This review compares the Bambu Lab A1 and P1S 3D printers, highlighting their differences in price, features, and performance to help practical users choose the best tool for their needs.
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Welcome back to Hooos. Today on Hoochos,
I'm going to be doing a comparison
review of my two top picks for
entrylevel 3D printers for people who
want a tool and not a time sync. In this
video, I'm going to be comparing and
contrasting the P1S with the A1. I'm
going to be talking mostly about the
differences between these machines and
the benefits that a Core XY printer has
over a bedser and kind of teasing apart
what you're getting for the extra money
and whether it's worth your money and
time. All right. So, on this channel, I
primarily focus on hydroponics,
beekeeping, and providing people with
practical 3D prints that they can
download through my Patreon or purchase
through my Amazon store or hydroland.com.au
hydroland.com.au
here in Australia. This is my
prototyping room. in it. I've got three
P1S's, one with an AMS, a P1P, an X1C
with AMS, and an A1 with AMS light. Now
the reason I have a mixture of all these
printers is because I wanted to compare
and contrast the printers for practical
people like myself that would like to
invest in a quality tool but are unsure
which of those quality tools is best for
them. So immediately we want to look at
the first thing that consumers are going
to look at and that is the price. Now,
in the store right now, the price of the
A1 is $399
US and $499 Australian. The price of the
P1S, now this is both without the combo
AMS, is $699
US and $899
Australian. So, for Australians, that
makes the P1S $400 more than the A1. And
for Americans, it's $300 more. So there
is a decent gap between these two
printers. So you are paying a lot more
for the P1S, but how much more are you
actually getting? And does the A1
present better options for a lower cost?
Well, it depends what you're after. So I
think the easiest way to start a
comparison of these two printers is by
directly comparing their features. Now,
straight off the bat, the P1S is an
enclosed printer. This means that you
can reach higher build area temperatures
for more intensive materials like ASA
and other filaments that require
specific temperatures to print. The fact
that this printer is enclosed also means
that it is contained within a smaller
footprint. So even on this desk, you can
see that the AMS plus the printer itself
takes up a lot less space. And this is a
major consideration for a lot of people
because space is limited for a lot of
people. The A1 would actually need to be
in an orientation such as this if you're
running an AMS. And you also have to
have it forward in whatever work area
you have because your bed slings
backwards and forwards. It takes up
about 150% of the depth of the P1S. Now,
this actually has a caveat in the form
of print bed area for the P1S. You see,
the print bed of a P1S isn't actually a
256x 256
square. It has an exclusion zone that
can be removed, but it disables the AMS
if you have it removed. So on larger
prints, the A1 actually has a natively
bigger bed print area able to be taken
advantage of with multicolor printing.
And that's not the only feature that the
A1 brings to the table that the P1S
leaves behind. We've got a nozzle
cleaner at the back as well as a really
small filament wipe area, which wastes
less filament than the P1S's filament
wipe. And I have no idea why this is. It
just seems to be a quirk of the A1. I
think it's because this machine was
designed after the P1S and incorporates
more technology that they've been
developing. Now, I'm just going to
rattle off a bunch of features that I
absolutely love about the A1. The screen
is an absolute pleasure to interact
with. It's a low refresh rate color
screen with an extremely intuitive UI,
which you can interact with the moment
that a print is done to reprint whatever
print you are printing. And this is a
far cry from the black and white uh absolutely
absolutely
atrocious screen that that comes with
the P1S. And this is a real shame
because it makes interacting with this
machine physically jarring to say the
least. Both of these machines can be
controlled via the Bamboo Labs mobile
app, which is quite intuitive. So
realistically, you don't need to
physically interact with this screen. It
can also be controlled via the slicer,
which is incredibly handy. And I find
myself rarely if ever using the screens
except when I want to reprint, which
makes this screen invaluable. Okay, so
I'm just in editing. To be clear, you
can reprint on the P1S using the
hardware screen. It's just buried deeper
in the UI and there's no pictures of
what you're reprinting. So, if you
haven't properly labeled and named all
of the previous files, you're kind of
stuffed. And that actually brings me to
a design quirk that I found with these
A1 printers that you have to watch out
for because it could destroy the screen
on your A1. If we actually have a look
at the side of my A1 green, you can see
here this is actually a saw mark from
the bed itself. What can actually happen
is as the bed is slinging if the bed
gets dislodged, which sometimes does
happen. I've found that these magnets,
they are fantastic 99% of the time, but
if the bed dislodges in a strange way,
you will get an odd circumstance where
the bed actually just soarses against
the screen as it's slinging backwards
and forwards. And this has come very
close to destroying the screen of one of
our printers in one of our print farms.
So, my recommendation here would be to
have the screen swiveled to the side uh
when you're not using it actively. And
you can even have this entire printer
oriented side on so that you're using
sideways bench space with the bed sling
rather than having it slinging backwards
and forwards against a wall. Another
quirk that we discovered after running
these machines for thousands and
thousands of hours is that the first
layer of the prints will start to
deteriorate because of a known issue
with the print head that requires you to
tighten the screws behind the extruder
unit. I'll leave a link in the
description for those people that are
running these non-stop and come across
this first layer defect on the print
bed. I'm also going to show you how to
fix that problem a little bit later in
the video. Another advantage that the
Bamboo Labs A1 has over the P1S is the
P1S actually requires you if you want to
change out the hotend to unscrew the
hotend. And depending on whether you've
bought a complete hotend kit or just the
hotend. If you've bought just the
hotend, you'll need to remove the
heating elements and replace the hotend
with the addition of thermal paste. Then
replace the new hotend, screw the fan
on, and replace the silicon cover. Now,
on the A1, I'm going to show you how
simple it is to change the hotend by
doing it with one hand. All we do is we
remove the front cover. We take off the
silicon front protector like so. We
press the filament cutter, uncip the
buckle here, and then the
extruder just pops out
like so. And honestly, for newcomers to
the 3D printing hobby, replacing nozzles
is probably the only regular maintenance
you'll be having to do on these
machines. And while we're in here, these
three screws are the problem screws that
can cause first layer defects on the A1.
Because when the head unit becomes
unstable, the bed leveling, which is
actually achieved by the tip touching
the bed, is interfered with by the
wobble in the tip of the A1's head. So,
if you've got an A1 that you've been
running for years or something and
you're having first layer bed defects,
tighten those three screws and I
guarantee all your headaches are going
to disappear. This is only becomes
apparent after like thousands and
thousands of hours of use. It is a very
small issue that you can fix in no time
at all. It's just a matter of being
aware of that issue. And to replace a
hotend, all we do is the exact same but
in reverse. The hotend is magnetized, so
we can just place it in and it will hold
itself in place like so. We replace the
buckle, clip it on, replace our silicon
cover around the entire unit, and put
the face back onto our head. Simple as
that. And I think that that process is
completely underrated when comparing
these two printers. So, here in front of
me, I have two examples of the same
large print. One printed on the P1S with
the XY printing. So, the bed moves up
and down while the nozzle moves around
the bed and prints in place. On the left
here, I have uh the bed slinger version,
which moves the bed forward and
backwards, essentially slinging the
item. The reason that the XYaxis is
preferable is because it creates less
artifacts on the print surface. As you
can see here, we have an almost perfect
print. It has some slight artifacting
here. This however was printed on the
A1. And as you can see at the base, we
have another almost perfect print. But
as the layer height increases, you start
to get artifacting on the top. as the
forces amplify against the bed and any
movement in that bed causes artifacting
on the prints at higher speeds. Now this
is a very very extreme case. I am maxing
out the height of the print bed and this
is a large object and if I printed it at
a lower speed the artifacting would have
been reduced. But these are just
limitations of this bedslinger
technology. And I think that the fact
that this is a bedslinger is why they
have actually included on this printer
in my eyes what is an inferior heating
element design. The heating element in
this bed snakes throughout the bed and
heats unevenly in comparison to the P1S.
If we take an infrared camera and
compare the two side by side. Okay. So,
I'm going to go ahead and turn on the
print bed. We'll just turn it up to uh
70° C and I'll show you the design of
the heat sink. As you can see, it snakes
around the bed and kind of unevenly
heats up the bed initially anyway. After
a while, it does even out and you get a
more consistent heating pattern. But it
is actually quite important that you
take into account this uh heating
pattern when you're laying smaller
objects on the bed or you have prints
you've been struggling to get to stick.
And this heat pattern actually explains
a fair few print failures that I've had,
especially in this area here and at the
back here. And if we contrast this to
our P1S, I'll do the same and we'll turn
on up to 70 again. And we'll watch this
heat. And immediately we'll start to see
a much more consistent
heating. and it heats just so much
faster as well. I've noticed a distinct
difference between uh first layer
failures on this heat bed as compared to
uh this A1 heat bed. And even when we
are at temperature, you can see a
difference between the hottest parts
which are reaching that 70° and the
coolest parts which are about 60° which
is a fairly large temperature
difference. And I think compounding this
issue further is the fact that the
enclosure will give you an even more
consistent bed temperature as opposed to
the A1 where you are fighting the
external temperature of the room with
this inferior element in my opinion. So,
the final consideration when comparing
these two machines is speed, and the P1S
beats the A1 by a long shot. Let's have
a look at the slicer and compare large
print files. Okay, so here is a really
large model that I've just released.
It's the Hooch pot. It's essentially a
selfwatering planter that feeds from a
float valve below and allows you to grow
your own plants in an infinitely
refilling manner. So, what we're going
to do is we're just going to take that
over to our slicer and I'm going to load
it in. Uh, we're going to place it on
our bed. It's going to be a massive
print. Yeah. I'm just going to leave all
settings, basic settings for our A1, 16
hours and 30 minutes. So, if we switch
that up to our P1S,
we slice our plate, we have a print time
of 11 hours and 30 minutes. So, that is
actually a massive difference in print
speed. So, you're looking at a print
time that is 30% faster with the P1S.
And that is going to be a major
consideration for a lot of people. Now,
for all of the positives and negatives
of both of these printers, there are
workarounds. For the A1, with the print
limitations that a bed slinger has, you
can obviously run the bed at a slower
speed and achieve similar quality prints
to the P1S. However, you are sacrificing
speed and you can run the A1 on
Ludicrous mode, which gives you faster
prints, lower quality, but at a higher
speed that will come closer to the P1S.
But these are all sacrifices that you're
making because of an inferior
technology, even though the product is
as good as that technology can be.
However, you are actually receiving an
incredible printer straight out of the
box and it is plugandplay and does
everything that this printer can do with
standard filament types. If you see
yourself needing the extra speed, the
extra print quality, the extra
reliability of the bed, and all of the
other little incremental improvements,
the P1S is probably for you. I actually
enjoy using the A1 a lot more than the
P1S. And I think that's because of the
improvements that were made by Bamboo
Labs in the interim between designing
this device and designing this device
with the low refresh screen, the nozzle
wipe, the single-handed nozzle change,
which I think is an absolute killer
feature. So, my final thoughts are you
really can't go wrong with either one of
these printers. They're both upgradable
to multicolor printing if you want to go
down that path. The only major
difference is speed and reliability at
higher speeds. With your taller prints,
you're going to have to be a bit more
careful with your A1. You're going to
have to print slower and you're going to
have to orient your prints correctly.
And that kind of all just falls away for
the P1S. It's just kind of foolproof.
You can print anything that I design on
my channel on this device and it is a
lot cheaper. It makes printing
accessible to a lot more people. And if
your budget's stretched with this, don't
go to the P1X. But if you can afford it
and you want to futureproof and say you
want to play with other materials or
whatever or just want a more compact
printer, this is the way to go. I now
own three A1s and three P1S's. I've
split it right down the middle, but I'm
probably going to start more investing
in the P1S's because speed is something
that I need for my business. But you
need to make up your mind on what is
important to you.
and go from there. I hope you enjoyed
this episode of Who Chos. Happy 3D
printing and I will see you next time
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