower than minimum wage of 5$/hr, that’s 200$ time wasted on calibrating. Anyone who knows, also knows 2 hours to calibrate a filament doesn’t include the cost of the benchmark prints. If they succeed, how many times they fail, and then the time YOU have to spend looking at things.
I will never consider another printer that doesn’t have lidar or some sort of similar automatic-calibration for filament. Not gonna happen, ever. I put in my time of manually fine-tuning filaments and wasting a ton of filament…
I have a P1S and rarely need to tune flow rate, the deafault profiles have always worked fine.