Hi @Maker5162 thanks for the clarification. I think price vs quality and reliability becomes a very difficult discussion when dealing with technology (or many other things for that matter!). It’d be lovely to be able to definitively say that a “thing” that costs twice as much as another “thing” does its job twice as well, but we all know that’s not usually the case. If we’re right down the bottom of the market, the lower priced thing could be virtually useless while the higher priced one does an OK job; at the upper end the differences between the two could be hard to spot (and the higher priced thing is almost certainly overpriced). And, of course, there’s every stage inbetween.
The Prusa Mk2 and the Makerbot M2 are, on the face of it, very similar machines. Virtually the same build area, both open source, both the same physical design, etc. The M2 can go down to 25 microns rather than 50 for the i3, but really I rarely print below 100 microns anyway so it’s debatable how important that is for a new user. So, someone looking to buy their first machine is left asking, what am I getting for my extra $1000? Your argument (and I’m not disagreeing with it) is that the extra cost is in higher quality components, greater reliability and so on, but that’s really only relevant if the i3 Mk2 has demonstrably poorer quality issues in terms of reliability, etc. What’s important to any user is whether they’ll actually be affected by any such issues. If the M2 will print 24x7 for 10 years and the i3 only 6, I’d argue that’s irrelevant to me because I can be pretty sure I won’t be using either in 6 years time. If the Prusa will break down in a year, that’s more of an issue, but it seems unlikely and if it breaks down, I’ve got $1000 in my pocket I can use to repair/upgrade it and, perhaps more importantly, by then there will be other machines on the market and that $1000 could buy something even better than the M2, who knows?
I think the M2 is a fine machine, I have absolutely no criticism of it, but this thread was started by @marczem who has said he’s a new user, looking for a hobbyist/enthusiast machine and that being the case I’d argue the Prusa is a better choice because it’ll do everything a hobbyist will need and it leaves $1000 in their pocket for filament, the multi-colour upgrade, spare nozzles, etc., or to reduce their wastage if they discover 3D printing isn’t for them. If the original poster was an experienced printer with specific needs, the M2 may well be the better choice, but that’s not the case here and we should consider the person as well as the machine.
