It’s hard to say. On paper, the specs look great; however, all the reviews came from paid YouTuber shills. In fact, it is one of the most egregiously fake-looking product launches I’ve seen in my 40+ years in tech, leading me to disbelieve everything Elegoo and its legions of paid promoters are saying.
This is one of the two big reasons I’m waiting to see what real reviewers say after the product has been in the wild for a few months. Call me cynical, but can we honestly trust any tech company these days, much less Chinese tech companies? Prusa is the obvious exception, but let’s be honest—they’re expensive. If money were no object, I’d own three of their products, but for each of Prusa’s products, I can buy anywhere from 3 to 10 printers in the same class. It’s hard to justify that kind of price delta.
Getting back to Bambu, Dr. Tao presents himself as the Steve Jobs of 3D printing and has publicly stated that they want to be more like Apple. However, Apple, for all its arrogance, at least has best-in-class customer support, and its product quality rarely comes into question. Can Bambu make either of those claims? So at the end of the day, if you no longer have a price advantage, never had a customer service advantage, and the one thing you were known for—innovation—is now something everyone else has too, then you can see where that’s all going.
The then CEO of Google Eric Schmidt said of his own company in 2007 when asked if he was worried about being declared a monopoly; “all tech companies are just one tech innovation away from obsolescence”. The next year Facebook launched and within two years MySpace was just a history footnote. Will we be saying that about Bambu in five years? Only time will tell. They still have a chance to turn the ship around but in my view, they aren’t steering the current ship into the right current as this thread initially pointed out. Will the H2D be that? If it’s at $3K, I don’t see it capturing much market share, especially since those customer willing to pay that much have much higher expectations that Bambu has not been able to meet with respect to support.
Most definitely, but I’mma gonna guess from that you’re in the US,
Ouch!
Unfortunately not here in AU (yet?) there is just one used A1 mini that is… dearer than buying one brand new from Bambu directly… (with only $25 shipping) FFS! And it’s not even really on special… it will go down to 299 or less… then.
damnnn that is really cheap… i wonder how much it cost to create those printers in china now that we see some clones of bambu for 200$ makes me wonder about the p1p … p1s and x1’s
Only if it is very low level support that you need. If you need support in as far as repairs to your device, you are pretty much out of luck - they will just want to sell you a new device.
Rarely? Not so. Are they generally good quality? Yes. Do they have some shocking and abysmal failures? Yes. I had a Apple iPod Touch 5th gen destroy it’s own internal battery and nearly set on fire, when using the genuine charge lead (which was only rarely used, at home), due to a fault in that lead. A relatives iPod Touch (a 2nd gen 8gen which was marketed as 3rd gen) has recently had the battery suddenly stop charging, yet on screen the iPod thought it was charging even though there was no charge lead. I also had one of that size/generation, and the headphones socket failed after about a years use, and the top power button is dodgy. So from first-hand experience I refute that statement. As I said before, I think generally they are good quality, but they also still have lemons and poor design choices.
The new auth system is definitely no masterpiece of engineering. It leans more toward locked systems like Stratasys/Ultimaker. If they also lockdown the filament and other supplies they may become a footnote in history to brought Core-XY 3D-printers to the masses and after that they disappeared as some other company with less restrictive and more open ideas was around the block. It may happen, hope it will be possible to print without cloud involved after this in the future.
I would hope, if it came to that, they would be wise enough to switch back to not being so locked down vs becoming a footnote. Or a hero arises with a way to “unlock it” yourself if possible. I guess it just has to be more profitable for them to not lock it down vs what it means when they do. The money always does the talking lol
According to the leaked info on H2D, they won’t take the step back, rather press ahead with this so called authentication/security thing. The H2D has no LAN, only cloud, and based on their statements in The Verge, all their new machines will be sold with this (BS) firmware pre-installed. So, in this regard, it’s a deal breaker for me. Others might decide that the benefits of running a H2D will outweigh the loss of the LAN…that is, until Bambu’s cloud falls again, either from an outage, or DDOS attacks, or whatever other unforeseen reason, as many have recently noted, when Bambu’s cloud is down, their print jobs were down as well.
Being completely reliant on someone else’s computer operational status (a machine located someplace on the other side of the world) to be able to print on your printer (located next door), is (in my humble opinion) unwise. But, then again, everyone decides for himself the amount of risk is prepared to take.
I completely missed this. I guess I assumed that since this was supposed to be a flagship product that it would have every feature of every Bambu Platform which includes the X1E.
I gotta ask, what are these people thinking? They are positioning this as “additive manufacturing”. Riddle me this; what manufacturer will allow a unsecured device in their enterprise? Answer: NONE.
I know none, zero, NADA, products that can coexist in the commercial manufacturing space that require or would allowed unfettered cloud access. Even Microsoft Azure has an on-premise option. This is baffling. Aside from the well-healed 3D printer enthusiast, who would buy such a product?
Yeah that’s fair, it couldn’t even connect to my work network because it doesn’t support WPA2-Enterprise. It seems like they’re really going for the “prosumer” market, not enterprise with this one. I expect to see the H2E soon for a couple of grand more for places like that.
EDIT 1: I expect the core market to be makers and hobbyists who have been wanting to upgrade and want something they can dump a big chunk of money into and not worry about getting a new printer for a while. That’s my plan at least. I have an excel spreadsheet for my finances and I’ve made a whole loan amortization table to plan the purchase. This is, to me, equivalent to upgrading my computer every 5-6 years or so, except I shouldn’t see the degradation in performance you see when playing new games on old hardware. It’ll be my workhorse for the next decade if I’m lucky. I don’t see this as something you buy 6 of for a print farm. Maybe you get one for special applications
EDIT 2: What I expect: Release the big one for a high cost, get the impulsive people and the big upgraders, then once that dies down release the next, cheaper model, get more impulsive people and people going “Oh wow it’s $1200 less than the H2D!”, wait a bit, then release the mass device (currently the A1/Mini) at a price others can’t really compete at with one or two new technologies to keep it fresh. Wait a couple years and then repeat the process
It does state that it has wi-fi for a wireless network. Not sure where the “USB” statement by them fits in. My P1S doesn’t have USB that I have found, but I can print across my “LAN”, well, send the file to the micro card and the printer will start printing.
Wifi only does not mean no LAN. You’re still on your Local Area Network if you’re on wifi. If you’re thinking of WAN, that’s Wide Area Network, not Wireless.
We’re talking about the H2D with regards to the USB, not the P1S
And it’s not even really on special… it will go down to 299 or less… then.
