Everything from ease of use, printer longevity and (most importantly) print quality can be improved by using some of the best Ender 3 upgrades. It’s important to make sure that the two holes for the gantry bolts on either side of the base align perfectly with the holes on the gantry. It takes a little bit of patience and adjustments to get them aligned, but they eventually fall into place. These are geared to suit the Ender 3, so you’ll have no compatibility issues, and there’s a version for every model of the Ender 3. These range from older 8-bit mainboards and the newer 32-bit V4.2.2 and V4.2.7 boards found on the older Ender 3s to the most recent Ender 3 S1 and Ender 3 Neo boards. The power supply is decent too. It’s Creality’s brand that, as far as we know, is safe to use and has no reliability issues. It’s better than a no-name bargain bin PSU, but probably not as good as a real MeanWell-branded one. We specifically tested the Ender 3 Max Neo with taller 3D prints to see if we could detect any Z banding, but the results were excellent. You’ll see these further down in this review.

What we can say for sure about the power supply is that it is underpowered for a print bed this size. With only 350W available, heating the bed to its maximum temperature of 100 °C takes long. 14 minutes to be exact, even though the total will depend on your ambient temperature. Compatibility: Ender 3, Ender 3 Pro, Ender 3 V2, Ender 3 Max, Ender 3 Neo, Ender 3 V2 Neo, Ender 3 Max Neo, Ender 3 S1, Ender 3 S1 Pro If you are wondering whether Creality has done this to save vertical height, we don’t think so. Even the 400 mm tall CR-10 Smart Pro has a top-mounted spool. Compatibility: Ender 3, Ender 3 V2, Ender 3 Pro, Ender 3 Max, Ender 3 V2 Neo, Ender 3 Max Neo, Ender 3 S1, Ender 3 S1 Pro, Ender 3 S1 PlusI’ve had this print fail many times on my other 3D printers, especially with the temperamental wood filament. It was great to see it print so well on the Max Neo after the first try. A bonus of printing with wood PLA filament is the smell of burning wood, which I enjoy. The Creality Ender 3 Max Neo is a surprisingly good 3D printer. It has a solid build quality and the print quality is better than we expected based on its specifications.

Creality offers its very own enclosure solution designed specifically for the Ender 3. What I like so much here is the simplicity: no complex assembly, high prices, or major limitations. The Creality tent enclosure covers all the main filaments: ASA, PC, ABS, and pretty much any other heat-sensitive material. With traditional manual bed leveling, the 3D Printer uses the Z endstop—a small switch located by the Z axis motor—to tell the printer when the nozzle is fully lowered to the print bed. Since this does not take into account the height of the print bed itself, you’ll need to use the knobs on the corners of the bed to adjust the bed’s vertical position until it is exactly the right distance from the nozzle. This process requires a fair amount of manual effort and calibration to get just right, and it drifts slowly over time. Considering the large bed size, there is still a large area available where the temperature is reasonably uniform and should be sufficient for most prints. However, it is not an optimal print surface for larger 3D prints in materials like ABS. Just like with the V2 Neo, this is caused by subpar machining quality—it is a budget 3D printer after all—that results in coarse threads. It’s not a big issue and can be solved with a bit of extra force if necessary. Cooling is always a factor in 3D printing, a balancing act of sorts that can lead to excellent prints or absolute failures.Compared to the Ender 3 Max, the new color screen is a big upgrade. That 3D printer uses an outdated monochrome LCD that only displays limited information. We rarely see those types of screens anymore, with the exception being the Sovol SV06 we covered recently. User Interface Comparing to the FF, at the same resolution setting, this is far superior, and with the addition of Cura as the Slicer, faster on many prints too.