Recently upgraded to an Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus, although I wouldn’t exactly call that ‘cheap’. No complaints so far, but I did replace the firmware with OpenNep4tune straight away so I can’t speak to the bone stock, out-of-box experience. Initial calibration was a little annoying but it auto-levels before every print, works really well with Orca and has its own remote web interface. I’ve only used it with PLA so far, but now that I have it dialled in I haven’t had a failed print that wasn’t my own fault.

Prusa and Cura are available on flathub and work fine. AFAIK Orca isn’t in the main repo but the flatpak is on their github and works fine for me too.

Thanks for doing the research but I’m not in the States. They’re out of stock at Anycubic here and significantly more expensive at resellers. Ender 3 V3 SE is AU$259 direct for me, whereas the Kobra is AU$368 (out of stock). Resellers have them for up to AU$500.

Interesting. Where I am the Kobra 3 seems to be either out of stock or ~160% the price of the Ender. Unless I’m missing a bargain somewhere.

I see auto-leveling as a nice-to-have. It’s not a deal breaker for me at this point because pretty much anything is going to be an upgrade from the K7.

I nearly pulled the trigger on a secondhand i3 Mega S but spare parts seemed to be nonexistent. How’s the support for the Kobra?