Are there any reviewers on YouTube/Rumble/etc. or independent blogs that don’t post affiliate links, aren’t sponsored by the printer company, or had one sent out by the company? Those to me all seem like a conflict of interest.
Yes people need to make money, I’m not blind to that, but they can advertise other things that aren’t a direct conflict of interest.
I’m looking to get my first printer and would like to get info from an unbiased source. I just don’t know enough to weed through the million 3D printer channels.
The Sovol SV06 Ace seems nice with little research as it is large enough to print the project I have in mind and uses open source firmware (Klipper) which is a must for me.
The only review I care/cared about is when someone actually uses the thing. I don’t care what they review. I care about all the projects they do later using a machine. When I was buying, everyone was defaulting to a Prusa. When everything else broke they used a MK3, so that is hat I got. Also, only people with Prusa’s seemed to be actually printing while only owning one printer. Everyone yapping about cheap printers had a half dozen of which only one or two ever worked at the same time. That is way more expensive than buying one machine.
Since then, Prusa has gone less and less open source and community driven. I still value true ownership without strings attached more than any other feature. To trust someone else’s proprietary scam and potential manipulation is to sell yourself to rent a product. Prusa is now selling a proprietary printer too. I would be very cautious about them going forward. The real open source community is with Voron and many projects supported by LDO kits.