I just got into 3d printing a few months ago (November). I wanted to make sure that I got a printer that I would not regret. I needed something that was going to be as user friendly as possible. I decided on the X1C with the AMS. I loved it. I have since started using Orca for certain things. My concern with what Bambu is doing is not because it will dramatically affect me, but because of the trajectory it indicates for the company. Therefore, I will not be buying any more Bambu products until they reverse course. Additionally, I will seek out a 3rd party replacement for the firmware and will completely exit the Bambu ecosystem as soon as possible. I really do hope they pump the breaks and rethink what they are doing.
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I don’t think Bambu will ever reverse course.
As many “devils advocates” say most of their market is phone only users, and many of them are child, who print from time to time and for them 2x price of filament is not critical because of small weight of used filament and because some of them is young enough for their parents buy filament for them.
And I also think that biggest part of their client base locate in China, so both America and Europe is minor part of bambu market.
Even if all who write is this thread throw Bambu’s printers in window, Bambu will not feel anything.
I wouldn’t bet all my money on Bambu changing “lanes” (or direction) anytime soon… as for the 3rd party firmware, there’s an attempt of doing just that, but it’s still in its primary stages, and even if successfully completed, it would require heavy and complex tinkering by replacement of various pcb boards and hardware. It’s not for nothing that Bambu has developed a walled garden system (proprietary firmware/software). So you’ll either have to wait for a (working) 3rd party alternative to be launched, or decide between updating your firmware and become entraped in Bambu’s “ecosystem” for good (no return), or just put your firmware update on hold for a while longer (like a year or two), or at least until Bambu (and the user community) figures out what to do next. Your printer, your call.
@Garfield To be fair, Handy isn’t completely useless at all. I was being hyperbolic (greatly exaggerating, for effect).
(I have no idea if this translation is correct - apologies if this is cussing you out or insulting your lineage or something.)
Um fair zu sein: Handy ist nicht völlig nutzlos. Ich habe nur übertrieben (stark übertrieben, um den Effekt zu erzielen).
(Ich habe keine Ahnung, ob diese Übersetzung korrekt ist - entschuldigen Sie, wenn ich Sie damit beschimpfe oder Ihre Abstammung beleidige oder so).
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Isn’t that the crux of this entire debate? Bambu Labs justifies these unwanted changes—changes nobody asked for—under the guise of security. Yet, despite admitting they lack expertise in cybersecurity, they insist they are right while dismissing both industry experts and users. No notable security professionals have defended their approach, while many have pointed out that it will not achieve its stated goals. In fact, as demonstrated, their implementation was hacked within 24 hours of release. And how does Bambu respond? By accusing critics of spreading lies rather than addressing legitimate concerns. That, my friends, is the ultimate example of gaslighting—denying reality and insisting you didn’t see what you saw.
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Well, if you read reddit or youtube, there are lots of people complaining and have hundreds of upvotes. Some random youtubers have thousands. Probably half the people that also use makerworld don’t even open a slicer, just browse on their phone and hit print from their phone. There are some around here as well. They think it’s a limitation implemented by Bambu if you go LAN mode, so you can only use their stuff, and who knows… subscription mode in the future and other stuff.
If you try to tell to these people how things work, they dismiss you and think you’re a fanboi or a shill. It’s not even worth explaining, they would rather believe someone else that is clearly wrong. I mean these things happens in every domain, like populism in politics. So for me, I do see it like a half drama, half comedy.
If things will still work as it’s working now, it’s fine for me. You have your “secure” way for ordinary people and your advanced mode for people that want control. My only issue is that I still don’t think it should connect to the internet even just one time to set it up. And as many others stated the obvious, the security is need it but not in the way they designed so far. If things go in another direction I don’t agree with, nobody is forcing me to buy another Bambu in the future.
The handy app does have a feature that the Studio doesn’t have. If you print multiple clones on a plate and one fails and want to skip it, it’s easy to do it from the app. From the printer screen as well if you’re near the printer. I still didn’t find this option on the studio. Otherwise I don’t use the app either, I have my own camera to monitor things over the internet.
It’s still there even in Orca, in the sense that you have to select a PA profile there. One nice thing about Orca is that you can specify PA in the filament. For some reason you can see it in Bambu when you make a comparison between filaments but it’s not displayed there.
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Inside this community I haven’t seen the complaint once, but I don’t doubt that you’re seeing less technical users complain about that. (Unfortunately?) I have to defend BL on this one though… LAN mode + external access to your LAN printer from an Internet phone isn’t a trivial thing to do, for technical reasons. And I wouldn’t even feel comfortable doing it.
Agreed
Also I agree with simon14 that it’s kind of strange for that setting to be where it is. At the very least it’s crummy UI design: people see that and they think “Oh nice the AMS tells you the weight of the spool?” … nope. 
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sorry for the misuse of your post
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I disagree, and the reasons and arguments supporting the points of disagreement have been already laid out in several of both my posts as well as of plenty of others, if you’ll bother looking them up. I don’t feel like repeating all over again all these back and forth discussions.
The main contentious point in all these debates was the LAN only issue. All resumes at that. Bambu needs to allow users to choose between cloud-based or LAN-based printing. Those willing to go for “cloud”, that’s their call to make, and ours not to interfere. Similarly, users choosing the LAN over cloud should be allowed to do so, even if that means no more online security updates (we can now do it offline through the sd-card) which will ensure Bambu’s servers don’t get “infected” by our “insecured” machines/computers. That’s not much to ask, isn’t Bambu?
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I’m going to say… yeah right…
Look, I don’t think people will actually switch to other products because of this…But if I’m wrong…
I got cash…let’s make a deal
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A little more offtopic but I’ve found another youtube random thing that some people seem to agree with but for me is funny as hell.
they are forcing their cloud service and their slicer so they can have access to bazzilion models for training their AI model generator software
It’s not like they have their own MakerWorld open to everyone, or access to Printables and Thingiverse and what not. They specifically need to steal your modeled vase or spinner. That without counting that most bambu users don’t even slice their own models.
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Luckily there is so many users offering to buy off printers so the price should be 
I sell mine for 650€ p1s combo + 200 € for the extra build plates supertack, cryogrip from BiQu 2 aliexpress plates smooth pei Hardened hotends 0.4 0.6 mm 0.2 stainless spare hardened extrudor … ams cable 1.5m ….
Used 300 hours 7 months old. Shipping to EU - buyer covers shipping costs
Your printer, your call. Good luck with your sell and your next printer purchase (if any).
I can imagine an uptick of BL printers getting listed on eBay in the coming months.
Sad to see Bambu Lab shooting themselves in the foot like this.
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There are plenty already, and probably more to come. For now, P1 series form the most of the offers for sale
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Whats the difference between bambu studio and orca? Bambu Studio less capable? I dont have my A1 yet so just curious.
That’s a fair question and I’ll try to give a high level answer.
When you start Bambu Studio, you may have noticed a banner stating that it was derived from PrusaSlicer and Cura, both open-source slicer programs that were themselves derived from or heavily influenced by the granddaddy of open-source slicers, Slic3r.
Since Bambu Studio is based on these two open-source slicers, they were required to make the source code public. That’s where fellow 3D printing enthusiast SoftFever came in, taking the program and dramatically enhancing it. If you’re into cars, you might be familiar with AMG—before Mercedes-Benz purchased them, they specialized in transforming regular Mercedes models into high-performance machines that rivaled Ferraris. Orca is a lot like that, but for slicers.
In short, Orca is a clone of Bambu Studio, but with many features from previous slicers, such as ironing and calibration, that Bambu never carried over(although they are now part of BS thanks to Orca).
While the Orca team has been painstakingly adding features, Bambu has focused mainly on promoting MakerWorld. One can easily extrapolate that click-through ads will appear at some point. Orca allows users to bypass this, something I’m sure Bambu isn’t happy about.
I have suspected that Orca’s independence from Bambu and collaboration with Bambu competitors is viewed by Bambu as a threat. Maybe this might be part of their sabotage of the Orca interface, in order to gain more control. It was gratifying to see SoftFever politely tell Bambu, No thanks and go their own way.
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Oh wow, thank you for the informative answer. Shady dealings from Bambu then… bambu needs to do better.
One fun difference I just recently noticed.
Start Orca with Internet blocked via local firewall… it runs fine.
Start Bambu Studio with your local firewall blocking Internet… it rages, freezes up, floods your PC with errors.
Between that and all the bugs I’ve seen, I’ve come to the conclusion that BS is kinda BS.
Which is kind of a problem if BL wants to encourage people to use it.
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I like orca because its feature set is better. I can choose a lot more stuff, and if I’m confused I hover over a setting and it tells me what’s what.