Bambu Lab A1 mini Review (2024)

With the rising popularity of 3D printing comes a bumper crop of inexpensive printers, some available for less than $200. Many of these, however, are difficult for beginners to assemble, calibrate, and use. That's decidedly not the case with the superb Bambu Lab A1 mini, which is not only affordably priced at $249 but offered with an add-on module (bringing the price to $399) that can print with any or all of four different-colored filaments, making multicolor creations easy. This makes the A1 mini the lowest-cost four-color fused deposition modeling (FDM) printer currently on the market, and easily earns it an Editors' Choice award among budget 3D printers.

Design and Setup: Multi-Color Prints in a Flash

Bambu Lab was founded in 2019 and introduced its first 3D printer, the X1-Carbon, on Kickstarter in 2022. Today, the company's lineup consists of several high-end FDM printers plus the entry-level A1 mini. The last is a nearly perfect device for someone new to 3D printing. Its ease of use rivals many more expensive models from other vendors.

The A1 mini is a "bed-slinger" printer, which means its extruder moves vertically up and down and horizontally from left to right while the print bed stays level but moves to the rear and front. By contrast, a CoreXY-style printer has a print bed that moves vertically while its extruder moves forward, backward, left, and right. (New to 3D printing terminology? Check out our handy explainer.)

The A1 mini's extruder can heat up to a maximum of 572 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing a variety of filament types including PLA, PETG, TPU, and PVA. Bambu Lab does not recommend using ABS or fiber-filled filaments. The print bed can reach a temperature of 176 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a little lower than the 212 degrees supported by some other FDM printers. In my tests, the bed temperature defaulted to 140 degrees, and I had no problems with adhesion or object removal. The print bed size is roughly 7 inches square, which is on the smallish side and not ideal if you need to make a lot of larger prints.

However, many printers with larger bed areas challenge you to assemble smaller components to create the final product. Instead, the A1 mini is almost completely assembled out of the box: Setup is just a matter of removing a few screws, tightening the build plate, and attaching the holder for single-spool use. The entire process took me less than 20 minutes.

(Credit: Ted Needleman)

The unit I received for review is the $399 Bambu Lab A1 mini combo, which includes the four-color attachment dubbed the Automatic Material System (AMS) Lite. It's a standalone unit that holds four spools of filament. Assembling the AMS was even easier and quicker than the printer. You simply join the base with the spool holder and run four PFTE tubes between the AMS and the A1 mini's tool head. Finally, you feed the filament from each spool through the accompanying tube into the tool head, and you're good to go.

An included toolkit eases what little assembly needs to be done. The kit contains two hex tools, tubes of lube, and a few other replacement parts that aren't needed for initial operation. Unlike the toolkits provided with some rivals such as the AnkerMake M5C, this kit has no side cutter for cutting filament, which would have been a nice addition. On the other hand, the A1 mini also comes with a kit containing the electronic and mechanical parts to build a finished product that's composed of more than just filament. I received a kit for a wireless computer mouse with my review unit. The print files are located on Bambu Lab's MakerWorld website, a repository of 3D printing designs that are free to download and use. You may receive a printer packed with a different kit; if you don't get one you like, you'll find a variety of kits available for purchase separately at the Bambu Lab store.

(Credit: Ted Needleman)

The A1 mini has a direct-drive extruder, with a hot end that you can remove and swap out (or clean) by simply undoing a buckle and sliding it out. Why might you want to do this? The hot end provided is stainless steel, which is not really appropriate for abrasive fiber-filled filaments. As mentioned above, Bambu Lab doesn't recommend using ABS filaments, either.

To use the A1 mini in single-filament mode (i.e., without the quad spools of the combo's AMS Lite), you install a spool holder on the rear of the vertical support during assembly. The The top of the extruder is the tool head and contains four ports into which PTFE tubes fit. If you're not using the AMS Lite, it doesn't matter which port you use for the feed from the spool; if you are, the documentation tells you into which port to feed the tube from each spool.

Connectivity and Software: Using the Slicer App

Also worth noting is the small (2.4-inch) touch-screen control panel on printer's lower right side. Its controls are easy to follow, but the small size of the display buttons made them a bit difficult for my large fingers (I solved this by using a stylus). The control panel lets you select 3D models from a microSD card you insert into the slot on the right side of the printer or download over a Wi-Fi connection. It also allows you to assign a spool color or multiple colors for printing.

(Credit: Ted Needleman)

One last task before printing is installing the software. This is a two-part process. The software (known as a slicer app) for the A1 mini is Bambu Studio, a good slicer for beginners with predefined parameters that will suit many models. The software offers an advanced mode if you want more control over the print process. Bambu Lab says the A1 mini is also compatible with other slicers such as Cura and PrusaPrint, though it states that not all features may work. I performed my testing with Bambu Studio, which I think most users will find both easy to use and sufficiently full-featured.

Another option is the Bambu Handy mobile app, available for iOS and Android devices. This lets you run the printer over a Wi-Fi connection and mirrors the slicer indicators such as bed and hot end temperatures. It also shows the output from the camera mounted on the A1 mini's extruder, as well as print progress and estimated time to completion. The camera isn't the highest resolution, but does allow you to save a time-lapse recording of your build; it lacks a night-vision capability, but a light on the extruder makes that feature unnecessary. One thing to keep in mind is that Bambu Handy's Wi-Fi connection only works on the 2.4GHz, not the 5GHz or 6GHz, band.

(Credit: Bambu Lab)

If you encounter any difficulty during hardware or software setup, you can turn to a detailed online wiki, numerous videos that address pretty much any situation a user might encounter, and a number of active Facebook groups.

Features and Speed: High-Quality, Quiet Printing

Using the A1 mini is just as simple as getting it up and running. You don't even need to use the slicer or Bambu Handy to make your first print, as a number of models including several iterations of the popular 3D Benchy are provided on a bundled microSD card. Loading and unloading filament (and choosing what filaments and colors to use if you have the combo model) is also handled from the control panel, even if the model is sliced on the slicer installed on a PC or Mac. The slicer can also route the generated gcode from a sliced model onto a microSD card if your computer has a card slot.

(Credit: Ted Needleman)

The default printing speed is 19.7 inches per second (ips), though you can choose a slower speed (which may produce better-quality results) in the slicer. I printed several models at both the default speed and the slower 9.8ips setting and was hard pressed to see any obvious differences; the default simply produced excellent prints in not quite half the time. This isn't unique to the A1 mini, however; pretty much every recent 3D printer offers similar or slightly faster speeds, so that shouldn't be a primary purchase consideration.

How long does an actual print take? That varies, but Bambu Lab provides some estimates, such as 15 minutes to print a 3D Benchy at the default speed. My testing verified that, with a caveat or two: Before each print, the company recommends that you perform an automatic bed-leveling process. This initially checks five points, but if it finds any discrepancy performs a full 49-point leveling routine, which adds several minutes to the print time. On initial power-up, the printer also goes through a noise cancellation procedure that takes a bit of additional time but considerably reduces printing noise and vibration.

Testing the A1 mini: Pick a Color, Any Color

If you spring for the A1 mini combo with the AMS Lite add-on, you've got additional options for printing. The kit can feed a selectable color from one of its four filament spools directly into the extruder. This means you can switch colors within the same printed layer. Printing a model of a four-color articulated panda bear from the microSD card, for example, was as easy as mounting the white, black, brown, and orange spools on the AMS Lite and changing a few settings.

The A1 mini lets you assign a color to each of the four AMS Lite spindles, and it can determine the color of filaments by reading RFID tags on filament spools purchased from Bambu Lab. (The AMS Lite can use filaments from any vendor, but won't automatically recognize their types and characteristics without the RFID tag.)

(Credit: Ted Needleman)

Printing the sample panda took many hours, as the model uses different colors on the same layer, obliging the printer to load and unload different colors multiple times. The A1 mini extrudes a small amount of filament with each color change, pushing these extrusions off to the left side of the build area. These waste extrusions can be extensive when you have a model with numerous color changes; the panda print produced a small mountain of leftover filament, which was not only wasteful but a pain to clean up. Perhaps one of the first models you'll want to print is a bin to contain these droppings.

(Credit: Ted Needleman)

The A1 mini isn't the only 3D printer that can print in multiple colors. The AMS Lite also works with Bambu Lab's larger A1 printer, while the company's X1-Carbon and P1Ps printers have a different AMS attachment that also offers four-color capability. As for competitors, Anycubic recently announced its Kobra 3 combo printer which also has four-color capability.

While a visual inspection of printed objects is the usual way to determine a 3D printer's capabilities, a more formal method involves benchmarking certain output characteristics against known criteria. In my testing, I printed a number of files including Baby Yoda and owl figures and others that we try on every 3D printer we review. In addition to the popular 3D Benchy, other benchmarks include a comprehensive test model developed by Kickstarter and Autodesk and a geometric panel. Only the Benchy and Kickstarter-Autodesk models have specific rubrics of measurements, which we check with a micrometer.

(Credit: Ted Needleman)

The geometry-panel model consists of several geometric and typographic forms that increase or decrease in size horizontally from left to right. While there is no formal rubric for this model, I noticed just a small amount of distortion on the smallest of the descending-size type tests.

The formal rubric for analyzing print dimensionality on the 3D Benchy can be found here. One measurement is the horizontal overall length, which the rubric specifies at 2.36 inches; the A1 mini delivered 2.38 inches. The printer matched the specified bridge roof length at 0.9 inch.

We also use the Kickstarter-Autodesk model, the rubric for which can be found here. A perfect score is 30 points; the A1 mini scored 27, which is excellent.

(Credit: Ted Needleman)

The Bambu mini produced first-rate output quality in all three of these benchmarks and the other objects we printed, which is frankly unusual for a printer this inexpensive. I used the 0.4mm nozzle included with the printer, though Bambu Lab's online store sells other sizes. I also performed the benchmark tests with white Bambu Lab filament fed from the AMS Lite, and averaged the results of three iterations for all of the measurement comparisons. Your exact print results may vary based on the brand and spool of filaments you use.

Verdict: Budget 3D Printing at Its Best

Overall, the Bambu Lab A1 mini is an excellent and affordable FDM printer suitable for beginners and hobbyists alike. It generates high-quality prints at relatively high speed; is exceptionally easy to get up and running; and continues to be problem-free while you're printing. It's also the most affordable four-color-capable FDM printer now available, within reach of nearly any budget even with the AMS Lite combo.

The A1 mini isn't perfect; the print bed's small size can be limiting and the dinky control panel may be a problem for large fingers. The only other downside we can see is the amount of filament waste produced during multicolor printing. But aside from these nitpicks, this is a superb 3D printer for someone who wants a stellar out-of-box experience, simple operation, and some money left in the bank.