Best Value 3D Printers Australia 2026:
Elegoo vs Bambu Lab, 8 Picks With Pros and Cons

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 this guide only covers Elegoo and Bambu Lab

There are a lot of 3D printer brands on Amazon AU, but past the first page most of what you'll find is sold by overseas sellers, or by resellers you've never heard of with no local warranty behind them. Elegoo and Bambu Lab both sell through their own brand storefronts on Amazon AU, and between them they cover every price point from a first printer to something that'll run every day in a small business. So rather than pad this out with brands I wouldn't send anyone to, I've kept it to the two I'd actually recommend.

They come at the job from opposite directions. Elegoo generally gives you more hardware for the money, and its printers are more open to tinkering (the Neptune 4 Pro runs Klipper, which you can reconfigure as much as you like). Bambu Lab gives you a closed, polished system where the printer, the slicer software, the phone app and the model library all come from one company. The printer calibrates itself and most first prints just work. Neither approach is wrong, and which one is better value mostly comes down to how much you enjoy fiddling.

Prices here are Amazon AU at time of writing, and every pick links to its listing so you can check today's price. If you already own a printer and you're here because it's stopped working, skip down to the section on what fails, or bring it into our Erina workshop and we'll take a look.

Bed slinger, CoreXY or enclosed: the choice that matters most

Every printer here is FDM, which means it melts plastic filament through a hot nozzle and builds the object up a layer at a time. What separates them isn't the headline speed, it's how they move. A bed slinger moves the print bed back and forth for one axis and the print head sideways for the other. The two Neptunes and both A1 models work this way. They're simpler and they cost less to build, but the bed is a heavy moving mass, so tall, thin prints can wobble and the machine needs a lot of room front to back. Bambu's own setup guidance for the A1 allows about 545 mm of depth for the bed to travel, which is more than a lot of desks have.

A CoreXY printer only moves the bed up and down and flies the print head around on a gantry above it. The Centauri Carbon and the P1S are both CoreXY. They're faster in practice, they handle tall prints better, and they fit neatly in a box, which is why both come enclosed. The enclosure is the real reason to pay more. ABS and ASA shrink as they cool, and in an open printer a draught from a window or an air conditioner is usually enough to lift a corner off the plate halfway through a ten-hour print.

If you'll only ever print PLA and PETG, which covers brackets, drawer organisers, cable clips, cosplay pieces and most of what's on the model sites, an open bed slinger is perfectly fine. If you want parts that'll survive a hot car dashboard or sit near an engine, you want an enclosed printer and ABS or ASA.

What value actually means with a 3D printer

The box price is the smallest part of what a printer costs you. The bigger costs are failed prints and your time. A printer that needs its bed levelled by hand, its first layer tuned and its nozzle unclogged every other week can easily cost you more in wasted filament and lost evenings than the $300 you saved buying it. That's why a $639 A1 can be better value than a $339 Neptune 3 Pro for someone who just wants the thing to work, and why the Neptune is better value for someone who'd enjoy learning all of that anyway.

Then there are the consumables. Nozzles wear, especially with glow-in-the-dark and carbon fibre filled filaments, which are abrasive. Build plates lose their grip after enough prints and get replaced. Filament is the ongoing cost, and multicolour printing uses more of it than you'd expect because the printer purges plastic every time it changes colour. On a small four-colour model the purge can outweigh the print itself, so I'd treat multicolour as something you pay for on every print, not just once at the checkout.

Parts supply matters too. Bambu printers have a big range of spares on Amazon AU from Bambu and third-party sellers, which makes them easy to keep running for years. Elegoo's older Neptunes use common parts that fit a lot of printers. The Centauri Carbon is newer and has less on the shelf so far, which is worth knowing if you're planning to run it hard.

How big a printer you actually need

Build volume sounds like a bigger-is-better number, but most household prints are small. Replacement knobs, phone stands, hooks, cable clips, drawer dividers and brackets almost all fit inside a 180 mm cube, which is why the A1 Mini works for so many people. Where it runs out is anything wide or tall: a helmet, a large planter, a full-size storage box, or a plate full of the same part printed in one go.

The step to 256 mm, which the Centauri Carbon, A1 and P1S all share, is bigger than it looks. It's close to three times the volume of a 180 mm cube, and in practice it means you rarely have to split a model into pieces and glue it back together. The Neptunes sit in between at 225 mm across, with the Neptune 3 Pro the tallest here at 280 mm. If you're not sure, I'd buy the bigger printer. Nobody I know has ever wished their printer was smaller, but plenty of people have outgrown a small one within a few months.

Speed numbers and what you'll actually print at

Almost every printer box now says 500 mm/s. Treat it like the top number on a car's speedo. It's a peak the print head can hit on a long straight move, not what you'll get on a real model with corners, small details and layer changes. Elegoo is fairly honest about it: the Neptune 4 Pro listing quotes 500 mm/s and then recommends 250 mm/s in the same sentence.

Acceleration is the more useful number, because most prints are made of short moves where the head never gets near full speed. The P1S and the Centauri Carbon both list 20,000 mm/s², while the A1 and A1 Mini list 10,000 mm/s². The Neptune 3 Pro doesn't list either figure, and it's the slowest machine here by a fair margin. For a lot of people that doesn't matter much, since a printer mostly runs while you're doing something else.

What lets a fast printer produce clean parts is firmware that cancels out vibration (input shaping) and compensates for pressure building up in the nozzle (pressure advance). The Neptune 4 Pro lists both, the Centauri Carbon lists vibration compensation and pressure advance, and Bambu handles the equivalent in its automatic calibration routine. The Neptune 3 Pro's listing doesn't mention either, which goes a long way to explaining why it's the slow one. You can still get lovely prints out of it, you just have to be patient.

Open versus closed: the software side

This is where the two brands differ the most. Bambu Lab's printers are built to run through Bambu Studio on a computer and Bambu Handy on your phone, with models from its MakerWorld library. It's slick, and for a beginner it's the easiest way I know to get from a download to a finished print. The trade is that you're working inside Bambu's system, with its parts, its software and its way of doing things.

Elegoo is more open. The Neptune 4 Pro runs Klipper, which is open-source firmware you can modify, and Elegoo's printers generally work with the common free slicers. If you like owning the whole stack (and if you've built a Home Assistant setup at home, you probably do), that openness is worth something. It also means more of your weekends go into tuning.

Both brands want the printer on your home Wi-Fi. If your router supports a guest or IoT network, put it there like you would any other smart device, and keep the firmware updated.

Power, safety and where to put it

A 3D printer is a heater that runs unattended for hours at a time, so treat it like one. Plug it straight into a wall socket rather than a daisy-chained powerboard, check that the power supply and cord carry the RCM mark, and keep it off carpet and away from curtains. Have a working smoke alarm in the room. None of that is specific to these brands, it's just what you'd do with anything that has a hot plate and a nozzle running at 300°C.

Running cost is small. The Neptune 4 Pro's bed is listed as a 100W centre zone plus a 150W outer zone. At the AU average tariff of roughly 33c/kWh, running both zones flat out for an hour costs about 8c, so even a ten-hour print with the whole bed on is under a dollar before you add the hotend and fans. Beds cycle on and off once they're up to temperature, so real use is usually lower.

Heat is the other thing to think about. Enclosed printers get warm inside, and none of them love a shed in January. Keep the printer somewhere that doesn't bake, and if you're thinking of running one from a portable power station, check its continuous output first, because a heated bed warming up pulls a lot more than the printer uses once it's settled.

Filament, humidity and what to buy with the printer

Filament soaks up moisture from the air, and PETG, TPU and nylon are worse for it than PLA. Wet filament pops and strings as it prints, gives rough surfaces and weak layers, and it's one of the most common reasons a printer that used to print well suddenly doesn't. On the Central Coast, with the humidity we get most of summer, spools left open on a shelf for a few weeks are often the problem, not the printer.

The fix is boring. Keep spools sealed in a box or bag with desiccant, and dry them before use if they've been sitting out. The AMS that comes with the P1S Combo is enclosed and holds desiccant, which helps. The AMS lite on the A1 and A1 Mini Combos is open, so the loaded spools sit in room air the whole time. A dry box costs far less than a printer and will save you chasing a fault that isn't there.

A printer on its own gets you started, but a few small things make the first month a lot less frustrating. Buy a couple of spools of PLA from a known brand rather than whatever's on special that week, because inconsistent diameter is one of the easiest ways to get bad prints on a good printer. Grab a spare nozzle that matches your printer, a sealed container with desiccant for your spools, and a set of digital calipers so you can measure the thing you're trying to replace.

A spare build plate is worth having once you're printing regularly, since a scratched or greasy plate is behind a lot of first-layer problems. Wash it with warm water and dish soap now and then, and don't touch the print surface with your fingers, because skin oil is enough to stop PLA sticking. That's honestly most of the maintenance a modern printer needs, apart from keeping the rods and rails clean and the fans free of dust.

The 8 picks, $339 to $1,229

Prices are Amazon AU at time of writing (28 September 2026) and move week to week. Ranks are Amazon AU overall sales ranks, checked the same day. Build volumes for the Bambu A1 range come from Bambu's spec sheet, since the Amazon listings don't state them.

Side-by-side comparison

What we see fail in the workshop: 3D printers

Most 3D printer faults are small, low-cost parts in places that move or get hot. When a printer does come into the shop, it's usually one of the three things below, and none of them means the printer is finished. Here's what to watch for so you catch them early, before a small fault turns into a burnt connector or a dead board.

Decision tree: which one should you actually buy?

• Just want to try 3D printing for the lowest outlay? → The ELEGOO Neptune 3 Pro at $339. Slow, but it'll teach you how a printer works.
• Want a fast, open printer you can modify? → The ELEGOO Neptune 4 Pro at $549, running Klipper.
• Want the best all-round value, enclosed? → The ELEGOO Centauri Carbon at $599. Enclosed CoreXY with a hardened nozzle for carbon fibre.
• Complete beginner who never wants to calibrate anything? → The Bambu Lab A1 at $639. If space is tight, the A1 Mini Combo at $739. For four colours, the A1 Combo at $899.
• Want enclosed multicolour with no tinkering? → The Bambu Lab P1S Combo at $1,229.
• Printer won't heat, keeps resetting or won't power on? → Bring it into our Erina workshop and we'll tell you what's wrong before you spend anything.

Frequently asked questions

Is Bambu Lab or Elegoo better value?

It comes down to whether your time or your money matters more. If your time matters most, Bambu Lab is usually better value, because the printers calibrate themselves, the software is polished and most prints work first go. If hardware for the money matters most, Elegoo generally wins, and the Centauri Carbon is the clearest example: an enclosed CoreXY printer with a hardened nozzle for $599 at time of writing. For most beginners I'd go Bambu A1 or A1 Combo. For someone who's printed before, or who wants carbon fibre filaments, I'd go Centauri Carbon.

Do I need an enclosed 3D printer?

Only if you want to print ABS, ASA or other materials that shrink as they cool. Those warp and crack in an open printer, especially near a draught. For PLA and PETG, which cover most household prints, an open printer like the A1 or Neptune 4 Pro is fine. Enclosed printers also keep dust off, cut noise a little and keep curious pets and small hands away from the hot parts. If you're not sure, the Centauri Carbon and P1S give you the option without having to buy a second printer later.

How much does a 3D printer cost to run in Australia?

Very little in power. Taking the Neptune 4 Pro's listed 250W for its heated bed at roughly 33c/kWh, the bed flat out for an hour costs about 8c, and a ten-hour print is under a dollar in electricity before you add the hotend and fans. Beds cycle once they're at temperature, so real use is usually lower. The bigger running costs are filament, nozzles and build plates, and failed prints and multicolour purging eat into your filament faster than most people expect.

Is multicolour printing worth paying for?

It's great for signs, name tags, toys and display models, and it's a lot of fun. It's less useful for functional parts, which are usually one colour anyway. The catch is waste and time, because the printer purges filament at every colour change, so a four-colour print uses noticeably more filament and takes longer than the same model in one colour. The A1 Combo is the best value way in. If you're not sure, buy the plain A1 and add the AMS lite later.

What filament should a beginner start with?

PLA. It prints at low temperatures, doesn't need an enclosure, sticks well to the plates these printers ship with and is forgiving of small tuning mistakes. PETG is the next step for tougher parts that need to handle a bit of heat and flex. Keep either one sealed with desiccant when you're not using it, because damp filament is behind a lot of the bad prints people blame on the printer, especially in a humid coastal climate.

Why are the Bambu Lab printers sold by Bambu Lab Technology instead of Amazon AU?

Bambu Lab sells its printers on Amazon AU through its own storefront, so the listing shows Bambu Lab Technology as the seller. That means warranty and support go through Bambu rather than Amazon. It's the brand selling direct, not a random reseller, but check the delivery estimate and the returns terms on the listing before you order, because those are set by the seller. Elegoo's printers are sold the same way, through ELEGOO Official AU.

Related buying guides