If your options are limited, it might be helpful to list them.

I’m on the prusa mini as my first printer and it’s done spectacularly well, the few times I’ve needed a bigger bed I’ve been able to segment the parts and glue it back together.

One thing you haven’t mentioned is where your printer will be, mine is in my living space, so noise is a big concern. Placing down a foam pad and then a paving stone under the printer stops vibrations from echoing through the table it’s on. But the bambu printers though amazingly featured for the price, are noisy beasts.

I have to give reddit credit for having some ground rules about this question. It gets asked more and more here and without a basic template it’s usually not possible to really help.

What matters :

• Auto calibration of Z-offset (multi-points). Your bed will warp with time and you don’t want to fight with it.
• PEI magnetic bed. You don’t want to fight with your things not sticking to the bed - or sticking too much. You may still have issues but less.

You will be happy with this as a cheap starter printer around 200$.

After some time, you may want to print bigger things, faster, and with ABS/ASA for technical parts. Then you could invest in a bigger printer, faster, hot and with an enclosure for ABS fumes and warping issues. The budget for this is 600-1000$.

Honestly, I started with an Ender 3 for less than $200 and it’s just fine. You’ll have to calibrate and fight with it for a bit, but once you get it running it’s just fine.

Cost is obviously a big factor. Almost every printer can change to any nozzle size and layer height for just the cost of the nozzle. Print volume is a major limitation, depending on your use case. The filaments it can print will probably be the same across any relatively low cost printers, with the only significant change being direct drive vs. Bowden.

Bed leveling is huge, and makes probably the most difference in print quality on low cost printers these days. If there’s an easy way to tension the belts, that’s a plus. If there isn’t a power switch on the front (or even if there is), a emergency stop switch can be a help, like if the nozzle is running into the bed.

Maintenance varies from printer to printer, generally you’re aiming for tight but not too tight on any belts or rollers. If the pulleys on the motors aren’t preinstalled, use something like loctite blue to fix them in place better.

Also make sure if you plan to buy a printer that it’s got a decent amount of community around it. Running into the same problems with a bunch of other people is a big plus as a beginner, so popular printers are better.

Teaching Tech made a calibration guide website that I’ve had a lot of good experiences with.

Check whether they mention heated bed. And if they do, check the max temperature. For example PETG prints the best at 85-90°C for the bed. For example the A1 sounds really great with all the specs, but the maximum bed temperature of 100°C immediately disqualifies it for me.

90-100°C is the sweet spot I’d go for a cheap printer. Otherwise you’re basically down to only printing PLA.

I’ve had a couple: a cheap Anet A8 clone, and a Prusa MK3. I did ABS and PLA on the A8, and PLA and PETG on the Prusa. My Prusa is now outdated, and I don’t have the A8 anymore. Both printers look the same to a layman. Here’s what I know.

The A8 was dirt cheap. Like $250 cheap. I think the Prusa was about $600 a couple years later. The print size was the same or very close on both, (250x250, 210 high).

The A8 relies on manual bed leveling. It sucked. The Prusa has a magnetic sensor that creates a level map in firmware and adjusts the printhead to follow the warp of the bed automatically for every print.

The A8 has an aluminum bed. It required kapton tape, or gluestick, or some way to get the print to adhere to the bed. I eventually used a sheet of glass with gluestick. The Prusa has a PEI bed, that just works as long as it’s clean.

Both of them have an E3D hotend with interchangeable nozzles using an M6 thread. Not the easiest thing to swap, but pretty simple anyway. The built-in Z-correction on the Prusa only selects for a few standard nozzle sizes (.25, .4(standard), .6, .8, and maybe 1.0). That’s a good range and probably enough. You can also forgo the built-in Z-adjustment and use any number of first-layer calibration models on the internet.

Both of them have a heated bed. And of course heated nozzle. You’ll have to check the temperature ranges yourself and see if your materials match.

You’ll have to select a Slicer program to use with your printer. I used Cura with the A8, and Prusaslicer with the Prusa. It’s up to you if you want to tinker more (Cura) or just print (Prusaslicer). There are so many options here, it’s impossible to touch on them all. This is where you adjust the layer height, and as long as your Z-axis motors can handle the fine adjustments it should be fine.

Neither come with an enclosure, which is something to consider for certain materials. I built one for my Prusa out of an IKEA table, to keep furry family members out of it.

In all, I wouldn’t recommend the A8 as a beginner printer. I had a lot of frustrations with it. Bed adhesion, bed leveling, belt tension. Very few successful prints, but I learned what I wanted for my next printer. The Prusa “just works”, and I’ve had it for 5+ years now. There was also a concern with the A8 setting things on fire. The Prusa firmware can detect temperature runaway and abort automatically.

As a hobbyist, consider how much time you want to spend upgrading the printer. Both of these have a lot of “home-brew” parts on the internet allowing you to add various features (belt tension adjustment, better part cooling, etc.) My MK3 is now an MK3S+, and still going strong. I’m considering if I want to upgrade this to the MK4.

If you don’t need a big volume to start then this one:
https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/a1-mini?skr=yes

I’ve been printing since the first Replicator and these days you don’t have to go thru all the trouble and learning experience if that’s not your thing. Get something that just works and requires little setup so you can enjoy it and hopefully grow your hobby. Many people buy an ender, get frustrated and then throw it up on marketplace for sale after it sits unused for a while.

Check that it works with Klipper!

The convenience and control Klipper provides is phenomenal. You don’t have to use it if it turns out you dont like it, but I feel like ruling it out as an option now would be a shame.

I would also point out that you should not be put off by the “official” supported printers list for Klipper, a bit of Googling will often turn up some mini projects where people are actively working on supporting the printer with Klipper before the main project gets round to adding official support.

I’d say support, whether it be official or unofficial is a thing you didn’t mention.

Try googling any printer you’re looking at + any random common error (not sticking to bed, not heating up, slicer options, etc…) and see what kind of results pop up and if they look helpful.
Look up parts costs and see how they look and if they’re proprietary or not.
See if there are official maintenance recommendations, etc…,

One of my printers is one that has ZERO support from the community and what you can get from the manufacturer is limited and it kind of sucks when I have problems with it.

Enders for all their faults at least have an insane community support (note: in 2024 I would never recommend an Ender 3/5 as a first printer).

My most reliable printer is a Qidi Smart-3 … vendor support has been great and the Facebook groups for it have been good too. The downsides: z-offset is manual & it’s 185x185 which is pretty tiny and it’s a bit of a pain to change the filament.
Upsides: core xy, fast, reliable, klipper
From what I’ve seen though, quality control is hit or miss, but the manufacturer seems to take care of you, so YMMV, mine hasn’t had problems that weren’t self induced.

Do you have a budget? Or is it just about making sure you’re getting your money’s worth (so $2000 is fine if it’s 10x better than a $200 printer)?

I bought a Ender-3 V2 Neo on Black Friday for €168. Has been a great buy and I have learnt a lot tweaking it. Maybe there are better printers out there I am unaware of, but as a starter I’d highly recommend it.

No matter what printer you get,

I recommend avoiding any printer designed to move the bed in the Y-Axis.

It’s an old design prior to CoreXY and it isn’t needed anymore, and has a lot of cons compared with no pros.

How much will you print? Have you looked into print services - there are companies with the expensive printers that will print your parts for you. Since a print is typically overnight or longer this may be just as fast. If something goes wrong with the print it isn’t your problem.