[ferminaut]

I own two MK3s+'s. They are solid machines if you are looking to print PLA and some PETG. The stock extruder is a PITA. The MK4's redesigned nozzle/heat break & 10:1 extruder are basically a Bondtech LGX + Revo & should make for a great improvement.

The MMU3 seems like a marginal improvement, you still have purge towers & large buffer boxes. Hopefully the reliability out of the box has improved.

I wonder if it's too little too late for Prusa. A Voron, Ratrig, Bambu Lab printer seems like it has all these features & is CoreXY. The multi material options seem better on these options too (Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder, Bambu AMS).

In the case of the Voron or Ratrig, you'll load Klipper instead of the tried & tested (and outdated) Marlin.

In 2023, I am not sure I'd buy a MK4 at $1100 when you can get a Bambu for $100 more.

[sircastor]

I think as 3D printer enthusiasts, we focus on structure and features. The thing that I think of when I think of Prusa is reliability. For most people the most important thing about a 3D printer is that it prints. It doesn’t matter if it’s corexy or uses a Bowden tube, or the board is 32bit. And while those technologies ostensibly provide a better experience, it doesn’t really matter (for most) so long as you get thing thing you wanted to print.

For me, Bambu is too proprietary, Voron is too self-built, Ender is too unpredictable.

By current printer is self built and it works sometimes. My next printer is a Prusa.

[eYrKEC2]

I'm not sure about too little, too late. All the different brands are the flavor of the month ARM SBCs vs raspberry pi -- Prusa may lag in features, but at least I've heard of them, they have a community, and they're not going to disappear tomorrow like something off ali baba.

[eropple]

Voron and Ratrig are not going to "disappear tomorrow".

Bambu--I'm less sanguine about them, to be fair.

The Prusa XL looks tremendous and I'm very interested, but a $1100 bedslinger had better literally make you breakfast to warrant it over a $250 SV06 or Neptune 3 Pro, and the MK4 does not.

[alpaca128]

Voron? Apparently that takes about 30 hours of build time, that's definitely not my kind of project. I want to use the printer. Bambulabs? Looks very interesting, but it's as proprietary as it gets. With Prusa it's clear what I'm getting into.

I want to upgrade from my Prusa Mini and can't justify the cost for the XL, so the Mk4 seems like a decent choice. I'm sure people building and modding their own printers and flashing firmwares might have other favorites, but that's simply not what I buy 3d printers for.

[hellweaver666]

I'm in the same situation. I've been using a Prusa Mini for two years and it's a really awesome machine. I've made some tweaks along the way but I get consistent, high-quality prints in a reliable machine. I never have trouble with prints failing to stick or filament sticking or any of that stuff. I'm in the market for a bigger print bed at the moment and I want to stick with Prusa but the XL is too expensive and the MK4 seems like it might not be quite big enough for my needs. I'm looking at the Elegoo Neptune range (they have some seriously big printers that are cheaper than the Prusa Mini!). I have serious doubts about the quality though at that point... it's just too damn cheap for the size.

[faeranne]

I'd argue that Prusa still has value over both Voron and Bambu Lab, though that value is dependent on the user. Voron still requires significant self-assembly, as you can't buy it as a prebuilt (far as I know), and doesn't have a company directly sponsoring it (that may be a plus for some). Bambu, on the other hand, is well built, but highly proprietary, and can absolutely rug pull without warning. This puts Prusa at a perfect position for makers/tinkers/hackers. The ability to continue to self improve if one wants, without needing to if one is too busy. I'm personally not a fan of Prusa Connect, as I like having all my systems run under software I've vetted, and right now that's still OctoPrint. But the thing is, I can still absolutely get OctoPrint running on the Prusa Connect hardware. It requires some tinkering, but that's in my control. Voron requires I build everything from scratch, and Bambu requires I use only their firmware/connection app. I've got so many things already linked with OctoPrint that moving systems simply wouldn't function. I'd have to completely reset all my automation.

As for Ratrig, that might be a healthy competition, though I've never looked into the quality of parts there. I know I've sat an Ender next to my Prusa and found the price vs quality to match surprisingly well, so Prusa's not the only game, but for something I can control, while still having a company to lean on when I want to, Prusa's got a good thing going.

[riceart]

Agree it’s tough. The non enthusiasts that don’t give a shit and aren’t interested in a cash outlay are in the sub $500 market. Once you break that point you’re unlikely to want to save a couple hundred bucks. I would have definitely had started with the Bambu if it were available a couple years ago. If I get tired of my MK3S I would be highly unlikely to upgrade to a Prusa.

[anamexis]

It seems like an odd place in Prusa's own product line-up.

I have a Prusa MINI+, which for $450 gets you a great printer. The print volume on the MK3 and now MK4 is just not that much better - 180x180x180 for the MINI, 250x210x220 for the MK4.

If I wanted to upgrade and wanted to stick with Prusa, MK3/MK4 wouldn't come into the picture, I'd go straight to the Prusa XL.

[dividedbyzero]

I have a Mini too, and I could see myself get a MK4 as the Mini has been a bit of a disappointment. The X and Y axes on mine aren't 90° and there seems to be no hardware adjustment (just a rigid printed part), no support for software adjustments either (the respective GCode is disabled in firmware), so I can't print proper rectangles, just parallelograms, and any boxes and lids I print never fit properly. I want to keep tinkering to a minimum (that's why I got a Prusa), and I can make do with goskew and preprocessing the gcode, but I found I have to repeat callibration quite often and it's a fairly annoying process and not very exact and means I can't reuse gcode files at a later date, so having a printer that doesn't have this defect would be very welcome.

My Mini also likes to ram the nozzle into the build plate once in a while without any of it's safeties triggering, heating element stuck on and the Z stepper fully engaged, so I can't let it run unsupervised either, and the filament sensor is pretty hit and miss as well. I may have had bad luck with my unit (I ordered right at release), but I'm definitely looking for something more reliable and, frankly, less dangerous.

The Prusa Mk4 does look like a solid hands-off machine and hopefully they didn't cut corners there like with the Mini, and hopefully customer support is also better for the more expensive ones. I don't have any use for the XL's feature set (I only print relatively small parts and not that many), but I didn't want to get a Mk3s as it's been pretty dated for a long time now. I'll wait a bit until other people have had a chance to run into any major flaws though.

[foxylad]

Very happy early Prusa Mini owner. I do remember some difficulty when assembling it, which lead to non-square axes. After an hour or so I eventually got right, so you might want to try redoing the tower assembly.

I don't have a filament sensor (I also print mainly small parts, so rare to hit the end of a spool), and haven't had any problems with heating elements, z steppers or nozzle crashes. I did experience the extruder clicking due to shrinking PTFE in the hot end, but I've ordered the E3D Revo mini hot end which will prevent that problem ever happening again.

[regularfry]

I had clogging problems on mine - three or four different fixes to sort it out, and the thing that finally nailed it was replacing the PTFE hotend lining with Capricorn. It's been fire-and-forget since then.