I’m new to the site - but curious.
I currently have a Ender 3 and Creality 10S - which are constantly breaking down on me and failing prints
Which printer would be best recommended to replace these
I personally like my Creality K1. Printed right out of the box and I have not had any problems with it (almost 2 years old).
The build volume is a little small and if that is an issue there is always the K1 Max.
My 2 cents worth.
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Thanks - I’m hoping to get a multi filament printer as my next one but I’ve heard really good things about the k1
My printers are like 5-7 years old and have been put through the ringer a few times lol
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I still use my Creality 10S Pro for larger builds. I changed it over to Klipper OS and have not had issues with it since. Also went with a Micro Swiss All Metal Direct Drive hot end.
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K2 or, wait for the K1 + CFS upgrade kit that are coming.
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Stay away from Creality printers unless you want to keep fixing stuff.
Get a Bambu Lab if you just want to print and don’t like tinkering
If you like tinkering and have decent knowledge upgrading printers then do yourself a favor and just build a Voron 2.4
It really depends, The reality often have poor tech support and need tinkering, I own a Bambu its ok. Some things are easy to do some not at all its needed something every few months. Less than the reality I owned but more than others. Prusa is in my experience the singular most reliable and that when a new version comes out the older versions can be updated to the new specs, although some steps are so large its not really sensible.
It really comes down to who you are what you are doing how much your budget is and what you expect and will tolerate.
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My experience has been completely the opposite, I find the only printers I have been able to keep printing reliably with little to no downtime are the creality machines. The Bambu’s on the other hand seem to break down constantly.
And when the creality’s do break down generally the fixes are much less complicated (and cheaper) than the Bambu’s. I chalk this up to overengineering but who knows.
Voron 2.4 will always be on top in my opinion 
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Wow, an interesting set of responses! I once had a Creality (small printer) years ago, never got it to print well, although it printed well enough to get a design done and approved We then had the parts made for us by a company in Texas, they did a great job.
When Prusa had its 10 year anniversary for their printer, I bought one for a keep safe. However, later, I had an employee build it. We print parts on it all the time. We had a short in the bed heater, and replaced it via AliExpress for about $25. Printer is extremely reliable, does fantastic quality, but very slowly.
More recently we bought one, then later 3 more K1 MAX printers. They seem to be fairly good, although we usually only have 2 or 3 running due to issues, so that is not such a great record. Their quality is good, not as good as I have seen from Bambu Labs or QiCi. For hobbyist use, it probably is a decent choice. Get it from a dealer with good support, such as 3D Printing Canada or MatterHackers. Get it from the same time zone, if possible, so when you need help, they are live when you are.
For production duty, that is, day and night printing, the K1 MAX is not really a great choice. We then bought a QiCi X max 3. Now this is one monster of a machine, built like.a battleship, much more rigid and well built than the K1 MAX. Call it the K1 MAX Killer. Why? Prints are much cleaner, speed is same or faster, vibration is lower, and it has the ability to do much higher temperature including heated interior in addition to hot end and print surface. It also has a drying and heated enclosure for the filament spool in the back, to keep your filament dry.
Pros: On sale, $699, normally $1099 The “3” numbers in their products refers to the year of introduction (I think) - 2023. There is one 4 printer, which has additional features, but we did not see that and thus bought the older unit.
So far, so good. We plan to print PC as well as PETG with it. PETG so far, works great. But yes, it is slightly behind the times with some feautures. But not significantly.
What it appears to be really good for is production. And that is what we need. The quality of the prints, the quality of screw holes, is truly amazing!
Cons: well, the spool is on the back, and it would be harder to fix that with a clever hanger like we have on the K1 MAX. It is harder to see what is being printed, unless you have the printer on a lower table and can look in the top. The printing is almost level with the front window, so you can’t really see that much there, and of course the sides are not clear, due to having to keep heated air inside. Finally, it is really big, but frankly, that is because it is really well built. And that also probably helps the print quality to be as high as it is: mechanical stability.
We plan to replace our three K1 MAX with the QiCi X max 3, or hopefully the X max 4 when it is released. Or, if the current “4” printer is the replacement for the X max 3, we will probably go with that. It is slightly smaller (305mm vs 330 mm square, and not as high).
I think for now, 3D printing is still in its infancy, and considering the amazing accuracy we are demanding out of a complex mechanical machine, it is going to be some trouble along the way. Consider it a learning experience: every problem you solve is one more thing you now know not to do or how to do right. After a while, you will be an expert…
P.S. If they release a follow-on to the X max 3, it would be X max 5, if my assumptions about the number being associated with the year is correct. And who ever heard of QiCi? I had not, but ran across it somewhere, and was surprised by the specs and the reviews. They may not be one of the innovation leaders, like Bambu Labs, but they are building really great machines only slightly behind the bleeding edge. Which gives the machine some advantages of being more reliable than those pushing the envelope. Gee, this machine is 1 ½ years old, which is forever in 3D printing times! And yet, I have not found any significant lack, and a lot to really love. And no, QiCi is not paying me for this! My honest experience.
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Wow that is a really well written out response, thank you for all the insight!
I had always seen those printers get pretty decent reviews on youtube but I havent gotten my hands on one yet. Maybe I will have to try it out!
Thanks, Matthew. I have a lot of experience since we started making our own cabinets aka enclosures rather than farming them out. The current enclosure has 8 pieces. Here is what it looks like when put together:
It took a lot of work to get this right. I am an electrical engineer/computer scientist, not a 3D designer, but Shapr3D got be through the design successfully. Not cheap, but an amazing product. It is a breee to use and quick to learn the basics.
If you order a QiCi X max3, you will need another person to help you lift it out of the box. It does have hand holds on either side of the cabinet for that purpose. Get one now while on sale! 
SORRY SORRY, I am calling the printer the QiCi, but it is QiDi. It is such a strange company name, I don’t know why I think C rather than D… Probably because I program in C and not D… So it is the QIDI X max3.
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Get a creality printer if you want to fix it yourself,
Get a bambu if you want to not be able to fix it yourself.
The sooner people stop hailing these machines as miracle godsends that ‘just work’ (something even 2d printers, decades older technology can’t do) the better off this hobby and industry will be. They still have the same upkeep requirements as every other corexy enclosed machine.
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Hi Mesenchuk:
All I can tell you is that back in September, I bought an Ender 3 V3 Plus.
I literally plugged it in, installed the slicer (I use Creality Print 5.1.4 specifically) and was printing right away. No messing around.
I liked it so much and since it was on sale, I ran up and bought a 2nd one.
I’m printing a bigger project right now and having the 2 printers to print different parts with different filament is awesome.
I got this model because of the larger print area… 300x300x330.
I do have to say that one of the many things I like about these printers is their accuracy and ability to print tiny things without issue.
Hope that helps.
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I appreciate everyones responses and insights - I do enjoy my ender 3 for my small prints and my 10-s for the larger ones –
I guess I just want to really upgrade what I have (when I get $) and make sure it has all the easy features that allow me to just plug/play print – I’m so tired of auto leveling and print shifts off axis during prints lol
Im running and ender 3 with sprite pro hot end and a cr10 mini with a sptie hot end aswell.
The ender 3 is on marlin and the cr10 on klipper haven’t had very many issues with them in the 5 urs ive been running them. But if you’re looking for something to run out of the box and want to get into multi color prints i would prbably go with a bambu lab p1 or x1 series and ams combo.