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If all you took away is “cheap plastic from China” and that they should have gone for low cost, you haven’t paid enough attention while reading this article. It

If all you took away is “cheap plastic from China” and that they should have gone for low cost, you haven’t paid enough attention while reading this article. It talks about building a better product and investing in the experience and ecosystem, which the chinese alternatives have done. We are about to witness the same thing happening to cars very soon.

sersi 3y ago
It's been interesting seeing this happen in multiple industries. Hifi is one of them, companies like Topping, Fiio, etc.. make great products for a fraction of the cost of previously well-known Japanese or western companies and have the measurements to prove it. Robot vaccuum cleaners are the same, we went from irobot being the best to being eclipsed by companies like Roborock or Dreame (although given privacy issues, I'd get something can be rooted)
- dralley 3y ago
  > Fiio etc.. make great products for a fraction of the cost of previously well-known Japanese or western companies and have the measurements to prove it. Ironically, most of the ADCs on the market are equalled or beat out by a $10 Apple USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle smaller than my pinkie finger, and the measurements prove it.
riddley 3y ago
The trouble is, the author doesn't at any point discuss what makes the products better. They just claim they are as if initial cost is the only factor.
- drewdevault 3y ago
  Author here. For the price tag of a Prusa Mk4 you can get a Bambu X1 Carbon 3D which is, metric for metric, a better printer -- larger volume, 16 color prints, faster printing, better resolution, pretty much all stats. Go for Creality and you can get the K1 Max at $300 less than the Mk4 (currently on sale, so more like $400 less) which is even better, again, in every spec and comes with an ecosystem that Creality has invested in to a much greater extent than Prusa.
  - MegaDeKay 3y ago
    You should know you can't just compare specs and stats and say the K1 Max is better. Print quality and reliability isn't something that shows up on a spec sheet, and Creality struggles here. Bambu is certainly a credible competitor though.
    - swells34 3y ago
      Honestly, as someone who's been in the 3d printing space for over a decade... Bambu Labs isn't a competitor to Prusa. There is no Prusa printer that is as fast, as reliable, produces the quality prints, as any printer from Bambu. I've used both extensively, the X1C since Kickstarter days, the Prusas for... just about ever. The only edge, the only objective property that Prusa holds over Bambu Labs is customization; Prusa gives away all the details you need to majorly modify their printers. Beyond that there just is no reason to buy a Prusa. Print quality on any of my Bambu printers was equal or better out of the box (minus one that had a warped bed, that was replaced for free) than any of my Prusa printers, even ones with extensive tuning. It's just a better product. Better design, better manufactur, better price, better quality output, better software (though I've migrated to Orcaslicer). Prusa has spent the last decade being the top of the pack, holding market share and stagnating. Now they've been dislodged, and I can't see any compelling reason for them to come back.
      - kiba 3y ago
        My experience did not match your. My X1C combo hadn't really work out of the box. I was able to get maybe 2 prints so far. That said, I am just an sample of one and the only reason why I bought it because my business need seems more pressing than waiting for Prusa to deliver the MMU3 kits.
        swells34 3y ago
        I have maybe a few hundred prints on Bambu Labs printers, and I've had fewer than 20 failures, pretty much all from bad design choices on my part. They have been quick, reliable workhorses that just spit out the parts I need. I did have an issue with one of them having a warped bed, which caused bad adhesion on several prints, but I contacted support, they walked me through some debugging, then just sent me a new one. It seems that early on they had a manufacturer that was putting out warped beds that weren't caught in QC, but they've dropped the manufacturer. Maybe you got one of these warped beds as well? You can diagnose that with a straightedge, a ruler, and a flashlight.
xrd 3y ago
Fine, I'll admit I am not always a careful reader. But, I did read it as: they should have diversified. I know from first hand experience that this is really expensive to do for a company. And, only possible when you can reduce costs in other ways, which China obviously has an advantage in the manufacturing realm. I think what I'm trying to say is that instead of diversifying, maybe their best bet is to make a really high quality product that appeals to a different category of people than Best Buy consumers. I have no evidence to prove this feeling though. It is just what I aspire to buy when I do buy things.
- swells34 3y ago
  Prusa's big problem is that they stopped innovating. They plateaud on their current tech, and just made tiny incremental improvements, years apart. There was plenty of things they could have been working on, new technologies, massive speed increases, etc. Bambu Labs created a better product in all ways (but one; very hard to modify), and now there's just no reason to buy a Prusa. You'll be spending more for an objectively inferior product.

sersi 3y ago

It's been interesting seeing this happen in multiple industries. Hifi is one of them, companies like Topping, Fiio, etc.. make great products for a fraction of the cost of previously well-known Japanese or western companies and have the measurements to prove it. Robot vaccuum cleaners are the same, we went from irobot being the best to being eclipsed by companies like Roborock or Dreame (although given privacy issues, I'd get something can be rooted)

dralley 3y ago
> Fiio etc.. make great products for a fraction of the cost of previously well-known Japanese or western companies and have the measurements to prove it. Ironically, most of the ADCs on the market are equalled or beat out by a $10 Apple USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle smaller than my pinkie finger, and the measurements prove it.

riddley 3y ago

The trouble is, the author doesn't at any point discuss what makes the products better. They just claim they are as if initial cost is the only factor.

drewdevault 3y ago
Author here. For the price tag of a Prusa Mk4 you can get a Bambu X1 Carbon 3D which is, metric for metric, a better printer -- larger volume, 16 color prints, faster printing, better resolution, pretty much all stats. Go for Creality and you can get the K1 Max at $300 less than the Mk4 (currently on sale, so more like $400 less) which is even better, again, in every spec and comes with an ecosystem that Creality has invested in to a much greater extent than Prusa.
- MegaDeKay 3y ago
  You should know you can't just compare specs and stats and say the K1 Max is better. Print quality and reliability isn't something that shows up on a spec sheet, and Creality struggles here. Bambu is certainly a credible competitor though.
  - swells34 3y ago
    Honestly, as someone who's been in the 3d printing space for over a decade... Bambu Labs isn't a competitor to Prusa. There is no Prusa printer that is as fast, as reliable, produces the quality prints, as any printer from Bambu. I've used both extensively, the X1C since Kickstarter days, the Prusas for... just about ever. The only edge, the only objective property that Prusa holds over Bambu Labs is customization; Prusa gives away all the details you need to majorly modify their printers. Beyond that there just is no reason to buy a Prusa. Print quality on any of my Bambu printers was equal or better out of the box (minus one that had a warped bed, that was replaced for free) than any of my Prusa printers, even ones with extensive tuning. It's just a better product. Better design, better manufactur, better price, better quality output, better software (though I've migrated to Orcaslicer). Prusa has spent the last decade being the top of the pack, holding market share and stagnating. Now they've been dislodged, and I can't see any compelling reason for them to come back.
    - kiba 3y ago
      My experience did not match your. My X1C combo hadn't really work out of the box. I was able to get maybe 2 prints so far. That said, I am just an sample of one and the only reason why I bought it because my business need seems more pressing than waiting for Prusa to deliver the MMU3 kits.
      - swells34 3y ago
        I have maybe a few hundred prints on Bambu Labs printers, and I've had fewer than 20 failures, pretty much all from bad design choices on my part. They have been quick, reliable workhorses that just spit out the parts I need. I did have an issue with one of them having a warped bed, which caused bad adhesion on several prints, but I contacted support, they walked me through some debugging, then just sent me a new one. It seems that early on they had a manufacturer that was putting out warped beds that weren't caught in QC, but they've dropped the manufacturer. Maybe you got one of these warped beds as well? You can diagnose that with a straightedge, a ruler, and a flashlight.

xrd 3y ago

Fine, I'll admit I am not always a careful reader. But, I did read it as: they should have diversified. I know from first hand experience that this is really expensive to do for a company. And, only possible when you can reduce costs in other ways, which China obviously has an advantage in the manufacturing realm. I think what I'm trying to say is that instead of diversifying, maybe their best bet is to make a really high quality product that appeals to a different category of people than Best Buy consumers. I have no evidence to prove this feeling though. It is just what I aspire to buy when I do buy things.

swells34 3y ago
Prusa's big problem is that they stopped innovating. They plateaud on their current tech, and just made tiny incremental improvements, years apart. There was plenty of things they could have been working on, new technologies, massive speed increases, etc. Bambu Labs created a better product in all ways (but one; very hard to modify), and now there's just no reason to buy a Prusa. You'll be spending more for an objectively inferior product.