I’m convinced Prusa and Bambu pricing is very simular; their printers just aren’t always an apples-to-apples comparison. When considering enclosed, metal framed, coreXY printers, the Prusa Core One can be purchased as a kit for $950, but the Bambu X1C is $1150. (I highly recommend the Prusa kit options for new owners so they can get familiar with maintaining their machine.) At the mini end, you have the same $200 difference, but in the other direction. The Prusa Mini+ kit is $430 while the Bambu A1 Mini is $220. However, these Bambu prices are currently shown as discounted and I’m not sure if they ever go up to their higher MSRPs. Therefore, I don’t like how Prusa is the only printer brand in this guide with an “expensive” warning.

Edit: Perhaps it would add more clarity to instead include the MSRP in parentheses beside the individual printers listed below.

I’m not sure what you’re woooshing here. If your saying that you were being sarcastic and you do recognize they were using affordable hardware, then that was understood. That’s exactly what I was responding to.

They used their Prusas and cheap filament to print pipe fittings that exceeded residential plumbing pressure requirements by 4-8x across the different materials. Filament cost was 3-17x cheaper than commercial fittings. Overall this study was a success. I think this price-point of printer hardware is a perfect match for the application. Any quality improvements from a more expensive “professional” printer would be wasted on these kinds of simple, low-precision designs.

Yes we are talking about home-teir 3D printers here. They used a Prusa MK3S printer and Prusa XL in this study. Also, they tested PLA in addition to PETG and ASA.