Prusa Puts Bambu Lab in Its Crosshairs with the New CORE One 3D Printer

Prusa is one of the most respected names in the 3D printing industry, but Prusa Research has struggled in recent years to compete with the cost and capability of competitors — particularly Bambu Lab. Now Prusa Research is set to make a massive comeback with the release of the new Prusa CORE One 3D printer.

The Prusa CORE One is very clearly designed to take back some of the significant market share that Bambu Lab has garnered in recent years. Prusa took a hard look at what customers like about their own products and what customers like about Bambu Lab’s products, then created the Prusa CORE One to provide it all.

If it sounds like I’m fanboying, that’s because I am. I owned a Prusa i3 MK3S and hold Prusa Research in high regard. But I sold that printer years ago and currently use a Bambu Lab P1S. The convenience and value proposition were simply too good to pass up. But like many of you are about to, I’m now drooling over the Prusa CORE One.

What makes it so enticing? It is a speedy CoreXY 3D printer that should offer fantastic performance in a practical package, but with the enthusiast-friendly philosophy that Prusa is known for and all kinds of interesting new features. This isn’t Prusa’s first CoreXY model — that was the Prusa XL. But the Prusa XL was big and fairly expensive. The Prusa CORE One is more compact, will come in at a price point meant to compete with the Bambu Lab X1 Carbon, and has several features that even the Prusa XL lacks.

The CORE One has a build volume of 250×220×270mm, which is about 89% of the build volume of the X1 Carbon’s 256×256×256mm. It is fully enclosed with full chamber temperature control, making it suitable for just about every filament material on the market. It has a powerful extruder with planetary gearbox and a high-flow hot end.

There are also all kinds of innovative features — more than we even have space to cover here. The enclosure, for example, has compartments for holding the printer’s filament and things like spare build plates. That minimizes the required space on tables. There is a “GPIO hackerboard” that will let the CORE One control other devices. It can, for example, trigger a mirrorless or DSLR camera in order to capture high-quality timelapses. And the CORE One is compatible with the MMU3, which is similar to Bambu Lab’s AMS system.

We’ve only scratched the surface, so be sure to check out Prusa’s announcement post and video. The Prusa CORE One should start shipping in January and an assembled printer will have an introductory price of $1,199 USD (plus VAT). There will also be a kit available to upgrade a MK4S to a CORE One — a remarkable feat in its own right.