Kobra 3 vs Bambu A1 - Telling you what you already know

so any cubic have stepped up their game of late and now that both of these printers are offering the same thing from a functionality standpoint you may be wondering which one you should get and unfortunately the decision is not as simple as skipping to the end of the video and I give you an answer because there is no right answer what is right for me may not be right for you you need to know the differences between these printers so you can make the best decision for yourself but since I've already made two separate videos

on both of these machines I'll be as quick as I can here and focus on the differences if you want to know any more about these machines then please check out the individual reviews until then let's get on with it hi I'm Ross and this is f Hammer videos right so these are both similarly sized bed Slingers and they both come as Standalone printers or with multimaterial offerings the bamboo comes with an automatic material system or AMS whilst the competitor has the ne cubic colar engine or acce I'll cover the different of these later but

the point is both are capable of multicolor filament printing let's start outside so external style differences are down to Personal Taste I like both of them but the any cubic has a more industrial look but the silver frame with the small orange elements complement well the Bamboo's light gray chassis is also nice with subtle green elements to fit in with their General branding style where they really differ visually is that the any cubic still has a lot more of its technical components on show whereas bamboo has nicely hidden these away and protected them and when

it comes to connecting up accessories bamboo has cables for connection to the AMS tidy coming out of the back whereas any cubics or fit to just leave the ports on the front so you do have your AC cable strewn across your worktop the control screen of the bamboo is neatly integrated and flips away when not needed where the any cubic screen is attached separately and has a loose ribbon cable sticking out the side I'm sure we can all agree that bamboo has put a little more effort into making a tidier setup whether this matters to

you though is totally your call now when it comes to actually setting up these machines the A1 comes in two main parts and you do need to do a little bit of building before attaching a couple of accessories this involves flipping it over a few times to attach the upper Gantry to the base whereas the Cobra 3 combo comes in a larger box and this is mostly pre-assembled for you all you need to do is attach the hot end and a few accessories neither process is necessarily hard in act both are straightforward but with less

flipping to do the any cubic takes the win for easier setup the outof Box experience on the screen and the whole UI though is quite different whilst the bamboo has the smaller display it is by far the more intuitive option with sensibly laid out pictograms and text menus where the any cubic machine is a little more Rough and Ready I just can't get over the use of any alpha numeric keyboard on a screen this big since this side of 200 7 when they invented the iPhone again though neither actual setup is hard they both walk

you through the printer self tests connection to each Brand's cloud service and your first print but I'll still easily hand this one to Bamboo for the effort they've put into how much tidier and more intuitive this is even though I'm less likely to use that UI ever again after I get onto the PC app but that's for later in the video when it comes to print size the Bamboo's maximum print volume is a fixed cube of 20 56x 256x 256 the any cubic has a slightly smaller rectangular cuboid of 250X 250 with a height of

260 mm but this is only a 3.2% difference I'm not handing this one to Bamboo for the extra size cuz well math is doing that for me where I want to push it is that because I just prefer cubes to cuboids when it comes to print volume and the extra value here is that this 256 mm cubed is directly comparative to the volume of Bamboo's P1 and X1 printers also I like standards and order it keeps things simple in an already confusing hobby when it comes to the hot ends both printers have made access pretty

easy with compression fit faes in each unit the bamboo has a quick release nozzle that you can simply pop out and pop a new one in the any cubic is a little bit trickier because you also need to detach a couple of cables to swap out the hotend but you can just swap out the nozzle itself rather than the whole hotend unit it which can save costs quite a bit and at the time of recording any cubic has not released whole hotend units as an available assortment on their store but I expect they're coming though

due to the additional hardware and cabling attached will probably be more expensive than what you can get now for the A1 both machines come as standard with an 0.4 mm nozzle but on the A1 you can get 2.6 and8 it did look like you could get these on the Cobra 3 combo 2 for a while but any cubic have now updated website and only the4 mm nozzle is available where I do prefer Bamboo's hot end is with material changes there is visibly less filament purged with each color change or material change on the A1 than

on the Cobra and one issue I found with the Cobra that still doesn't seem to be fixed is that even if two consecutive prints use the same color filament the printer will still Express a ton of waste as though it has done a color change where the A1 will just continue printing the next model knowing the previous color is still installed so whilst multicolor printing is already quite wasteful it's slightly less so with this bamboo printer but one shining addition is that the A1 has active flow rate compensation which measures pressure on the nozzle to

determine that the flow rate is accurate during every part of every print meaning there should be no signs of under or overe Extrusion from this machine from what I've seen and read of the Cobra this has no such function and my prints actually saw several signs of of underere Extrusion even when using default profiles for any cubic own provided filaments but it is still early days for any cubic and these profiles can be tweaked by them when or if they do is something I want to come on to both printers come with double-sided textured Pei

plates that are easy to slide into place thanks to the cut in grooves but the bamboo has a larger selection of build plate surfaces available including smooth plates and a variety of quirky textures like carbon fiber diamond rainbow effect sheets too which are easily applied as stickers to the smooth steel plate and because this build plate has remained consistent throughout Bamboo's product range there's a huge selection of thirdparty plates available for this brand too already another feature of both printers whilst optional on the any cubic is the addition of a camera with the A1 this

comes as standard and is discretly built into the frame of the Z rail it comes with a privacy guard which also doubles up as an LED diffuser whilst the camera is in use with the cobra three this camera is an optional extra and well it's actually just a controller PCB with a lens attached you actually need to print the chassis for it which well that's kind of cool and fun but again the cable like the one for the AC just plugs in at the front leaving another cable strewn across your desk the A1 will automatically

capture time lapses of all your prints just be careful of what's in its visual range whilst it's active though and even at night your time-lapses are fairly well lit thanks to this LED and diffuser well well enough for you to see what's happening anyway both printers will let you remotely view the camera so you can keep an eye on Prints but at night time the Cobra is let down by the only light being attached to the actual hot end itself without the whole field of view being let up it's actually much harder to detect failures

and it won't make good time-lapses overnight though at the time of recording we still don't have the ability to create time-lapses on the Cobra I have been told this feature is coming soon but I was also told that in my review of the cobra a few weeks ago but speaking of software let's have a look at the slicers both the bamboo studio and any cubic slicer are built off the prer slicer both are fairly straightforward to use your primary options are displayed right at you and more advanced options are available but tucked away for advanced

users bamboo has the lead on this one but mainly because they've had a massive head start their software has remained consistent since its initial release and they clearly thought about designed and delivered a user oriented workflow the any cub slicer is still just a bit of a way off it's not terrible and it's slowly getting better but slowly though it's clear that it's just not getting as much love put into it as bamboo Studio look at it this way bamboo studio is such a good branch of prer that it now has its own child which

is orca slicer possibly the best and certainly the current most popular slicer for most users in this Niche and I doubt there will be a future where someone wants to Branch off any cubic like that's the difference Orca has become the one that I wish these Brands would just integrate with and give up making their own versions unless they plan to actually try and make a better one I remarked before in my Cobra review that maybe I just haven't spent enough time with any cubic slicer and I'm more used to Bamboo and orca branches that

this feels different and that's why I don't like it but now that I've spent more time with it I'm just cementing my opinion that this needs a massive overhaul for it to even start to compete bamboo Studio keeps getting better with every release and even has their STL storefront of completely free and well curated models built into the app itself one app to find a model one app to print them but I feel like any cubic would take that feedback and go oh people want our storefront in the slicer no we want a good slicer

first then think about adding your storefront to it each brand has a phone app and these are just Echoes of the slicer with the any cubic app being quite a bit more messy than bamboo handy which yeah is a stupid name but this is likely because any cubic have tried integrating with various weird and wonderful types of printer into this app over the years including a mix of fdm and resin and bamboo only have five fdm printers to worry about and all of them are kind of the same thing nevertheless bamboo have built upon a

solid foundation whilst any cubic have been scrambling since day one now when it comes to the multimaterial units which are now day's hot Trend any cubic has brought some much desired functionality that bamboo have yet to deliver not only will both units give us the ability to have multicolor prints and the ability to queue up multiples of the same filament so we never need to worry about being in a place to change a reel when it runs out but here any cubic have also given us a fully enclosed unit with an integrated heater for filament

drying and for anyone new to fdm printing yes plastic filament can absorb moisture and this can be incredibly detrimental to a print quality or even success at all and whilst the a1's AMS serves the function of multiple reels connected to the printer at once for its various functions and can be top mounted thanks to a 3D printed accessory provided by bamboo your filament is left open to the elements and well that's not the best additionally Bamboo's AMS light will only natively accept its own reels or reels with an equal diameter Center hole for anything else

like popular cardboard spools you need to 3D print accessories to fill the Gap so they actually work the AC unit will take any type of reel from plastic to cardboard and even my own reel of purple any cubic filament was slightly damaged on one Edge but the unit had no issue feeding or attracting this collar any cubic has said they will allow up to two AC units to work with the Cobra 3 when they release their upcoming Hub which will allow up to eight colors on one machine but we've heard nothing similar from bamboo despite

the A1 clearly having two ports you can plug your AMS light into however like with much of the Cobra or any cubic in general still this isn't the most seamless implementation the AC requires its own Mains power supply which is totally understandable to power the heater but to turn this heater on you need to manually tell the printer to turn it on set the temperature and how long you want it to run for I don't get why the printer doesn't just preheat before a print starts and then keep it on for the exact duration hopefully

this is a future update but I hope you can see by now that these printers pretty much match each other in terms of features with the A1 having a faster swappable nozzle and a better integrated more functional camera whilst the Cobra has the more feature Rich but less well integrated multimaterial system now I know price comes into it when deciding on a printer and right now the Cobra is give or take $50 to $80 cheaper than the A1 and remember if you don't want either multimaterial system they're both cheaper without it it's just not presented

to you without it when you first go to the web page now if you're wanting my pick that I don't normally like to give but I've got to be honest it would easily be the A1 easily even if it cost $100 or $150 more because bamboo is the brand who have delivered a user oriented experience since day one their history is filled with success after success even when things went wrong they succeed Ed in fixing it the software is consistently getting developed to add new features to their printers years after release any cubic software is

comparatively still somewhat messy and has more of a make do approach than a make better approach and they unfortunately have a history of abandoning their machines almost as soon as they stop selling them if not before because they aren't selling well enough and that to us seems like any cubic just don't care enough about you or me the consumer bamboo has kept a consistent design language with many of their parts across their ranges now I know if I buy an A1 now and invest in several build plates that's not a waste because I'm more confident

that I can still use them if I upgrade to a p or X Series in the future any cubic have almost as many style of build plate as they have printers but I'm not here to just trash any cubic because they do have their best machine ever here I hope people will buy it I hope that happens to encourage any cubic to invest more in this machine software to not only bring it in line with bamboo but to get to the point where they can push features and functionality forward too you know actually compete instead

of just playing at it like everyone else is the Cobra 3 is any cubic opportunity to prove their dedication to their customers and extend a product's Life by building a platform around it honestly and I don't know about you but I'm tired of the annual side grade cycle of 3D print printers because it doesn't feel like we're really getting upgrades anymore if in a year from now we see a cobra 4 with minimal improvements from the Cobra 3 whilst bamboo continues to enhance the A1 through software updates it will highlight a significant contrast this will

show another generation of any Cubit customers the difference between making a purchase and making an investment but only time and your investment in any cubic will show what happens so if you're liking the Cobra want to save some money now and maybe you trust it will be improved upon please definitely go and buy one and I know I sound like I'm shelling out a verbal bamboo handy see told you it was a stupid name and many of you still may think I must be getting paid by bamboo to say this stuff let me be straight

As I always have been I do not get paid by any of the brands to make these videos though I wouldn't mind some of that sponsorship cash from ancillary Partners where's hellofresh because I actually use hellofresh why can't they sponsor me but anyway I'm not paid by any brand I make my money by you clicking my affiliate links before you make a purchase and I make 2% to 4% less from bamboo sales than any cubic sales the reason I'm Pro bamboo is because I want you to watch my videos choose the right printer for you

have the experience you hoped for and expected because I laid it out up front that is what will bring you back to me next time when you want to spend more on a newer bigger printer upgrade and you click my affiliate link links again because you know you can trust me even when you might not agree with me speaking of next time I'd like to say thanks for watching and thanks to our members for supporting us each month please consider joining them to get your names in the credits along with Early Access exclusive videos and

Discord roles until next time me all bamboo me all bamboo you'll never have a bother with me all bamboo I changed the lyrics there a little sorry dick anyway F hammer out [Music]