[microtonal]

I think the answer is still Prusa. It's mostly Chinese companies undercutting Prusa's price and they probably care as little about free software licenses and users as Bambu.

I saw this mess coming from miles ahead (and it will repeat itself), so when it was time to replace our Ender 3v2, I got a Prusa printer. Yes, it was much more expensive than Bambu, but at some point we have to put our money where our mouth is. We cannot talk all the time about open source, consumer friendliness, the right to repair, etc. and then reward companies that don't give a shit about it. So our money went to Prusa.

It's a great printer too!

[Gigachad]

The Prusa i3 mk4 is about 4 times as expensive as the roughly equivalent A1. Their stuff also seems to have less features and less polish.

I get voting with your wallet but not many people want to spend 4x more for a worse product.

[microtonal]

Maybe it's because I am in Europe, here it's slightly less than 3x or about 2x when you buy a kit.

European/US products are always going to be substantially more expensive because they pay employees better, have better labor laws, have more strict regulations to deal with (GDPR, etc.), cannot freeload on other people's work while violating open source licenses, don't get state funding to murder Western competitors, etc.

If you buy Bambu, you are supporting AGPL violations. If you buy Prusa, you are supporting development of open source firmware, open source slicers, and a company that is friendly to self repairs and makes it possible print replacement parts for your printer.

I understand that not everyone can afford a Prusa printer. But most people on HN have a lot of disposable income. If you choose to support the greedy, anti-consumer, anti-open source company anyway, don't complain the next time a open source project cannot be sustained even though they are used by large companies, don't complain production is moving away from the west, and don't complain when you get locked into cloud services. You supported these practices.

I am not saying that you are complaining about this, but a lot of people are, but when push comes to shove they don't put their money where their mouth is.

[GZGavinZhao]

> I get voting with your wallet but not many people want to spend 4x more for a worse product.

Yeah as much as I like Prusa, I really hope they figure out how to cut down their prices because, let's be real, most of the people buying a 3D printer don't give a cent about how "open" it is, and if Prusa continues this trend I'm afraid it'll become obsolete. Having competitors with genuinely good products (like Bambu, despite them not being a good company) is healthy, but not helpful if Prusa doesn't do anything to catch up to their competitor.s

[fuomag9]

I got a P1S for 500€ and what was already at the limit of my budget for what I use the 3D printer for (very sporadic small parts/gadgets)