Spent months researching which printer. Didn't want to under buy and didn't want to spend too much money on something that I wasn't sure I would like. For someone without any experience, I would call this almost plug and play. Assembly is minimal even for those not accustomed to this. The printed instructions are excellent and there are additional instructions and videos on the included drive. Been running the unit almost 24/7 since I assembled it using downloads from Tinkerverse. Only had one failed print due to a bed height issue when I used a very thin paper to level the bed. Order extra filament. The supplied filament is enough to print a couple of sample jobs (included on the drive).

Where to start? Packaging was excellent, double boxed. Assembly wasn’t to bad, although this could really benefit from better instructions. They do supply you with some basic tools for assembly, tuning, and repair. The side cutters work well for cutting your filament. Now let’s really got into this ting. First ring first, the webpage states that this has the upgraded MK10 Hotend. It does not. It still has the MK8... very disappointing... bed leveling on this machine is a nightmare..., but not the end of the world. It is easily fixed with upgrade uxcell springs, or by adding 4 small nuts between the springs and the bottom of the bed. This creates more pressure between the bed and the mounting plate, which in turn keeps the bed from becoming unlevel as quickly. I would suggest to go ahead and upgrade the Bowden tube to the Capricorn Bowden tube. The machine now comes with the spacers for the coupling on the extruded end to keep everything tight. The plastic extruder clamping mechanism is crap, after a few prints (maybe five total) it is beginning to show wear. It creates friction on the filament as it is being extruded (see attached photo). The all metal extruder is a must. The filament will not wear on the metal and cause the hole to become out of round. The more friction on the filament, the higher chance of it binding and causing the extruder to not feed. This in turn will lead to under extrusion and causing failed prints. With that being said, do yourself a favor and before you ever run your first print, check the calibration of your extruder. There are a ton of how to’s our there for this. I know it will be tempting to just jump off into printing, but doing this first will lead to more successful prints. Next up is the magnetic build plate. I love this thing, for now... I’ve only printed in PLA so far and IF your bed leveling is right and your nozzle height is correct, PLA has no problems sticking. The prints are supper easy to remove, and the finish is what you would expect, about the same as if you printed on painters tape. My MK8 (should have been MK10) hotend works well, but if it is to close to the build plate, it will clog. If this is your first printer, go ahead and buy some replacement nozzles, because you will clog one or two. Next up are the stepper motors. Everything seems to work well with them so far, my Z axis motor was binding up a little, but found a spacer on thingaverse to correct this issue and have had no problems since. The stepper motors are not supper loud, but over the course of an 8 hour print, they do get a little annoying. The motor dampers will lower the amount of noise they make, which allows this printer to become more tolerable. I am not a huge fan of the filament holder as it is placed on the top of the printer, and not off to the side. This to can cause issues with the filament binding, but so far it has not for me. I’ve got prints ready to go for filament guides as to help alleviate the strain. If it doesn’t help, I will update this review. I also found a stand-alone filament holder that can be printed from thingaverse. I do want to say that this printer also comes with a micro SD card and reader so you can load prints from your computer to the printer. When you get this thing assembled, so yourself a favor and loosen all of the bolts that hold the frame together, but do not remove them all. With the bolts loose, give it a good wiggle in all corners to insure that everything is nice and neat and not binding. I want to touch on the X and Y axis belts. These machines come with a way to tighten these belts, but it almost requires an extra pair of hands. The only way to adjust them is to loosed the tension bolts, pull on the tensioner with one hand, hold it in place, and righted the bolts back up while making sure everything is straight with the other. Prints are available from thingaverse for a better tensioner for the Ender 3/ 3 Pro. And now on to my biggest issue... there is not a boot loader built into this machine, it is recamended by the community to update firmware on these. There could be issues with the overheat safety protocols not being enabled. The updated firmware turns this on and makes this machine safer. It’s not like it will burn down, but if left unattended, could overheat and catch fire. To update the firmware you will have to buy a boot loader of some kind. The Arduino Uno is maybe $16 here on Amazon. After the overheat safety functions are turned back on, it would be safe to let this thing run over night, or for a couple days at a time. Let’s face it, who wants to birdog this thing for 48 straight hours?? In the end, I feel like this machine can be good, even great espically at its price point. But for that to happen, you will have to spend a little more money. In all with the printer included, I’ve got about $300 wrapped up in this. I strongly feel that if I would have bought a more expensive printer, I would need to do some of these upgrades anyways. If I had it to do all over agin, I would buy the Ender 3, and not the Pro. I thought the Pro was going to come with the MK10 hotend plus the benefit of the larger Y axis support, and the magnetic build plate. The Y support is nice, but on its own wasn’t worth the difference in price. This review is not meant to steer you away from this printer in anyway, but to make sure you know what your getting. I do really like it, but don’t love it yet... Update: Found out that my bed is warped between the leveling screws making a glass build plate a must if you want to print anything large, or with multiple parts. If you are going to buy this printer at the $250 range, know that you will need a glass bed, the all metal extruder setup, upgraded Bowden tube, and if you want to update the firmware so that the safety functions are turned one, you will need to buy a boot loader of some kind. An Arduino Uno will work well. So your $250 printer has turned into a $350+ printer. I would also recamend printing filament guides, upper and lower, extruder knob, new adjustable feet so you can level the whole printer, a new spool holder if you are not going to go the filament guide options... oh, and don’t forget about the stiffer bed springs. By the time you get to start printing something you want to, you now have spent almost $400 and about a month of your time trying to print “upgrades” for this printer. With that being said, the quality sucks on this printer, but with a little bit more money, patience, and the willingness to learn, this printer is capable of really nice prints. I will say this, having gone through these issues, I am still glad that I bought this printer. It has thought me things early on that I probably wouldn’t have learned about 3D printing had I bought a better printer. I really wish I could give it a 2.5 star. I don’t hate it, but I’m not sure I love it.

I did a lot of research into options before settling on the Creality Ender 3 Pro. So far, I'm extremely happy with the selection. The printer arrived on time and in perfect condition. I had it put together and doing a first test print within an hour or so. Granted, I had done a lot of YouTube video watching prior to purchase so already had a good idea of how the machine went together, what all the critical parts were, etc. The included assembly instructions are strictly pictorial but they are detailed in terms of calling out specific parts by label and quantity (all parts, screws, etc. are really well labeled). The only gap I found in the instructions had to do with how the filament "guide tube" (not the official name) connects to the filament feeder; there's a metal fitting that's not pre-installed on this assembly and the instructions don't tell you anything about it - I only knew it was "missing" because of the earlier videos I'd watched. In fact, the part itself wasn't "missing" - it's in one of the parts bags, along with a spare, but the way the assembly instructions are written it implies this part should have already been installed. After getting it assembled you MUST take a few minutes to "level the bed" - this has nothing to do with the print bed being "level"; it's all about making sure the spacing between the print nozzle and the bed is about the thickness of a sheet of paper and uniform across the print surface. There are instructions included in the PDF user guide (supplied on an 8GB micro-SD card that came with the printer). Be careful with this step, and patient - do it several times to "make sure" it's correct; if the spacing is too generous, your print won't stick to the bed and you'll find it sliding around as it prints (ask how I know....). Once it was setup correctly, I had no trouble at all printing the supplied sample from the SD card. I've since made quite a few prints from my PC (connected via USB cable) using the free CURA software that is commonly used (something you'd download separately - not affiliated with the printer). Haven't had any failures so far and the quality is quite impressive for a printer that was well below $280.

I'm building a 3D printer from scratch and needed printed parts for it. (Go figure). I purchased this printer not expecting much except to upgrade it before using. I haven't upgraded a thing yet. This printer assembled in around 30 minutes from unboxing to first print. I laid everything out where I could see the bolt sizes and all the tools. Everything you need to assemble it is there. All of the fastener sizes were listed on the packing and all were individually packaged per size. There is a small amount of filament with it. Enough to do two of the test prints included on the sd card. I've printed with it now almost 20 hours a day for over a week and the magnetic bed is starting to warp a bit. It still prints great but will need to be rectified before long. The only other thing that I would change is some sort of wire management from the factory. That is it.

My son talked me into buying this and I am glad he sit. Have had a lot of fun with this even though there is big learning curve for me. Even if you are not going to sell what you print it is fun making things for your family. If you like tinkering around with gadgets try this it’s a lot of fun. This printer is easy to assemble and you can get started in a very short time. I recommend this printer it is a quality machine.

While the Ender 3 has several fixes that need to be done to make it a better printer, most of them can be printed on the printer itself. It is very easy to use and after completing most of the upgrades I want to do to it, it prints extremely well. If you search upgrades for Ender 3 on YouTube, you can see many of the upgrades that you can print an all you h ave to do is get some filament in order to do them. There are also quite a few upgrades that only cost a few dollars each.

Ok.......So I got this printer for Fathers Day from my kids. I was very excited to receive this printer. This is where things went VERY WRONG. I got the printer as ordered. I bought the Pro version for the upgraded MeanWell power supply. I took my time setting it up and getting the printer leveled. I then went to start the first print, printing the test object that came on the SD card. About 3 minutes into the print I heard a loud pop and smoke started coming from the "Upgraded" power supply along with that wonderful burnt electronic smell. You know the one, the one that does not go away for hours. I quickly unplugged the printer from the wall so the printer did not burst into flames. I then contacted Amazon customer service. It was around 8pm Central Time and was greeted by a VERY helpful CSR. After explaining my issues with the printer they were extremely helpful in correcting the problems. Amazon shipped me another printer and took care of the return shipping on the spot. I received my replacement printer before I was able to get the burnt one in the mail. Only thing that sucked was having to take apart the old one and build the new one again. In hind sight though I learned more about how the printer works building it twice. I did notice that the second printer was packaged differently and the firmware was different as well. I have now had the second printer for a little over a week and it it printing well. I will probably get a glass bed upgrade in the future for it as the bed has some warping. But that is to be expected on a lower price end printer. I will say that so far it prints real nice and the first test print came out flawlessly. I will make a suggestion, if you buy this printer, go and look you video's about getting the bed level. This is the second printer I own and it was a little harder to get level than my other one (Wanhao Duplicator I3 Plus). For the money, this printer is a steal and a great beginner printer for anyone wanting to get into the hobby. I have a lot of fun with my printers, you just need to have patience. I would recommend this printer to others as a entrance printer.

I have been extremely pleased with this purchase, I bought it mostly for printing tabletop models. Screwed up one test print because I used a business card to space the tip from the bed. Use a piece of standard letter paper like they suggest to get good adhesion to the plate. After that I jumped straight into printing with PLA and the results are amazing! Design credit to rbross @ thingiverse

Let's start off by saying I was warned that the directions were bad, however I never expected them to be so poor. I work on electronics, cars, Ikea furniture, etc. and these are by far the worst I have encountered. The assembly is not hard and would likely only take under a half hour if one did not have to try to figure out things for themselves. Plan for a few hours. Tech Support/Website- do not expect to find ANYTHING helpful from the website. YouTube is your best bet. I still cannot get the filament to feed and therefor I just have an large paperweight instead of a 3d printer. Mine was not sent set up for US voltage. After spending time trying to find out why it won't power up, I discovered it has a switch on the power supply to select. It is partway inside the power supply- so if you run into the issue, just spend some time looking. Of course this is nowhere in the directions nor on the website. I know others, including a family member, did not have the issues I do and are happy with theirs. However, mine is a complete POS with no support at all. I would look elsewhere or buy it local so you can return easily.

This is my first printer, but I've learned a lot from it. It was very easy to assemble, the instructions were crappy, but everything pretty much only had one place it could go. Out of the box I had an issue with it printing above 30mm/s. The picture of the dogs shows the right one looking wire frame, that was the result. The magnetic bed didn't stick too well to the prints, I went through some trial and error and found blue painter's tape fixed the issue. The bed was also warped which made larger prints a pipe dream. But I bought this printer for one reason, customizability. I've added a light, glass bed, new control board, and new pfte tube. I've got the settings to where I can print with very little failure and when I do fail it usually doesnt happen again for said print.