AnkerMake M5 3D Printer, FDM 3D Printer with AI Camera, Auto-Levelling £629 delivered, using code @ Amazon / Anker

too little too late

open source FDM printers with klipper and all the bells and whistles cost less (whether cube or bed slinger)

and closed source Bambulabs P1P runs circles around the anker at the same price bracket

not worth it

I've got this printer, I backed it on Kickstarter and can give feedback for anyone that wants it or is thinking of getting it.

First, a Disclaimer: This is my first 3D printer. I've always been interested in 3D printing but I don't like faffing and fiddling too much. I like the option to be able to, but I appreciate things that "just work" as well. One thing that put me off jumping into this before now is that historically a lot of printers require a lot of faffing and maintenance - adjusting bed levels, tightening gears and all that, then running a bunch of prints to test it all and doing it over and over to "Dial it in", as it were.

The reason this printer appealed to me is the promise of it working "Out of the Box". Assemble it, plug it in and start printing. I can honestly say that it does actually live up to that promise. The bed-levelling works well and I printed a pretty good Benchy without much effort using the supplied PLA. Over the last few months I've tried different materials like PETG and TPU and had pretty good success - from all kinds of manufacturers (mostly whatever was cheapest on Amazon at the time). It's pretty fast too, relatively speaking.

However, the thing about FDM printing is that this is material science and different materials handle differently. These printers work by heating up your material and squeezing it out of a nozzle, there's always going to be an element of maintenance and tinkering to make it work all the time for all materials and this printer is no different. Likewise, sometimes things go wrong and again this printer is no different. Out of the box it's fine, but you can still expect failed prints, stringing, tangled filament and all the other fun things that affect all printers.

It's a very good "my first printer" but anyone experienced with 3D printing is probably going to be relatively unimpressed as there's no single thing this printer does that other printers can't do. As a package, it does actually work quite well - there'll always be something faster, or more accurate or able to handle other materials but very few do all of that at this price point and with as little faffing. The closest comparison to this printer is the BambuLab P1P - an excellent device for sure and it does have some capabilities beyond the M5, but make no mistake the P1P has its own set of issues and does require some fiddling as well.

To summarise -

Pros:
It's pretty fast
It's easy to use out of the box
It supports a good range of materials
Print quality is excellent (I've printed at 0.08mm layer height without issue)
it's solidly built

Cons:
It's LOUD
The nozzles are proprietary so you've got to buy Anker branded/sized ones (Cheapest I can find for official nozziles is £20/nozzle - not cheap, but there are a few 3rd party ones on aliexpress)
It's a "bed slinger" design, other printers at this price point are CoreXY which is a much better design
Anker as a brand can't be trusted
The "AI" Camera is utter rubbish and doesn't work. Don't buy it for that feature.
Speaking of the camera, you can use it to monitor your prints but it's positioned too low so you can't actually see anything until the first few layers have printed (edited)

do any of these things print with aluminium?