That feeling of buying and unboxing your very first printer is unforgettable. The brand new hardware, the never-been-used before hotend and build plate, and the smell of new technology, is all incredible. I decided that my first printer was going to be the Prusa MK3S+; a perfect blend of reliability, quality, and speed. Or so I thought. I have owned my Prusa MK3S+ for almost a year now, and I have a lot to say about the printer’s build quality, print quality, and much more.
Buy the Prusa MK3S+ from Prusa’s official website
First things first: I bought this printer as a kit and assembled it myself, so take my experience with a grain of salt. As of writing this article, Prusa has released their MK4, and my experience is solely with the MK3S+. What I say may or may not be true with the MK4. I think my experience is still relevant because the Prusa MK3S+ is still for sale, for a lower price than before.
This was my very first printer, and it took a little bit of calibration and troubleshooting to get it working. I don’t believe this would be a problem for the fully-assembled version of this printer, but for the kit you should go in with some 3d printing knowledge already. This was the mistake I made: buying the kit without any experience in 3d printing. However, once it was working, the first few prints were beautiful!
What the MK3S+ does right:
- Automatic bed leveling: This printer comes equipped with Prusa’s trademark SuperPINDA bed leveling sensor, which can probe the Prusa MK3S+’s heatbed for you and achieve a perfect first layer. This is semi-automatic bed leveling, as you still need to set a Z-offset to the build plate. I believe the MK4 has fully-automatic bed leveling, but the MK3S+ does not.
- Incredibly reliable – When I had finally assembled this printer, it ran with little to no issues for a long time. Even as someone completely new to 3d printing, this printer was incredibly easy to use.
- Wide selection of official parts for repair + open source: This printer’s design is completely open source and you can purchase almost every replacement part necessary on Prusa’s website or third parties. This is incredibly useful if you ever run into reliability issues.
The bad:
- Official parts for repair ship from the Czech Republic – This means it can be costly to receive official parts in countries such as the US and Canada.
- It’s expensive – Even after they lowered the price from $1100 for the assembled printer to $900, this printer still clocks in at a high price compared to competitors. For the quality you get, the price used to be justifiable, but with new contenders on the market such as the Bambu Lab P1P, this printer is starting to seem overpriced.
- It’s a bed-slinger – When I say “bed-slinger”, I mean the bed itself moves on the Y-axis. This means that the whole 3d print is going to be moving back and forth during printing. With bigger and taller models, this can lead to instability and requires much slower printing speeds to achieve the same results as a CoreXY printer. This has affected me before, especially when printing tall objects like fins for model rockets.
- The kit can be a pain to assemble – This is obviously only an issue if you buy the MK3S+ kit, but for me the kit was incredibly difficult to assemble.
What’s my overall opinion on this printer?
I believe that in today’s market with printers like the Bambu Lab P1P, the MK3S+ is looking very outdated as a daily-driver printer. However, even after all is said and done, the open-source nature of this printer and just how easy it is to work on and repair makes it a very fun printer to have. If you’re looking for a printer that “just works”, there are better options on the market today, such as the P1P. If you want a full 3D printing experience, however, this printer is perfect. It’s the perfect blend of reliability, speed, and quality.
