[wolvoleo]

I don't think Prusa and Bambu compare well. Prusa printers aren't as cleanly designed as Bambu and they are more than twice the price. I consider them really poor value for money. And Bambu printers aren't clones. The AMS is something they came up with.

Also, Prusa copy from Bambu too. Like their own material switcher (much less sophisticated than the AMS) and the new Core printer is really more a Bambu copy than the other way around, honestly. In fact other brands are copying Bambu too.

I really like them, they are fair to me as a consumer. Spare parts are cheap, there's no consumable restrictions or subscriptions for their cloud service.

And they're really as plug and play as you can get right now. I don't really need that, I've owned printers since the first generation so I know how to deal with issues. But really they happen rarely. The worst I get is stuck filament in the AMS and I found I can prevent that by removing the bit of filament with gear bite marks after it's been through. It absorbs more water then and gets brittle.

Also I've learned from earlier printers not to mix materials in the same nozzle so I switch them too.

[Arch-TK]

No idea about the filament swirchers, but calling core XY designs bambu clones is really funny.

The core XY design that all manufacturers are now centering around has been around long before Bambu existed as a company.

[cyberrock]

Core XY didn't exist in consumer printers outside of Vorons that took hours to build. If all a new company did was take an obvious concept and make it accessible, then that just reflects poorly on the previous market leaders.

[Arch-TK]

Vorons are not consumer printers. They are enthusiast DIY projects.

That aside, sure, maybe Bambu were the first to make an affordable core XY machine. But, outside of China, we still don't have an affordable core XY machine by this definition.

So Bambu were the first Chinese company to take advantage of cheap Chinese manufacturing to stop making crappy Prusa i3 clones, crappy other things, or v slot Bowden crap (Ender 3, etc.).

They were the first to "clone"[0] some existing core XY designs and make a polished and affordable product.

Cool.

I am not saying its a bad thing, but do we need to applaud it when China repeatedly undercuts the rest of the world by not playing on the same playing field?

[0]: I say clone only because many of the "clones" Prusa complained about so much were only visually similar to the uninitiated and were otherwise quite distinct (and also much lower quality). The Bambu core XY designs look a lot like other more expensive core XY designs of the time. But really core XY isn't hard, the hard part is all the fine details, which every "clone" maker has to deal with inevitably.

[wolvoleo]

The technical design maybe but they all look like bambu P1/X1 in terms of design.

[Arch-TK]

Again, the predecessors also looked like bambu printers, I don't know what to tell you. There are not that many ways to design an enclosed core XY machine.

[Baeocystin]

I have about 15,000 hours on my Bambu x1c, and it's been fantastic. Their customer service has been great, too; the couple of times that I've had service issues, the tech genuinely worked with me to solve the problem. They were a lot nicer about it than the times I had to contact prusa about my older i3. FWIW.