Popular Mechanics tested seven home 3D printers, naming Bambu’s P2S the best overall at $749 and Snapmaker’s U1 the best multicolor model at $849. The roundup prioritizes ease of use for newcomers while offering machines for different printing needs.
Other selections include Elegoo’s Centauri Carbon for value, QIDI’s Q2 for higher-temperature materials, and Creality’s Ender-3 V3 SE for flexible filament. Testing covered common PLA, PETG and TPU filaments, setup and print reliability, with more than 100 hours of printing on each machine.
The P2S was the easiest printer to use, but its single nozzle makes complex multicolor jobs slow and wasteful: the reviewer found that some prints discarded three to four times as much filament as the part used, and a three-color mask took 19 hours 30 minutes, versus 2 hours 4 minutes in one color. The U1 switches among four loaded print heads, reducing filament purging; its lid and HEPA/activated-carbon filter cost an extra $150, and its slicer was sluggish during testing.
