Best Resin 3D Printers Australia 2026:
Mars or Saturn, and the Parts That Wear Out

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to amazon.com.au. If you buy through one of these links iFix may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It doesn't change which products we recommend. We focus on what actually lasts based on 16 years of repair-shop experience.

Why every pick here is an Elegoo

I went looking for resin printers on Amazon AU from every brand I'd normally consider, and the only ones sold new by an Australian seller in the $300 to $900 range were Elegoo's. Anycubic, Phrozen, Creality and Uniformation searches mostly turned up replacement screens, build plates and resin vats from overseas marketplace sellers, which isn't what you want when the printer itself needs a warranty claim. So this guide compares four Elegoo machines against each other, and I'll say where another brand might suit you better.

That's not as limiting as it sounds. Elegoo's range splits neatly into two families: the Mars, which is the smaller desktop machine with a 7-inch class screen, and the Saturn, which has a 10-inch screen and roughly twice the print area. Inside each family there's a standard model and an Ultra, and the Ultra adds a tilting resin tank, a camera and Wi-Fi. Those are the two decisions that matter, and you can make both without ever reading a spec sheet in full.

All four picks are sold by ELEGOO Official AU, the brand's own Australian storefront on Amazon. Three of them are bundles that include a 1kg bottle of resin, and at time of writing two of those bundles were listed for less than the printer on its own. I can't tell you why Amazon prices work that way, but it does mean you should check the bundle listing before you buy the bare printer.

Resin or filament: which one you actually want

A resin printer cures liquid photopolymer one thin layer at a time with UV light shone through an LCD screen. Because the screen masks each layer with tiny pixels, the detail is far finer than a filament printer can manage, which is why tabletop gamers, jewellers and dental labs use them. The catch is size and mess. Prints are small, every part comes out sticky and needs washing and curing, and the resin itself needs careful handling.

If you want brackets, enclosures, replacement knobs or anything functional and larger than a coffee mug, a filament printer is still the better tool, and our value 3D printer guide covers the Elegoo and Bambu Lab machines we'd point you to. We run two filament printers at the shop for exactly that sort of job. Resin is the right call when the detail is the point, like miniatures, figurines, small mechanical parts with fine threads, or anything you'll paint.

Plenty of people end up with both. If you already own a filament machine, a small resin printer is a nice second tool rather than a replacement, and the running cost is mostly resin, release film and isopropyl alcohol or water for washing. If you're choosing your first printer and you don't paint models, I'd usually start with filament and the PLA+ spools we recommend, because it's far more forgiving to learn on.

Mars or Saturn: build size and screen resolution

The Mars 5 prints in a space of 143.43 x 89.66 x 105.11 mm, and the Mars 5 Ultra in 153.36 x 77.76 x 165 mm. That's fine for single miniatures, small figures and jewellery, and you can fit a dozen 28mm tabletop models on the plate if you lay them out well. The Saturn 4 and Saturn 4 Ultra print in about 218 x 122 x 220 mm, which is the size you want for busts, larger figures, cosplay parts or batches of twenty or thirty small parts at once.

Resolution is where the marketing gets noisy. The listings quote 4K for the Mars 5, 9K for the Mars 5 Ultra and 12K for both Saturns, but what you actually see in a print is the XY pixel size. The Mars 5 Ultra lists 18μm and the Saturn 4 lists 19 x 24μm, so the bigger screen has slightly larger pixels even though it carries the bigger number. In practice both are sharper than most people's painting, and the layer lines you notice usually come from the layer height you choose, not the screen.

The Mars 5 listing doesn't state its XY resolution or screen size, only that it's a 4K mono LCD with a COB light source. It'll print miniatures well, but if you're printing small text, fine chainmail or jewellery masters, I'd spend the extra on the Mars 5 Ultra bundle, which was only about $68 more at time of writing. For anyone who isn't sure what size they'll print, the Saturn 4 bundle is the one I'd lean toward, because a larger plate covers more uses and it was listed at almost the same price as the Mars 5 Ultra bundle.

The release film and the LCD are the consumables

Every layer of a resin print gets peeled off a thin clear film in the bottom of the resin tank. That film is a wear part. It clouds, stretches and eventually tears, and a torn film lets resin drip onto the LCD screen and into the base of the machine. Most of the resin printers that come into the shop with a dead screen got that way through a punctured film, usually from a stray cured flake or a scraper pushed too hard.

All four picks have a mechanical sensor that checks for leftover cured resin before a print starts, which Elegoo says is there to protect the LCD screen. It's a sensible feature and I'd keep it switched on. It won't catch every flake, though, so the habit that matters is filtering your resin back into the bottle after a failed print and running the tank's cleaning exposure to lift any cured skin off the film before the next job.

The Ultra models tilt the resin tank to peel each layer off the film rather than pulling the plate straight up. Elegoo quotes up to 150mm/h on both Ultras with that system. The faster peel is nice, but what interests me more is that a gentler, angled peel is generally easier on the film than a straight pull, so you should get more prints between film changes. Elegoo doesn't state a film life on any of these listings, so buy a spare film or two with the printer either way.

The LCD screen is the other consumable. Mono screens last much longer than the old colour ones resin printers used to have, but UV and heat still wear them down, and Elegoo doesn't publish an hours rating on these listings. When one fails you'll usually see faint lines, dead patches or a print that only half forms. Before you order a replacement screen, check the price on Elegoo's own store, because on the 12K Saturns it can be a fair slice of the printer's price.

Washing, curing and the mess nobody mentions

Every resin print comes off the plate wet with uncured resin. It needs washing, then curing under UV light so it hardens fully. With standard and ABS-like resins you wash in isopropyl alcohol, and with water washable resin, which is what comes in the two Saturn bundles, you wash in plain tap water. Water's easier to buy and doesn't smell, but the waste water still holds dissolved resin, so it can't just go down the sink.

The safe way to handle dirty wash liquid is to leave it in a clear container in the sun until the resin in it cures and settles, then filter the solids out and dispose of them as cured plastic. Check your local council's rules for the liquid. It's slow and a bit of a chore, which is why most people end up with a wash and cure station, an ultrasonic cleaner or at least two lidded tubs with a basket. Budget for that setup on top of the printer.

• Nitrile gloves, a box of them, and a silicone mat for the work area.
• A metal or plastic scraper with rounded corners, kept away from the film.
• Paper filters for pouring resin back into the bottle.
• Two lidded wash tubs or a wash and cure station.
• A spare release film sized for your model.
• Paper towel and somewhere to put it that isn't the kitchen bin.

Handling resin sensibly at home

I'm not going to lecture anyone, but uncured resin is a chemical and it should be handled like one. Read the safety data sheet for whatever resin you buy, wear nitrile gloves every time you touch the tank, a print or a used paper towel, and keep resin off your skin and off surfaces that people and pets use. Spills on timber or carpet are close to impossible to get out once they cure.

Resin has a strong smell while it's printing, and the water washable and ABS-like resins in these bundles are no exception. A printer belongs in a room with a door you can close and a window you can open, like a garage, a shed or a spare room, not the corner of a lounge room or a kid's bedroom. The Mars 4 Ultra that Elegoo sells alongside these ships with a plug-in carbon filter for odour, and you can add a small extraction fan or one of the units from our air purifier guide if the smell bothers you.

Keep the resin bottles and the printer out of direct sunlight, because the same UV that cures each layer will slowly thicken resin in a tank or a bottle left near a window. The orange lid on each of these printers blocks the UV wavelengths the resin reacts to, so keep it on whenever there's resin in the tank. A cat or a curious kid knocking a lid off during a print is a surprisingly common way to lose a tank of resin.

Power, placement and the cold

Resin printers don't draw much power compared to a filament printer with a heated bed, and none of these listings state a wattage, so I won't guess one. What does matter is that the mainboard, the LED light source and the screen all run from a small power supply, and a power surge or a no-name replacement adaptor can take out the board and the screen together. If you ever replace the power brick, read our guide to bad power supplies first and stick to Elegoo's own part.

Resin gets thick when it's cold, and thick resin peels badly and fails prints. A garage on the Central Coast in July can sit well under the temperature most resin bottles ask for, so in winter it's worth warming the room or the resin before a long print. Avoid putting a heater right next to the printer or on the same powerboard, and keep the printer on a stable, level surface that doesn't wobble when someone walks past.

The Saturn 4 Ultra lists a resume-printing feature after a power outage, which is handy if your area drops power in summer storms. The others don't state it, so a power cut usually means a failed print, a plate to clean and a tank of resin with a half-cured layer stuck to the film. Clear that layer before you restart, because printing straight over it is a common way to damage the film and the screen underneath.

What to check before you buy

All four Elegoo listings state a half-year manufacturer warranty. That's short, but it doesn't replace your rights under Australian Consumer Law, which cover a printer that fails within a reasonable time for its price, and buying from Elegoo's own AU storefront makes any claim simpler than chasing an overseas seller. Keep the box for the first few weeks, because sending a resin printer back without proper packing is how screens get cracked in transit.

Look up the price of a replacement release film and screen for the exact model before you order, and buy a spare film with the printer. Check that the bundle's resin suits what you want to print: the Saturn bundles come with water washable resin, which is easy to clean up but generally more brittle than ABS-like resin, while the Mars 5 Ultra bundle comes with ABS-Like Resin 3.0, which Elegoo describes as having more strength and toughness.

Resin printers fail in fairly predictable ways, and most of them can be fixed. A dead screen, a resin leak into the base or a power supply fault isn't always the end of the machine. If one of these stops printing properly, bring it into our Erina workshop and we'll tell you what's wrong before you spend anything. For desktop PCs and laptops that run your slicer, our Central Coast computer repairs team can help too.

The 4 picks, $349 to $640

Prices are Amazon AU at time of writing (2 November 2026) and move week to week. Ranks are Amazon AU category sales ranks, checked the same day; Amazon AU files these resin printers under its Laser Printers category, and where it publishes no category rank the site-wide rank is shown.

Side-by-side comparison

What we see fail in the workshop: resin 3D printers

Resin printers have fewer moving parts than filament machines, so the faults we see tend to come from the resin getting where it shouldn't, or from the power side. Most of them can be repaired, and most of them could have been prevented with a spare film and a bit of care when cleaning the tank. Here's what we see most.

Decision tree: which one should you actually buy?

• First resin printer for tabletop miniatures? → The ELEGOO Mars 5 Ultra bundle at $417, or the plain Mars 5 at $349 if you only want to try resin.
• Printing busts, cosplay parts or big batches? → The ELEGOO Saturn 4 bundle at $416 for the bigger plate, or the Saturn 4 Ultra bundle at $640 if you print large jobs every week.
• Want to wash prints in water instead of alcohol? → Either Saturn bundle, both of which include 1kg of water washable resin. Plan to cure the waste water before you dispose of it.
• Printer lives in a shed with patchy power? → The Saturn 4 Ultra bundle at $640, the only pick that lists resuming a print after a power outage.
• Need functional parts bigger than a coffee mug? → Skip resin and look at our filament 3D printer picks instead.
• Resin printer with lines on the screen or resin in the base? → Unplug it, clean any wet resin off with isopropyl alcohol, and bring it into our Erina workshop so we can check the screen, board and light source before you buy parts.

Frequently asked questions

Is a resin 3D printer more detailed than a filament printer?

Yes, by a long way for small parts. A resin printer cures each layer through an LCD screen, so detail is set by the screen's pixel size, which is 18 to 24 microns on the Mars 5 Ultra and Saturn 4 picks here. That's why resin is the choice for miniatures, jewellery and fine threads. Filament printers are better for larger functional parts, and they're less messy because the prints come off the plate clean and ready to use without washing or curing.

Do I need a wash and cure station for a resin printer?

You don't strictly need one, but you do need some way to wash and cure every print. Two lidded tubs with a basket and a sunny windowsill or a small UV lamp will work. A wash and cure station makes the process tidier and quicker, which matters if you print often. Whatever you use, the dirty wash liquid holds dissolved resin, so leave it in the sun to cure the resin out, filter the solids and check your council's rules before disposing of it.

How often do you replace the release film on a resin printer?

Elegoo doesn't state a film life on any of these listings, and it depends on how often you print and how careful you are with the scraper. Replace it when it goes cloudy, starts to sag, or shows any scratch or dent, because a torn film lets resin onto the LCD screen. Tilt-release machines like the Ultra models peel more gently, which generally helps the film last. Buy a spare with the printer so a failed film doesn't stop you for a week.

How long does the LCD screen in a resin printer last?

Elegoo doesn't publish a screen life on these listings. Mono LCD screens last much longer than the colour screens older resin printers used, but UV and heat still wear them, and a cured flake pressed into the screen can crack it in one print. Signs of a failing screen are lines, dark patches or parts of a model that don't form. Keep the residue sensor on, filter your resin after failed prints, and check the replacement screen price before you buy the printer.

Is water washable resin better than standard resin?

It's easier to clean up, because you wash prints in tap water instead of isopropyl alcohol, and it smells less during washing. It's generally more brittle than ABS-like resin, though, so thin parts and supports snap more easily. The waste water still contains resin and can't go down the sink. The two Saturn bundles here include water washable resin, while the Mars 5 Ultra bundle includes ABS-Like Resin 3.0, which Elegoo describes as tougher.

Can I run a resin printer in a garage or shed in winter?

Yes, and a garage or shed is usually the best place for one because of the smell. The catch is temperature. Resin gets thick when it's cold, and thick resin peels badly from the film and causes failed prints. In a cold garage, warm the room or the resin before a long print, but don't put a heater right beside the printer or on the same powerboard. Keep it on a level, stable surface and out of direct sunlight.

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