Now that this is shipping, I'm hoping it gets more exposure and reviews online:

https://www.prusa3d.com/product/prusa-core-one/

Unfortunately an heir apparent isn't readily... Apparent in my eyes. All have tradeoffs. To be fair, Bambu did too but hid it better from most consumers.

Qidi isn't terrible, and they have a decent track record. Their use of klipper is a big plus as well. But multi material is still a promise with no release or reviews, and they have had some duds in their history.

Prusa is an obvious option, and previously wore the crown. They're a good bit more expensive, but perhaps that's the cost of a highly ethical company that is deeply invested in the community. MMU is well understood and works great, but isn't integrated in their latest printers yet.

Voron is amazing but absolutely still not for beginners. Besides that they lack for absolutely nothing. Some kits are approaching the user friendliness of pre built, but care and feeding is generally a more technical endeavor.

Creality is a good place to start generally, but lacks for features.

Long story short, if a friend approached me and demanded a recommendation, I'd push a casual user to Qidi, a demanding user to a Prusa, and a tinkerer to a Creality with the understanding I'll be printing voron parts in a year or two

The sad reality is that we are going to see more and more printer companies building up walled gardens. There is money in models and the end goal is going to be one model site per slicer per manufacturer. There will still be the open source build your own printers but... there is a reason everyone recommended a Bambu over one of those.

As of right now? Qidi are pretty awesome in the semi-proprietary space and have a good track record of releasing the g-code macros required to interface with their printers (e.g. chamber temperature controls). Time will tell what they do with their multi-material solution though.

Yeah this sucks, I just bought an a1 mini with AMS, I love it. I do have it in LAN Mode with no internet and I still use bambustudio since I believe that is open source no? Lets hope they reverse this but I don't see them doing that. Hope I can still use the printer without upgrading the firmware or somebody is able to make open source firmware for the a1 mini...

Man I hate tech space right now, every company grinding out as much money as possible anyway they can because "security"...

I have an order for a P1S that hasn't shipped yet but am now considering cancelling it and buying a Creality K1C. Anyone have thoughts on that as an alternative? It seems their multi material thing is coming out soon

Wait I missed something. What happened with bambulabs?

I saw this coming a mile away. i made the right choice of printer :/

Really tho their software has already been broken into, it's on repair.wiki. You can fix your printer

I have a Qidi X-Plus 4. There are a lot of reviews online raving about its reliability, how it's the first production-ready printer that's also affordable for hobbyists. It's also got Klipper firmware, which is open, so it can't be locked down the way the Bambu ones are.

My old printer is a 10 year old prusa clone kit, which I wrestled with the whole time I had it. Compared to that, the Qidi is a dream.

If you're on 110v power, make sure you get the fixed relay board. The original one can't handle the higher amperage of the lower voltage power.

You could extract the private keys from your printer

https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Reverse_Engineering_Bambu_Connect

Just like you, I switched to LAN mode and I'm using Orca anyway. Gonna wait for it to blow over, it's still a great printer for the price but next one will most likely be Prusa. I'm still happy with my A1M+AMS, it's a great introduction to the hobby as far as I'm concerned. It's disappointing to see Bambulab behaving that way, I hope they change course.

For completeness it's worth mentioning that they posted a response to a lot of the more extreme allegations

https://blog.bambulab.com/updates-and-third-party-integration-with-bambu-connect/

Is X1Plus available for the P1S? If it is, that's what you should switch to in LAN only mode. Can slice with anything and feed it over to the printer.

It's what I did with mine, even though it was in LAN only mode already. Switch over before they disable that option. Already working on selling it though so I can get a Prusa CORE.

X1plus on an isolated network + pandaprint for an orcaslicer without any Bambu network plugins. (https://github.com/pandaprint-dev/pandaprint/tree/master)

Get a Prusa. I too made the error buing chinese crap (Ender 3 v2 in my case). I didn't have the cloud problem but i had to tinker soo much till it actually worked.

You pay more for a Prusa, but then you actually have tested and open hard- and software that works and can't be taken away from you.

Are you within the EU?

The way forward is to enjoy printing cool stuff.