[hevi_jos]

Prusa cares about quality. Chinese mostly about price.

For example, Prusa filaments are perfectly rewind, so the possibility of the filament making a knot and stopping the print like has happened to me with other filaments in 14h printing sessions does not exist.

Or chinese aluminium printing beds, with 0.3-0.4 mms differences along the printer, that even with a touch probe you can't print big things over.

Those beds are so cheap, and you could print small pieces with them, but anything serious in size like 18x18 cms will fail. Prusa warrantees it.

Quality control is the great advantage that Prusa has over the Chinese(that love lying). He knows it, and sends you a report of the QA of your specific machine.

[royletron]

So does it feel like this is the first genuinely plug and play 3D printer...? That's always been one of the things that puts me off, I don't want to have to learn so much...

[Klathmon]

I'd say the MK3S printer is like 75% plug and play. (For reference, I consider current wireless "2d" paper printers to be 100% plug and play now).

You will eventually need to do maintenance on it, you'll eventually have a clog or a broke part or need to do some slightly technical stuff to fix an eventual problem, but most adults capable of building Ikea furniture should be able to follow instructions and do it.

I'm assuming this will be closer to 85% "plug and play". Things like the "one click print", color screen, WiFi and automatic firmware updates are the biggest nice to haves.

But I don't think they've gotten to the point where you'll have reliability similar to a normal "2d" paper printer, so at some point you'll need to take some stuff apart to unclog it. But that's about the extent of the technical needs I'd expect from this printer.

[dTal]

Ultimakers are absolutely plug and play. You get what you pay for.

[dual_basis]

Maybe, but quality is hard to measure. I just bought a Creality Ender 3 Pro for $180 and the print quality looks as good as anything I've seen from a Prusa or even the Ultimaker at my university. It's got a larger build volume than this mini as well. It doesn't have some of the comfort features, such as auto bed leveling or wifi, but if you really want these you can add them in and still be under the price of this mini, not to mention that the cantilevered design of the mini is almost certainly less stiff than the i3 style on the Ender 3.