Best options for entry level 3D printing available these days?

https://sh.itjust.works/post/18372434

Best options for entry level 3D printing available these days? - sh.itjust.works

I’ve had access to a roommate’s 3D printer, but they’ll be moving away soon :( Wondering if people have takes on machines that are considered entry level today but may have evolved handy features since, well, when you were an entry level user. If this isn’t the right place for this please be nice I’m sorry

I’m a huge fan of Creality printers. If I were starting over today and didn’t have my eye on any specific bell or whistle, I’d probably get a Creality Ender 3 V3 or Ender 3 V3 SE. The Ender 3 Pro and Ender 3 V2 Neo I have now are great. Very reliable and easy to maintain.

One bell/whistle I’d 100% pay extra for is autoleveling. (A z probe rather than a z endstop.) My Ender 3 Pro came with an endstop rather than a probe. As soon as I got the V2 Neo that does have a z-probe I immediately decided to upgrade my Ender 3 Pro with a z-probe. With just the endstop, I had constant issues getting the first layer to adhere, especially if I was printing something that used a significant portion of the bed.

Fuck creality. They have issues all the time, no customer support, no auto bed leveling out of the box, the firmware out of the box isn’t even good. I would go for Elegoo Neptune printers. They work perfectly out of the box, have amazing support, good firmware, auto bed leveling, and prints faster than the enders.

I’ve never had occasion to need to contact Creality customer support, and aside from bed adhesion with my Ender 3 Pro before I added a CR-Touch, I haven’t had any issues with my Creality printers. “No auto bed leveling out of the box” isn’t the case for most of Creality’s printers. (I didn’t mean to imply by “I would pay extra for autoleveling” that Creality makes you pay extra for that. Their bottom-of-the-line printers have autoleveling now-a-days.) And my experience with my two Creality printers was that they “work perfectly out of the box.”

I don’t have any experience with Elegoo printers.