A better, bigger bedslinger
Tom’s Hardware Verdict
The Kobra 3 Max Combo is a super-sized printer with a four-color spool system that delivers on both quality and speed. Bed adhesion is still a little dicey, but easily addressed with a bit of glue stick or a plate upgrade.
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Pros
- +
Massive build size
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Color
- +
Excellent auto-leveling
- +
Active filament drying while printing
Cons
- –
Massive footprint
- –
No camera for AI
- –
Wastes filament in color mode
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At the time of this review, there are few 3D printers that can compare with the Anycubic Kobra 3 Max. The printer itself is a massive improvement over the Kobra 2 Max, with reliable auto leveling, input shaping, and decent speed. The new slicer is well designed and makes four-color printing with the ACE (Anycubic Color Engine) Pro simple. It’s also the biggest multicolor 3D printer on the market, with competition slow to catch up.
It didn’t look this good when the Kobra 3 Max Combo showed up at my workshop with buggy software. I won’t go into detail on all the things wrong with it, but I will say that if you already bought this machine, you will need to run an update, pronto.
The Kobra 3 Max is a massive beast of a machine just like its predecessors. Its custom “no-its-not-Klipper” operating system does a good job at input shaping, but with a bed the size of a coffee table, you can’t expect Bambu-level speeds. It is much faster than the first Marlin Kobra Max, with a cruising speed of 200 mm/s and acceleration maxing out at 5,000 mm/s².
Its high-flow hotend still wastes a good bit of filament on color swaps, but at least the slicer software now has the means to reduce waste by using purge objects and tuning the amount of filament pushed out between color changes. These updates, as well as the printer’s overall performance during testing, put the Kobra 3 Max Combo on our list of best 3D printers.