I have a Prusa i3 Mk3 and a Bambu P1S and I have to disagree. They are in entirely different leagues. The Prusa was a step change improvement from an Ender 3, and the Bambu is a step change from the Prusa i3 Mk3. It definitely depends on what you're printing, but I personally saw all my print failures on the Prusa pretty much go away overnight with Bambu.

So is a bambuu for far less money.

I have a Prusa btw.

Nope. You will get absolute shite prints if you skip the manual, eyeballed, first layer cals [1]. Bambu manual effort is a few seconds [2] of navigating a menu, then print. But, these cal's are NOT equivalent, with Bambu doing linear advance cal and input shaping (completely manual on i3).

Prusa being "adequate" (and expensive) is partly why Bambu now has 41% of the market, while Prusa has < 3% [3].

[1] https://youtu.be/GE-lrRbU124&t=245 and https://youtu.be/GE-lrRbU124&t=524

[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XruRPpODE6Q.

[3] https://www.3dprintingjournal.com/p/consolidation-has-become...