Prusa was one of the pioneers of enthusiast 3D printing a decade ago, so its latest model, the Core One, is sure to excite its legions of fans. At $1,199 for the fully assembled version we tested, it is a significant investment, especially considering that it lacks some headline features available in competing 3D printers, such as LiDAR calibration, built-in AI monitoring, or multi-material printing as standard. While the machine excels in build quality and reliability, it doesn’t quite offer the same value as some of its rival 3D printers. Most beginners would be better off with the Bambu Lab A1, our Editors' Choice pick for mainstream printers. Meanwhile, experienced hobbyists and professionals should consider the Qidi Plus 4 or the Anycubic Photon Mono M7 Max instead.

Prusa History: Original to the Core

I’ve been following Prusa since 2015, when Josef Prusa launched the Original Prusa i3. I was enamored like the rest of you when I watched a video of him walking through the army of i3s that were making parts for the i3s not yet assembled. Machines making machines was the dream. Prusa's products quickly gained a reputation for reliability and quality support—we gave the i3 MK3S an Editors' Choice award.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The company also has an infamously strong community of users. YouTubers often preface their reviews of Prusa printers with apologies to the community, so as not to offend them and be consequently flamed in the comment sections eternally. For quite a while, to own a Prusa anything (the company launched several iterations of the Original line over the years) was to own the pinnacle of fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing.

The 3D printing landscape has changed considerably since 2015, of course. As I waited for the Core One to arrive, I thought about how I used to own a Blackberry and a Garmin GPS, and how the Apple iPhone made those obsolete. Bambu Lab’s arrival felt a lot like an iPhone moment in the 3D printing world: fast, smart, automated, paradigm-shifting features on products like the A1 and A1 Mini that appeal to modern users. So I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Czech company that arguably started it all.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

I found out that the Core One is Prusa’s answer to the disruption of Bambu Lab and other newcomers—but whether it’s a comeback or a case of "too little, too late" depends on how much value you place on open-source ideals versus plug-and-play performance.

Unboxing and Setup: Filament Roll Included

My fully assembled kit arrived securely packaged in a rugged cardboard box that prominently featured a roll of filament for loading. I appreciate it when manufacturers include a roll of plastic instead of a sad little spaghetti string of sample filament. Prusa also offers an unassembled kit variant of the Core One that presently lists for $949.

The company sells individual filament rolls for $30 and bundles of six for $150. A box that arrived alongside the Core One review unit had 10 extra rolls. It felt like Prusa was daring me to fill a shelf with creations in the first few moments of unpacking: ”You’re going to need a lot of filament for all the fun you’re about to have,” the printer seemed to be saying. It was a Willy Wonka moment, for sure.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Out of the box, the Prusa Core One includes everything you need to get started printing right away: a preinstalled smooth PEI print sheet, a spool of Prusament PLA (in the Galaxy Black color), a USB thumb drive preloaded with sample G-code files, alcohol wipes, a nozzle-cleaning needle, and a region-specific power cable (110V for me.) Also included: a 3D Printing Handbook, a user manual, and Prusa’s signature bag of gummy bears. My review unit also came with extra build plates with different textures, should I want to experiment beyond the smooth PEI sheet that comes standard.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Prusa's marketing game is strong, and the company leans heavily on its branding colors. You’re immediately hit with black and orange, and if you've been in the 3D printing hobby as long as I have, the familiar combination lulls you into the ecosystem. I looked around the room at all the things I personally owned with the same color scheme, including laptop bags, insulated water bottles, VHF radios, and power cords.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

The setup process might not be as slick as the branding, though. I experienced an issue with the touch-screen display, which has a port to plug in a ribbon cable, as well as a grounding cord that runs back under the machine. After assembly, I noticed a rattling and found that the grounding terminal hadn’t been screwed down to the lug. I took the self-tapping screws out, located the lug screw, and corrected the issue. “OK, stuff happens,” I thought, extending a modicum of grace to Josef and the gang.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I then powered up the unit and had another setback. The display unit would flash the bootloader text, and then flicker away. It would intermittently flash and then fade to black; not a great start. I logged on to the Prusa website and connected with an online support representative on a Sunday morning. To my surprise, someone actually answered me in the chat box—a real human...

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

After I explained the situation, the technician advised me to remove the ribbon cable from the display unit all the way back to the control board and “stretch it out and smooth it” to alleviate any stress or kinks.

He patiently waited at each step of the disassembly and reassembly and commented on the photos I was able to share with him from my phone in real time. About 20 minutes later, I was booted up and running with a downloadable log of our interaction for my archives.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

During this process, I flashed back to my experiences with the second 3D printer I ever bought, a Lulzbot TAZ 5, which I purchased 10 years ago and still own. I had to take it apart and put it back together many times to troubleshoot issues. I didn’t like how the setup of the Core One reminded me of those early-day experiences. Still, I was impressed by how quickly the issue was resolved with the help of a representative who knew this machine inside out. With that behind me, I resolved to print every test file that came with the unit on the USB stick.

The requisite Benchy (shown below) printed in 12 minutes with no issues. The USB drive also included an 8-minute high-speed Benchy file that I also printed, and watched the Core One nearly fall over from the hyper vibration. It's a bit of a flex—showing that the Core One can print really fast if you want it to—and at the cost of shaking my house apart, I made only one of those.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

The Benchy was followed by a spatula scraper, a key-ring Prusa card, and an impressive overhang test bowl, shown below.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I was nervous with the next file—the infamous Prusa rocket engine (shown below), which just about took my breath away and finished off my Galaxy Black PLA roll after 22 hours of print time. It printed perfectly, and it was obvious Prusa had dialed in the preset values to pair its advanced Nextruder assembly to the Prusa PLA. The geared dual-drive system’s strong grip on the filament allows accurate retraction, and I couldn’t find any vertical artifacts or seam lines on the optimized model. The detail and smooth surface of the robot llama on the engine were flawless.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

From these initial prints, it's clear that Prusa is relying on the pairing of the branded filament and the Core One and leaning into its experience with filament production. The Core One is clearly designed to print with Prusa filament consistently and beautifully. This walled-garden approach gives Prusa a tremendous legacy advantage over the Bambu Lab A1 and similar printers from Creality, like the K1.

Rounding out the initial setup are a few more quirks—both welcome and problematic. The fact that you can switch the hinges of the door to the opposite side is nice. But the NFC reader on the back of the printer that is supposed to help you connect to Wi-Fi using the Prusa app just didn’t work for me. I would prefer to just use a QR code from the display to connect my printer to my network.

Performance and Ease of Use: Built to Churn

I took the Core One with me on a two-week beach vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, along with the 10 spools of Prusa filament (including PLA, ASA, and PETG) and a filament dryer to ensure no humidity would affect my results. For 14 days, I fed the unit like a furnace, pushing filament through it like coal into the fire of a locomotive boiler. I got into a rhythm and discovered another subtle edge that the Core One has over its competitors—a smooth workflow.

I found decorative files on Printables.com, Prusa’s file-sharing site (which I’ve used for years and love how it looks and feels). You can drag things like exotic fish sculptures—which I thought would look great in schools displayed throughout my beach house—into the Prusa slicer app and then load them straight onto the USB key.

Over the course of the two-week testing period, the unit ran between 12 and 20 hours a day, making decorations for me. Just 3 days in, I understood why people use Prusa machines. Everything about the Core One centers on production and workflow. If the print is operational, it’s a blue LED light bar...

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

An error? It turns yellow...

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Finished? It’s green...

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

It doesn't get much more production-line-friendly than that, and this friendliness extends to many other aspects of the printer. Need to load filament? The process takes 2 to 3 minutes. The more you use the straightforward user interface on the display, the more you get who this is built for: people who make lots and lots of prints.

I was starting to feel like I was cranking out fish decorations to sell in a high-traffic souvenir shop. The rhythm went like this: Load a new file on the USB key. See it automatically come up on the Core One display when I plug it in. Start printing. Check the display's bold numbers to see what percentage was left, and how long it would take, while I prepared the next file. Repeat.

I could see this unit sitting on a shelf, alongside two, five, or maybe 10 other units, churning out parts with consistent quality and broadcasting their print status visually with the LEDs. It. Just. Ran.

I changed over from PLA to ASA, and thought I might want to make a sea turtle display at the base of the house’s stairs. The Prusa slicer makes it simple to change settings like support type and material type, with specific options for the Prusa filaments you're using. You could navigate to submenus buried in tabs, but the focus on workflow is obvious. The app makes it easy for you to load the file, pick the resolution and material, slice, and export. The more I was in the ecosystem, the more I realized how easy Prusa makes it to go from file to print.

And so the turtle started. The end result had zero issues and perfect surface finishes at the 0.2mm layer height. It was a cool little display of flying turtles with the bright, colorful ASA green that would last for years outside.

I then went back and loaded an “ocean” file, with the blue PETG roll I was sent with the Core One. This display had a pocket for my Benchy, which looked as though it was fighting to stay upright in a perfect ocean storm. I used the Fast Detail setting, and I wasn’t disappointed when it finished....

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Features and Build Quality: Room for Improvement

While the Core One's production-line prowess is impressive, its build quality leaves room for improvement. I don’t like the cheap plastic covers for the side panels. Nor do I care for the cover held in on the top by plastic rivets, or how the unit comes with the plastic still on the panels. These elements feel cheap—almost an afterthought compared with the steel frame.

This is a premium-priced machine compared with the $600 Creality K1 and the $700 Bambu Lab P1P, and it should feel like it. Josef Prusa himself says in a video that the top cover is riveted down for safety regulations, with a wink and nod that suggests he knows you’re going to need to take it off to fix an extruder jam. I'd rather not have to fiddle with cheap plastic rivets to do so, instead of higher-quality tapped holes or rivet nuts.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

You'll find another odd design choice on the display, which has a plastic dial, even though it’s a touch screen. Why? My 10-year-old Lulzbot has a dial. It’s weird that a machine as otherwise advanced as the Core One has one.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The printer has no silicone cleaning wiper. Instead, you get this stringy filament that hangs down like the cheese your grandfather has hanging on his lips from the French onion soup he’s eating that you have to clear away. We expect this on far-cheaper models like the Bambu Lab A1 Mini (which extrudes a considerable amount of the waste that hobbyists refer to as "poop") but not on a $1,200 machine. Of course, you can 3D print a wiper yourself, but you shouldn’t have to for this price.

I prefer a camera that I can watch from my phone to see if something’s gone wrong, or get a text or email letting me know that my turtle is stillborn. You can get one for the Core One, but it costs extra, and you have to install it yourself. Relying on the community to engineer things that should come standard is out of character with a high-end printer like the Core One is marketed to be.

Then there’s the question of the heater—or lack thereof. The unit has an enclosure, but it’s not a heated chamber, and relies on the passive heat from the bed to warm up and bake the parts internally. Competitors like the Qidi Plus 4 have a secondary internal heater that floods the chamber with heated air, which is important for engineering-grade materials like ABS, PA12-CF, and polycarbonate. The Core One relies on slots on the cheap-feeling plastic lid and two small fans to regulate the chamber temperature, inviting heat-creep issues at the nozzle for cooler extruding materials like PLA. In fact, I had one PLA jam issue as a result of heat creep that I had to clear during testing, and I needed to chat with a service representative again to help me disassemble the Nextruder to clear it.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Between these small fans and the flimsy polycarbonate with the weird slider on the plastic-riveted lid, I feel like Prusa hasn’t worked out the balance between cool material requirements like PLA and TPU, and the opposite end of the spectrum: high-temperature, engineering-grade materials. The Plus 4 has a heavy glass lid with handles that you can lift right off for PLA—a more premium experience.

As for how big you can print, the 8.3-by-8.3-by-9.8-inch build volume is a bit cramped compared with the 10-inch square volume of the Bambu Lab X1C. Even the Creality K1's build volume is slightly larger, at 8.7 by 8.7 by 9.8 inches. The constrained build volume is a byproduct of Prusa's upgrade philosophy. Owners of the Original Prusa series can upgrade their units to later models and even the Core One by purchasing and installing upgrade kits.

Print Quality: Mostly Excellent

To evaluate the Core One's print quality, I printed the three tests we use to evaluate all 3D printers: the Benchy, a geometry detail model, and the Kickstarter/Autodesk model. I also printed many other models, including a mesh organizer, a robot, and a toaster.

Benchy Test

As mentioned above, I had no issues with the Benchy. At the 0.2mm layer height, it had a consistent surface finish with no shifts between layers or vertical fine artifacts (VFAs).

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Geometry Detail Test

I printed two versions of this, one with PLA and one with black PETG. Other than some minor sagging on the bridges of the purple vertical print, the Core One produced a good output. I noticed that with PLA or PETG, opening the door and taking the lid off helps prevent heat buildup. So does increasing the fan speed. The door is supposed to remain closed during printing, and a sensor verifies it's closed, but you can disable the sensor using the touch screen controls.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Kickstarter/Autodesk Test

I printed this twice as well: once with purple PLA and once with orange PETG. I used the default settings with a 0.2mm structural preset. I noticed stringing immediately and wondered if the fans weren’t getting the chamber cool enough...

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I wanted to use the Core One the way a new user would, knowing nothing about pressure advance, retraction, or fan speed optimization. I knew if I left the lid off, opened the door, and increased the fan speed, I could make the stringing go away. With out-of-the-box settings and keeping the door closed, though, it was like a haunted forest with the tapered posts.

On the other hand, the cylinders all fell out of their holes as intended, all the way down to the 0.2mm clearance test, without issues or prying...

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

The overhang test also went well, right up until the 80-degree point, where stringing and layer separation started. The stringiness was constant through the 85-degree overhang maximum of the part. There were minimal VFAs on the sides and top of the part, which had a clean finish (shown below).

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Mesh Organizer

I wanted to try this piece, as it's frequently used as a benchmark across printers. It has a delicate hexagon wall pattern and is a good test of a printer's retraction and cooling capabilities. I bumped up the fan speed from 30% to 35%, and achieved much better results in a real-world part with no stringiness this time, along with near-perfect hex shapes...

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

I ran the print two more times to see if all three of them would stack properly, and they did.

Interlocking Robot

I went back to Printables.com to find a snap-together part, and discovered this articulated robot that had two plates of parts, which were supposed to snap together. It had minimal supports, and I decided to give the orange and black PETG a try to further test the dimensional tolerances of the unit. I used the 0.15mm structural setting and default Prusa slicer values for Prusa PETG.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Honestly, I felt like I did when I first started 3D printing. A little bit like a kid again, and I wanted to make more and more things and snap more and more robots together.

Torture Toaster

The toaster came out perfect, with a smooth finish, using the 0.15mm setting for PETG. The doors opened and closed easily. The gears spun. The toast popped out, and all but the 0.1mm sliders moved freely in their guides.

(Credit: Michael Lydick)

Prusa Ecosystem: More Than Just 3D Printers

After testing the Core One, I realized my initial BlackBerry analogy doesn't really apply to Prusa. In fact, I don’t think you can classify a Prusa printer as just one option in an ever-deepening sea of 3D printers. Instead, I think that if you're considering the Core One, you have to refer to Prusa as a collective—a community of users, a repository of open-source software, and a room full of 24/7 technical service advisors at your disposal. You have to include the library of Prusa filaments in the collective idea as well, because every node is interdependent. And don't forget the Prusa app and the Printables website. You're investing in all of it when you purchase a unit.

You're also buying into the promise that you can upgrade your Core One to whatever the company introduces next. That's both a strength and a weakness. Prusa's commitment to upgradability means you can upgrade your hardware at less than the cost of a new model, but it also means that you'll feel more compelled to ignore the advances that competitors make, especially when it comes to larger print volumes and heat management.