I bought a Bambu A1 Mini to replace an Ender 3, thinking it would just be for occasional printing. I wanted something smaller and better looking. The opposite happened: the process got so much easier that I now regret not getting something bigger, maybe even with AMS.

So while I can't compare the whole market, I can definitely say the jump in ease of use was huge.

Prusa printers are great too, especially if you care about supporting a company that invested heavily in open source. I found them harder to justify on price, but I also understand why people choose them for that reason.

There have also been pretty public disputes around Bambu's use of open-source work from the Prusa/Slic3r ecosystem, so that is part of the decision too.

Aside from the occasional problems like printers waking up at night to print gibberish [0] and attempts at locking down their ecosystem [1], Bambu Lab makes the most consistent, reliable printers for casual use you will find.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/3d-printers-print-br... [1] https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/bambu-lab-controversy-de...

I was chatting with my sister about this. She has a P2S and highly recommends it.

I did a bit of research and I agree with her. The other one that stood out was the snap maker U1 (it has a nice elegant solution for multi-colored prints, and promises to be open etc going forward).

I'm personally going with the P2S with AMS for the simplicity of the bambu ecosystem (though I'm conflicted about it).

Still after using the creality ender 3 for a long time I'm excited to see how much easier things can be. :)