8 Popular 3D Printer Brands, Ranked - BGR

It's incredible how home 3D printing has gone from the scrappy little RepRap from 2005 to the fast and sophisticated 3D printers of today. What started out as a community of tinkerers sending out 3D printer kits that essentially had you building the whole thing yourself has now become a massive market. When you buy a 3D printer these days, it's a factory-made product that needs little or no assembly out of the box. 3D printers are finally ready for the average person, not just the maker geeks who got the whole thing started. Об этом сообщает портал BGR.

This also means there are plenty of new companies that have popped up over the last two decades, and many 3D printer brands to sort through. Some have been around long enough to establish a solid reputation, while others seem like they've only been here since yesterday. Not that this has stopped those products from quickly becoming popular due to innovation, lower prices, or sometimes both.

If you're new to 3D printing, the barrage of brands can make things confusing quickly. That's especially true since each brand has its own hardcore fans and since just about any mainstream printer will work for most people off the shelf. It's generally not a great idea to get hung up on brands. Individual models matter more, but the brands also often represent specific ecosystems, and once you buy your first printer, you may find adding a second limits your choices. Perhaps no company embodies this more than the number one brand in this list detailing our ranking of popular 3D printer brands, from best to worst ... though they're all worthy of consideration.

Bambu Lab

Founded by former drone engineers, Bambu Lab came into the 3D printer market and changed everything. The company launched a Kickstarter for its first printer in 2022. By 2024, the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon was getting massive praise from professional reviewers. This CoreXY-style printer was fast, worked out of the box, did not require fiddling thanks to smart self-calibration, and offered a revolutionary automatic multi-material system. Many of the popular printers from other brands on this list have copied the X1's template because it set the standard for the next generation of 3D printers.

But who owns Bambu Lab? While the company's story does indeed begin with a group of former engineers from the drone giant DJI, this Shenzhen-based Chinese firm didn't pull itself up by its own bootstraps using crowdfunding alone. Sure, the Kickstarter funding helped, but Bambu Lab also got a sizeable cash injection from an investment group called IDG Capital. Since becoming so successful, Bambu has been pulling in even more backers.

While the company's printers are extremely well regarded, and owners generally love them, Bambu's closed ecosystem has drawn criticism. In 2023, a cloud outage triggered sudden (often catastrophic) print activity all over the world, and some customer rights advocates have outlined how the company seems to be aiming for forced subscriptions, software limitations, and cloud dependency.

Prusa Research

Right at the top of our list for 3D printer brands that can compete with Bambu Lab, you'll find Prusa Research. Unlike other 3D brands, Prusa trades on the identity of its founder, Josef Prusa. Started in 2012, Prusa was just a hobbyist with a passion for 3D printing. Unlike Bambu Lab, there were no Kickstarter campaigns or big-money investors to help Prusa get rolling. According to the company, it started from a basement shipping 3D printer parts in pizza boxes.

Today, Prusa claims to be the biggest 3D printer maker in both Europe and the United States, with over 1,200 employees. Thanks to its origins, Prusa has been an open-source outfit for most of its existence. In particular, the original Prusa printer designs were shared, allowing for others to make clones. Likewise, Prusa developed its own software, including PrusaSlicer, to uplift the whole industry. Today, there's a split in Prusa's approach.

The company has trademarked Original Prusa to denote its printers that are not open source, and it's been working on more monetization streams, such as a cloud subscription. Even so, Prusa's printers are still highly regarded and popular among 3D-printing enthusiasts. It supports a devoted community, and its influence on 3D printing as a whole is undeniable. However, its printers aren't generally suited to mainstream buyers who just want to open a box and get to printing as soon as possible. If Bambu Lab printers are like Apple MacBooks, then Prusa's printers are like Lenovo ThinkPads. They're designed for very different crowds, but both are excellent in their target niches.

Creality

The first modern CoreXY printer I personally bought was a Creality K1 Max. I didn't (and still don't) want to spend Bambu Lab-level money, and the K1 Max offered everything on paper that the X1 Carbon did, but at a price I could afford. That's largely been the credo of Shenzhen Creality 3D Technology Co, Ltd., which was founded back in 2014.

Creality made its name with the Ender series of open-bed printers, of which I owned an Ender 5. These were affordable and reliable workhorses, and they remain popular today. However, when Creality went head-to-head with the likes of Bambu and Prusa with its first CoreXY machines, it stepped into a new league. The original K1 printers had their problems, and I had to get a few updated parts and mods to solve some of those issues, but from the K1C onwards, Creality has been pumping out solid systems at highly competitive prices.

While Creality's software and printers do lack a bit of polish compared to Bambu Labs and the offerings aren't quite as open or technical as Prusa Research, the company hits a nice midpoint between those two paths. It also has a notable wide range of printers. The K-series flagships might get all the attention these days, but the Ender series is still going strong. These affordable bed-slingers have also benefited from some of the fancier technologies in the K-Series, especially when it comes to self-calibration and ease of use. Overall, Creality is an excellent all-rounder brand that should be on anyone's shortlist when buying a new printer.

Ultimaker

If you're looking for a good cheap 3D printer, then Ultimaker is the last brand you should consider. There's no shortage of threads on Reddit asking why Ultimaker printers are so expensive, and the general answer is that Ultimaker is targeting enterprise and industrial customers rather than mainstream or even enthusiast markets. Indeed, Ultimaker printers are used by the likes of Ford and the Royal Netherlands Air Force. The company spends a fortune on advanced research and development, and it's not just the printers, but also its in-house filaments and software that add to the total value of the products.

Part of the cost also comes from manufacturing the printers in Europe rather than China. The production facility is also an expensive, high-grade outfit, and the build quality, assembly, and materials in play here are top-notch.

Ultimaker builds 3D printers that are expected to work extremely long hours and produce high-precision, high-quality parts. If you put a roll of Ultimaker filament in your Ultimaker printer, using the company's material profiles, then you can expect consistent results good enough for industrial use. In other words, if you don't need aerospace-grade parts for your fighter jet, some of these Ultimaker products are probably the wrong tool for the job. However, that takes nothing away from how good the company's technology is, or the fact that you could buy one if you wanted to.

Formlabs

So far, we've looked at FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) printer companies, where a filament of material is extruded in layers to build objects. Some of these companies make both resin and filament 3D printers, but it's the FDM stuff that makes up their collective bread and butter. Formlabs, however, doesn't deal in FDM printers at all.

Instead, this company, established in 2014 by three MIT graduates, specializes in two very different 3D printing technologies called SLA (Stereolithography) and SLS (selective laser sintering). Specifically, it claims to be the largest supplier of professional SLA and SLS printers in the world. Therefore, like Ultimaker, Formlabs isn't really interested in selling 3D printers to mere mortals, but you might see a Formlabs machine at an engineering shop or a medical facility.

Professional reviews of something like the Form 4 resin printer show that these printers are both fast and accurate. They have a high level of reliability and consistency, and are the right choice for a business making objects that will generate an income, whether it's prototyping that leads to a final product design or custom parts that actually go into a final product. Formlabs printers are stuffed with sensors, have highly sophisticated software, and business-class after-sales support. For mere enthusiasts like myself and other tinkerers and hobbyists, it's nice to know what the future may one day hold for consumer-grade 3D printers by looking at what Formlabs can do today, but these are not a realistic purchase for most people.

Elegoo

As we move to the lower part of this list, we get to Elegoo. Two of my three 3D printers are Elegoo: a Centauri Carbon (with the new multi-color printer upgrade) and a Centauri Carbon 2. In the interest of full disclosure, I received both of these printers as review units as part of my work, but I have spent hundreds of hours printing on them. That gives me insight into what sets Elegoo's printers apart from other mainstream 3D printer brands.

This is another Shenzhen-based company, founded in 2015. Elegoo is known for some interesting printers, such as the Elegoo Orangestorm Giga with its absolutely massive 800 x 800 x 1000 millimeter build volume. Yet, for such a large FDM printer, you can usually buy one for well under $3,000 on sale. And that's Elegoo in a nutshell. The company makes competent 3D printers that would be just OK when weighed against the competition from brands like Bambu, but when you factor in the price, the value proposition shoots up immensely.

As an example, take the company's CoreXY system, the original Centauri Carbon. When it launched, this printer retailed for $299, about half the price of other CoreXY systems with similar on-paper performance. In practice, these machines are built to a price without a doubt, but this is the result of smart engineering. Why use three motors when one will do? Why over-engineer a simple side panel? Elegoo doesn't see why, and if you're a hobbyist or a beginner, you probably won't, either.

Anycubic

Like Elegoo, Anycubic was founded in 2015 in Shenzhen, debuting with the Kossel, one of the first Delta FDM 3D printers to be developed independently (Anycubic says it is the first). Delta-robot printers are quite interesting and relatively rare, but at one point, they seemed like the future. They're especially good for printing tall structures, but Anycubic quickly moved on to a more conventional bedslinger design with the i3 Mega.

Sadly, looking at the company's catalog today, there are no more Delta robot-style printers on the menu, but the range and diversity of printers is quite impressive. There are bed-slingers, CoreXY-style systems like the Kobra S1, and quite a few LCD-based resin printers. Anycubic is certainly priced to go head-to-head with Elegoo's products, and, of course, more expensive equivalents from Creality and Bambu.

However, if you look at discussion forums, you'll find that customer sentiment seems to be that Anycubic's strength is actually in its resin printers. Those models often land on lists of printers that are best for beginners. Professional reviews of printers like the Photon M3 Plus note that these resin printers are inexpensive and create accurate and crisp parts, but that Anycubic products are a little rough around the edges. Anycubic's CoreXY Kobra S1 also gets praise in reviews for the printer itself, but then gets dinged for the quality (or lack thereof) when it comes to the software. While, on balance, it feels like Anycubic should be one spot below Elegoo, it's totally fair to speak of both brands in the same breath.

Flashforge

Flashforge was founded in 2011 and is based in Zhejiang. In the West, it's also certainly less of a well-known brand name than Elegoo or Anycubic in the budget printer space. But you would be making a mistake by glancing over the FDM printer catalog and thinking this is another Elegoo or Anycubic. Flashforge has a much more pared-down range of printers compared to those companies, and if you look closely, you'll see they tend to be a little more ambitious for the money.

For example, the Flashforge Creator 5 Pro is a CoreXY multi-material printer for under $1,000 (so far, so typical), but it has a toolhead changer system. The Flashforge Guider is a dual-extruder machine with a tall 600-millimeter print volume for just under $3,000. Flashforge has competitors for printers like the Centauri Carbon that undercut it by almost $100 after discounts are applied, and its Carbon 2 multicolor competitor also competes on price more than anything.

Professional reviews of Flashforge printers praise this value and ambition, but often note some downsides when it comes to software and user experience. Flashforge advertises itself as being particularly user-friendly and beginner-oriented, but investing in software is one of the reasons some other brands on this list can't sell their printers for this little money. The disparity shows up in Flashforge's interfaces, which can feel a bit dated. That said, while Flashforge happens to be last on this list, this is a list of winners, not losers. No company on this list makes printers not worth owning (unlike the 3D printer brands you should steer clear of) — they just have different value propositions.

How we chose and ranked these brands

Let's be honest, any ranking of 3D printer brands is going to be heavily subjective. Ranking entire brands, with all their products and diverse histories, can be rather reductive. After all, any brand can make a product that's a stinker and follow it up with a game-changing masterpiece. So, in choosing popular brands and ranking them, we followed a set of rough rules.

First up, what counts as popular? After all, these brands each cater to a niche audience. To be included here, then, a brand needs to be well-established with solid name recognition among the audience the company wants to sell to. So, while your hobbyist friends might not know Formlabs, your engineering and medical friends will. Another important factor is whether, on average, the company delivers the types of products it intends to and that its niche demands. It's not fair to penalize a budget printer maker for the budget nature of its printers.

We counted quality and reliability heavily, and reputation among regular 3D-printing enthusiasts matters, as well. If that reputation is truly poor, naturally, the brand isn't on this list. A wide product range with lots of price points helps lift budget players, but ultimately, build quality and advanced engineers were perhaps the strongest factors. That's why enterprise outfits rank above mass budget brands, and also why attainable enthusiast or highly-polished brands stand above them all in our book.