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.
Best ones I know of are maker’s muse and teaching tech
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.
Reviews are good to learn about each printer features if you don’t like to read. Then, just do a check list and see which machine has the best specs for your needs. At least that’s my approach when buying printers because at the end of the day they’re all extremely similar and capable all things considered. A consideration that may only matter to few is the proprietary/open-source aspect.
Reviews will only emphasize bells and whistles you may not even need. Everyone will comment on their personal experience which will vary with the machine they have and the gap can be huge for the same machine because it’s a piece of hardware/software and some may have flaws despite all the quality checks.
Reviewers without ANY potential conflict of interest don’t exist (and if you are even considering “Rumble” as something to trust… holy shit).
But also? Nobody has zero conflict of interest. Especially once they get into the “media” side of things. because you are going to meet employees of companies (or have colleagues become employees) and it is inherently going to shade things. I don’t like that Intel are dangerously close to circling the drain because one of my best friends from grad school works there. But also? I have a few people who work at a company that my firm does business with and we get drinks together when I fly out to visit.
But also? That is kind of what journalism(-adjacent) work is. Just because I have drinks with Fred and Sally doesn’t mean I am going to give them a pass for not meeting a deliverable or price gouging us. Similarly, I am not going to buy an intel processor just because a buddy of mine works on their compiler.
What matters is actually looking at how an outlet reviews things and how transparent they are with their biases and policies.
In the 3d printing space? I recently bought a new printer. The outlets that I genuinely trust are Teaching Tech and Maker’s Muse as both of them are very transparent on their review policies and have a good track record of reviewing things. I ALSO just did some youtube browsing to get close ups of aspects of the printer I was not sure about or to see what happens if you print on a stable surface (I love Angus but someone needs to take that table away from him…).
And if the extent of your research is asking randos on the internet to search for you? I recommend reading up on how prevalent astroturfing is and the cases of even “established” social media accounts being purchased/rented to post FUD. Because it isn’t just consumers who learned they can search “best doorknob reddit” to get a “better” answer… And while Lemmy is too small to really care about… it is also trivial to do this kind of stuff on.
Good luck finding one. I put zero faith in any electronic reviews because it’s so commonly gamed that there’s no way to know whether you’re being fed bullshit or not and the likelyhood of BS increases when it’s someone who reviews these devices professionally. Even recommendations you get here could be fake or misinformed for all you or anyone else knows.
but they can advertise other things that aren’t a direct conflict of interest.
Advertising things that arent a direct conflict of interest just results in poorly targeted ads, which both consumers and advertisers don’t like.
On the “open source” side, its not enough that the firmware is open source, the flashed binary needs to actually be unmodified. Marlin and klipper run 99% of the budget 3d printer space, and both are open source projects. There are still dozens of printers that are shipped with modified firmware with the changes kept secret. GPL is only as powerful as your lawyers are.
Is there a way to figure out if a product is shipped 100% open source? Maybe a website that keeps track of how open/closed each company is? Otherwise do you know of a way to reflash the system with an open source project? Something like a new OS from github? I’ve found in any hobby there tends to be a brand that has gotten lots of mod support from the community
Other than building the firmware and flashing it yourself not really?
Usually they will have flashing instructions somewhere, and thats a goodish sign. Even better if they have the source code published somewhere. But unless you build it and flash it yourself its impossible to know what is on there.
For a real-world example, many Anet A8 machines were shipping with “marlin”, but with the runaway thermal protection disabled.
The far bigger issue is that reviewers don’t have the time to put 1000 hours and more on the printer. So a lot of them are just an extended unboxing experience.
Next issue is that nearly all of the influencers have no expertise at all. They are just talking heads and happen to know a thing or two about 3D-printing. This means they still have no clue at all about embedded/electronics and mechanical design and often make hillerious comments.
